Wednesday, December 24, 2008

To cut a long story short

Of late, I have gravitated towards collections of short-stories instead of 1000 page novels. A combination of a shortening attention span and a distinct lack of extended reading time has forced this change in my reading preferences.

I have quite a few books at home that are in my to-read list, but I find the quicker pace and faster conclusion of a short-story much more appealing. Strange since I find that my interest in cricket remains in direct proportion to the duration of the game.

The website, Tehelka.com, has come out with a collection of short-stories by various Indian authors for their year-end issue, with the simple brief that the stories have to be about "excess", as explained by Jabberwock on his blog.

As ML was telling me recently, there appear to be two types of Indian writers - those that write for a western audience, and those that write for any audience. The stories in this anthology are a mix of both types. I have not read all of them, so I will reserve my comments until I do that. Until then, enjoy the stories by clicking on the link for the stories. (Once again, these are short-stories linked to the site where they are published from - Tehelka.com).

Siddhartha by Altaf Tyrewala

Feast by Manjula Padmanabhan

Same Day by Mridula Koshy

The Decline Of Henrietta by Tishani Doshi

The Good Boy by Rajorshi Chakraborti:

Mrs Roberts by Ruskin Bond:

Anatomy Of Excess by Amruta Patil

Sweetlove (recovered) by Sunetra Gupta

Rosie by Vivek Narayanan

Paraphilia by Ambarish Satwik

The Perfect Couple by Sarnath Banerjee

Hanging On Like Death by Anjum Hasan

My House Is Your House by Sudeep Chakravarti

Strawberries Are White by Kalpish Ratna

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