Absolutely. I love most Hemingway. "Men Without Women" being my favorite collection. "Banal Story" and "Today is Friday" both very short. And is "A Very Short Story" from another collection is, as the title suggests, very short.

J.D. Salinger's "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" from "Nine Stories" is a good, but dark, introduction to the Glass family, who are the subject of many of his stories.

And a random one I cherish: "Boys" by Rick Moody (https://barringerlit.weebly.com/uploads/1/3/2/6/13263242/boy...)

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shaneclevelandMar 2020

Anything from Salinger. Go beyond Catcher in the Rye. Nine Stories; Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters; Franny and Zooey.

Hemingway's short fiction really kicked off a lot of reading for me. Men Without Women is a nice little collection.

A couple others to go deeper on ... Stephen Kind and Roald Dahl. King has many incredible novelas: The Body (Stand By Me); Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption (Shawshank Redemption); Hearts in Atlantis. Likewise, Dahl, known more for his children's books wrote some adult fiction, short stories.

I think it is less about the book and more about when in your life you pick it up.

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shantlyOct 2019

He's really only got three other books, and only one of them's a novel, the others being a short story collection and a pair of novellas/novellettes.

I read Catcher first and found it just OK. Franny and Zooey was my gateway deeper into Salinger (and Stoicism) back in high school. Liked Nine stories quite a bit on my first visit, but didn't care for Raise High & Seymour at all until a re-read over a decade later, and now that might be my favorite of his books.

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firebonesJan 2019

For all the Catcher hate in this thread, the short story collection "Nine Stories" may be more interesting to those who quit on Salinger based solely on traumatic coerced readings of Catcher.

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