Is it my fault?

The New Yorker Fiction Podcast is a small miracle. Every month, a writer who has been published in the magazine picks a story from the archive, and reads it out loud. A short discussion between the fiction editor and the writer about themes arising from the story wraps it up.
I love to hear a story read aloud, and good short fiction is available to listen to from more varied sources, but it is the New Yorker version I return to repeatedly. You learn so much about an author from their choice. The New Yorker archive is venerable and extensive, so you won't hear a dud. Then, there is the discussion, which is lucid and intelligent without veering into arid intellectual posturing.
I listened to the latest podcast: Jonathan Safran Foer reading Amos Oz's story, "The King of Norway". You can listen for yourself here. As the story unfolded, I formed opinions about the characters. In the discussion, Jonathan Safran Foer blew them away, making me go through a paradigm shift about what I had just heard, challenging my casual judgements, giving me new insights and shedding richness upon my narrow interpretation.
That's not bad for 30 minutes listening. It made me think about the dangers of throwaway reading (or listening), of not paying sufficient attention. It made me think of a chilling Twitter exchange I saw yesterday, where a reader reeled off some master short story practitioners of whom he was "a bit bored". Perhaps we need to be aware of our limitations as readers; how the quest for novelty and sensation can mask the potential richness of the pages we read. Sometimes, we need to read reflexively and thoughtfully, open to the possibility of being challenged. Sometimes, if we are bored, it is our fault.

Happy New Year Reading

In between the shopping and wrapping and visits and visitors and cooking and hoovering for the next round of visitors and cooking and eating I've managed to find time to finish reading Sarah Waters' "The Little Stranger" which I started about two months ago. It's no reflection on the book that it took so long for me to finish it. In fact as I got into it I wanted to wait til there were no distractions to interfere with the gorgeous moody writing. It has so much of what I love in a novel: a terrific setting in the mouldering Hundreds Hall, evocative imagery and characters, a slow boiling plot that utterly pulls you in.

Happy New Year

Happy reading and writing in 2014 from the Garden Room Writers.

My stories published at The Derry Review website and The Weary Blues

I'm deighted to say that I've two pieces published very recently online.  My story Myself Alone was published last week on The Derry Review website here  and  a flash fiction called Cooking for the Dead at The Weary Blues  here.

Happy Christmas

 

Happy Christmas from the Garden Room Writers, and thanks for stopping by and reading our blog.

(Christmas tree image - Mazeo's clipart from Openclipart)

Some more recommended readings in short fiction, poetry, letters and more

Here are more ideas for online readings over the festive season - a few first issues even. And below some beautiful, hard copy, hold in your hands literary magazines.

Shortlist for the Donegal Creameries & North West Words 2013 Poetry Prize

And, the shortlist is out. Congratulations to all. I'm looking forward to the readings in January.

My story With Matchsticks Not Money in The Linnet's Wings Winter 2013

I'm delighted to say that my short story With Matchsticks Not Money has just been published in the Winter 2013 issue of The Linnet's Wings here

Some online readings - for the festive season perhaps.

Here are some ideas for reading short stories and poetry in online literary journals over the festive season.

The beginnings of enthusiasm...

I remember vividly the first book of short stories that ever came my way. I was a  teenager, on holiday from London, accompanying my mother on a trip to her childhood home in Dunlewey. The cottage was empty. Her parents had died decades earlier; their ten children had all emigrated and made their lives elsewhere. My uncle used to come for the summer when his children were young, but now he rented it to a judge from Dublin who came for occasional fishing trips.
A neighbour from the village kept the key for my uncle, and as the judge was not in residence he came with us so my mother could look inside the place where she grew up. Paddy Maire Mor was an old man then, but he would have witnessed the sadness of death and emigration that my mother's family had gone through, and he was aware of her feelings as she moved through the little cottage. As if to distract me from her melancholy, he drew my attention to a shelf of paperbacks by the door, and urged me to take one. I hesitated, not wanting to deplete the judge's holiday reading, but Paddy was insistent.
I have the book beside me now: "The Sphere Book of Modern Irish Short Stories", published in 1972, edited by David Marcus. I remember reading the stories from start to finish, an indiscriminate consumer of pages, unaware of the reputation of many of the writers. Some resonated with me at the time. I knew that Liam O'Flaherty's 'Going into Exile' described an American Wake like the one my mother remembered in the cottage in the 1930's when her eldest brother and sister emigrated, and I could recognise the tensions in Edna O'Brien's 'Cords': a daughter at home in London with a mother ill-at -ease there.
It's only now I recognise how this book was a launching pad for my enthusiasm for the Irish short story. In years to come, I sought out collections by Michael McLaverty and Brian Friel, having grown to love their stories in this collection. It was here I first read John McGahern, in an unforgettable and strange portrait of his father called 'The Bomb Box'.
I've returned to the stories over the years, and it's only recently that some have yielded their riches to me. Elizabeth Bowen's  'A Love Story; 1939' stands out now, but left my younger self unmoved. How could I have overlooked Mary Lavin's 'Happiness'? I joyfully rediscovered its complexity and emotional power during a recent browse, and it sent me on a quest for more. I'm delighted that I could order 'Tales From Bective Bridge' from Faber Finds, and even happier that it has just been delivered.
The book I acquired so long ago is still spurring me on and leading to new discoveries and pleasures.