Hi everyone, welcome to Kitabi Cabins. Mera naam Bani hai and in this episode I am going to recommend to you some of my favorite short story collections. When I was a child in school we used to have books that were dedicated to short stories. I was obsessed with reading short stories and I realized they are such good endpoints to reading and also great escape if you can't finish a whole novel.
Now, I have a list of five books that I really want to recommend to you. Honorary mentions to Nobody. belongs here more than you by Miranda July. That's because I think it revived my love for reading. Aajra Dhruv Sehgal recommended it to us on Chalchitra Talks.
The first collection of stories that I want to recommend to you is the one that I grew up reading when I was in class 9th and 10th as part of the syllabus. It was a treasure trove of short stories. It has a wide variety of stories from all across the world.
Some of my favorite stories are Girls, Remember the Roses, Monkey Spore, Dusk. And quite recently, I discovered a subreddit called Monkeyspaw, where people write down things that they wish were true. And people then comment down below what would really happen if their wishes came true. It also helped me discover a lot of authors in the process. I think I discovered O.
Henry because of this book. The next book that I want to recommend to you is Dear Life by Alice Munro. She also received the Nobel Prize for Literature.
And she's written some of my favorite books. books when you see an artist like Aga Shahid Ali and you know why you like him because he writes poetry that's very real and will pierce through your heart without you realizing it or someone like Ernest Hemingway his rawness will steer you and shake you and make you love his writing then there are people like Alice Munro and you cannot really understand what's so special about them but what's really special about them is that they write in such a language that can seep through anyone beyond age groups, beyond demographics. And that is what I really like about Alice Munro. And in Dear Life, she covers people who are just living ordinary lives. And that makes Dear Life, the collection of stories, so relatable.
But before I recommend the next book, I really want to talk about this app that I've discovered recently. It's called Saga Fiction. And it is like Netflix, but for books.
Which is very interesting because all the books that are listed on the app are carefully handpicked. picked by the editors so that you can read them and enjoy them. If you want to get started, what I'd really recommend to you is the titles Famous in Love and When in a Myth. Absolutely amazing. And another thing that I really like about the app is that certain books come in episodes format.
It's like TV series, but you're reading the script. They're very binge worthy and you can binge read with the help of Saga. We also had them on Chalchitra Talks for VM Square Show.
we just had a wonderful wonderful time sitting down with them and talking about all their ideas it's a wonderful app and i would recommend to anyone everyone who's looking out for books that are diverse to go out check out saga fiction they have a lot of books listed in the categories from fiction philosophy horror crime thriller so on the list is endless so do check them out saga fiction the app is available on ios and androids and if you do get to saga fiction Let them know that you discovered them through Kitabi Cabins. Now, coming back to the recommendation, the next book that I want to talk about is 10th of December by George Saunders. I realize I have a taste for dark humor, which you'll find in abundance in 10th of December. I also realize the short stories that are in 10th of December, some of you might really like them.
Some of you might just hate me for recommending this book to you because you won't see the point. But I'm of the opinion that these books are really, really interesting, especially the short story. that the book is named after 10th of december which follows a man who's decided to walk away from his family because he thinks he's a burden on them but the moment he walks away things start happening and he realizes why life is an adventure that can still happen the next book that i want to recommend to you is fortune smiles by adam johnson i read this in one of the reviews and i completely agree each story is going to plant a small bomb in your head You will expect something out of a story and then the plot would just go in a direction that you wouldn't expect it to go. They are of course bizarre, humorous and some of the stories might even be ridiculous. The stories from dear life might make you feel emotional about life.
But Fortune Smiles is just going to devastate you. You're going to laugh at each character mentioned in each story. You will also cry for help because you will identify yourself in that individual who's actually in a plotline that is years from now waiting to happen. The last collection that I now want to recommend to you is something that's very personal and I finished reading it very recently.
It's called Tales from the Hills. It's about Lahore's enduring myths and legends. Lahore is a district in Himachal Pradesh and it's written by Manohar Lal.
The book talks about the legends and myths that are a part of the district and you also realize a lot of diversity that exists in India. This is a wonderful book, especially if you want to get and insight into the beautiful region that La Halle-en-Spithy is. And I think this is also the short story collection that inspired me to make this video.
I hope you will like and pick up at least one of these collections and let me know if you like them. Let me know if you like this new setup and if you'd like to see more videos from here. And what kind of content would you like for us to make on Kitab-e-Kabins?
Let us know in the comments below. And I will be back with another set of recommendations for you in my next video.