Little words

Over the last year, I've been noticing the proliferation of short fiction: smallish, often beautifully packaged and uniquely presented. Maybe it's just that I'm beginning to pay attention to fiction again, after a frustrating hiatus of pap and bad circumstance...and this is a good re-entry into it before finally picking up that W. Somerset Maugham or Henry James that have been staring at me for a long time.

Here are some of the books which have been inhabitating my thoughts recently (including some non-fiction):


The Tent - Margaret Atwood

...this little book is a collection of short - some very short - pieces that hover somewhere between folktales, fables and parables. They feel ancient, but stunningly prescient...like opening up an old cigar box, filled with your childhood treasured objects and trinkets, after having forgotten about them for years...and them reminding you, somehow, of who you are, and who you should be.


Memories of My Melancholy Whores - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

...a strange and gorgeous little novel, of the malleability of age; the resiliency of humanity, the beauty of life and the weird situations we create around ourselves at times. Garcia Marquez's works always scintillate and crackle with the heat and melliflousness of post-colonial South America (at least what I know of it from reading).


What Jesus Meant - Garry Wills

... a brilliant (I'm still working on it) revisiting of the life of Jesus, cut down to the core of the Gospels, complete with Wills's own meaty and wonderful translations of New Testament Greek. This little devotional-type book will be controversial, but feels so true to the heart of Jesus' ministry and purpose through his father...


And here are some that are on my upcoming list:

Gotz and Meyer - David Albahari
the days of awe - Hugh Nissenson


I'd be curious to learn if any of you have read any of these books, and would also love to hear your opinion of them. Any one else been noticing all the little books on the shelves recently?