100 books like Selected Stories

Maybe the weirdest and most beautiful collection of stories in my house full of books.

In “The Circular Ruins,” a man dreams up another man, only to realize that he, too, is a dream. “The Library of Babel” imagines a world containing every possible book, most of which are nonsense but some of which, if only you could find them, contain the most profound truths ever written. “Funes the Memorious” imagines a boy paralyzed by a perfect memory, one that retains every single detail of every event ever experienced.

Every sentence of these stories is bizarre and fascinating, with a richness that leaves me understanding them differently with every re-read.

I first read The Explorers when I was a child. I delighted in it then and still do. Its style got to me first. A real literary style. Some of the stories are hard-boiled, Raymond Chandler in space. Some poetic. But so much better than most clunky SF. And also, so unconventional This is not Azimov. Rather than space opera, we get a scientist drunk, bemoaning his “contributions” to space flight. Instead of wondrous inventions, we get cheesy computer art. Brainless generals celebrate nuclear war. Well-written, unusual, simultaneously funny and sad, The Explorers is a masterpiece of 50s SF.

I recently re-read Six Great Modern Short Novels, after I’d been reading a lot of recent commercial fiction. I shook my head in amazement. A thought came unbidden into my head: “This is what they mean by great literature.” All six novels are simply so much ̶  better (I can say it no better). I had read it as a youth. But the second time was even more compelling. Even the lesser novels were light-years ahead of your run-of-the-mill bestseller. Each left me with a feeling I had forgotten literature could engender ̶ a kind of exalted acceptance, an awed wonder, a transcendence, a nobility. Read them one at a time. All at once may be too powerful.

Any Maugham story has to be great. This collection is no exception. Usually a character in his own stories, Maugham will play the part of reader’s confidant, recounting a story about a friend of his, or a friend of a friend, as it were second-hand. I particularly like how he handles the theme of money in this collection (unlike Balzac, who introduces money with a truncheon): no big deal; but such a bother. Each story seems a trifling anecdote, distanced, cursory ̶ until the perfect note of pathos slips in. And Matisse’s simple line drawings complement Maugham’s prose nicely.

The two most influential writers of the 19th Century, who perfected the art of writing revenge stories were French-born Guy de Maupassant and American Edgar Allan Poe. Maupassant is the quintessential go-to Gothic storyteller for revenge and considered the greatest master of the short story in world literature. This collection has all his classic tales like “La Vendetta,” a tale about a grieving mother’s need for revenge, and my favorite, “The Hand,” about an avenging appendage. Plus, many more tales. 

Maupassant’s story takes its name from the chubby prostitute at its centre, nicknamed ‘Bowl of Fat’. At the time of Prussian occupation of France, a group of petty bourgeoisie, upper bourgeoisie, noble and religious people encourage her to offer herself to a Prussian officer in return for the freedom to travel through an occupied town to Le Havre. Through this short novel, Maupassant reveals the hypocrisy and moral poverty of those who sit in the layers of society above such outcasts as ‘Boule de suif’ and, by contrast, both the moral solidity and even innocence of the ‘fallen woman’ herself.

Madame de Boigne describes the same period as Chateaubriand, whom she disliked, from a liberal perspective. Both had their style and mind improved by suffering during the Emigration, which also made both, for a time, feel half-English. Boigne married a French officer who had made a fortune in India, but failed to tell her he had brought back an Indian wife. She took his money and returned to live with her parents. 

Born with what she called a ‘taste for royalty and the instinct for court life’, she described salons and quarrels, royalty and revolution, Paris and England, from 1780 to 1840. Her friend Count Pozzo di Borgo, for example, she says, would have descended into hell to find enemies for Napoleon, whom he had hated since their childhood in Corsica. She blamed the long foretold revolutions of 1830 and 1848 on monarchs’ exaggerated sense of their infallibility. A genius… show more.

I love this adventure travel memoir about hiking across Corsica, a French island in the Mediterranean, because the author and her husband who just turned sixty, inspire me to keep walking and adventuring for as long as possible.

The GR20 is one of the toughest trails in Europe and the author shows us with her determination and honesty how to persist. After reading this book, I’m excited to add the GR20 to my wish list of walks or at least dream about it. 

Where better to start trying to understand Napoleon than with his own words? If only it was that simple! In total, four of his companions took down Napoleon’s words but he died without editing them. Exiled on St Helena, Bonaparte was determined to counter what he saw as the gross distortions circulating in the English-speaking world. I delight in his confident vision, even after his ultimate defeat. This book gives us insights into his view on the nature of history, his assessment of generals through the ages, including a substantial section on himself, the key events in his career, and a set of final observations in which he attempts to rewrite history to his tastes. Not then a balanced piece of work but no less fascinating for all that. It taught me the importance of putting myself in a character’s shoes before I start writing.

This is a fine work of fiction that forms but the first installment of a four-book masterpiece. Max Gallo was a herculean figure in French post-war life. In this volume, he tells the story of Napoleon’s life from his birth in Corsica to the moment in 1799 when he topples the ineffective Directory. I love this book because the author puts us inside Napoleon’s head. We think his thoughts and savour his words. He has put the flesh on the bones of history, conjuring a sympathetic tyro at times plagued by doubts but also willing to take daunting risks. This book made me realise Napoleon was more than an icon or an ogre, an Emperor, or a military genius; he was an outsider, he endured bullying, and he felt the same gamut of emotions as we do. I never looked at historical figures in the same way again.