Public reader discussion about Carmen in the WeRead Catalog by Prosper Mérimée.
By pageCoastal7
I’m not really sure what to make of some of these, but I’ve got to say I really liked a bunch of them anyway. Stuff like *Heartburn* and *Goodbye, Vitamin* hit the right tone for me, and I also ended up enjoying *In the Dream House*. A few others were a little more confusing or just didn’t fully click at first, but I’m glad I read them.
By cloudyriver
I thought this book was really good—honestly better than Fight Club and Choke for me. I do catch myself wondering what’s going on in Palahniuk’s head though. How does he even think up stories like this? I also learned a bunch of random weird stuff from it. You can tell he actually researches, because there are details you’d never guess just from reading. And his style feels kind of like Lars Von Trier’s thing—so different, gross in a way, but also somehow beautiful. Plus the whole time it comes off more like drama than anything else, like just messy, strange drama. Invisible Monsters especially had twist after twist, and I liked the way the narrator jumps around in time. At first it threw me off, but once I got used to it I couldn’t stop reading. It makes me want to check out the newer Invisible Monsters: Remix too. Overall, I really loved this book.
By lucky-cup
It feels like a lot of the “best of” short story lists just ignore anything from the 2000s/2010s. I’m not sure what’s been left out on purpose, but do any of the newer collections (like the last decade) really stand out to you? For me, I’ve really enjoyed “Audition” by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, a few things by Sigrid Nuñez, and Ottessa Moshfegh’s Homesick for Another Planet. I liked how the characters were kind of off in their own way—thinking pretty weird thoughts—and it all felt pretty direct, like nobody was being judged or psychoanalyzed to death, just people acting on whatever they’re feeling.
By SedulityLake
Wait, is he wearing a trench coat?
By Patient_Bear1993
As a kid, I was super into this weird sci-fi book called “Brainboy and the Deathmaster.” It feels kind of like a mix of Ender’s Game and Ready Player One, but I’m not totally sure. I think the setup was kids in an orphanage getting hooked up to a pod to play video games. It popped into my head in a convo with some friends, and I figured I’d toss the question out here too, because I’m always interested in hearing what everyone thinks.
By prologue_chaffer1978
I’m reading *Carmen* by Mérimée Prosper right now, and I keep getting a bit stuck. I’ve noticed this kind of setup in a lot of older, shorter fiction—why do some stories get told like someone is telling someone else a story? Like the “main” book story is basically being relayed by a character to another character. I don’t see it much anymore, at least not in the same way, so I get that times change. But I’m still confused why this novella starts with pages focused on the main character, when a lot of what follows is another character basically telling him about his own experience. I do know there are writing reasons you’d do something like that, especially for getting emotions across in a more subtle way. I just don’t really see what this particular technique is doing here. It feels like it slows everything down, and since it’s mostly direct speech, it doesn’t seem to add much—so why was this such a common way of telling stories? What is it supposed to accomplish?
By footnote_book
Got downvoted just for calling out the headline being wrong. They say “revealing” like it’s supposed to show something we didn’t know before… but this article doesn’t really have anything “hitherto unknown” in it. Honestly, the story itself was strong enough without making up or stretching the claims in the headline. Using a metaphor is one thing, but blatantly exaggerating to the point of false is pretty low.
By strangeteacuphoney
I’ve been stuck on this question: which demon designs, aside from the original SMT ones, don’t feel like they’re taken from regular urban legends or old mythology? The only ones I can think of are Treant and BUG.
By narrow_epilogue
I’ve seen a bunch of old threads about favorite prose writers, but I didn’t really find anything that focused on more recent stuff, so I figured I’d ask. Who (or what books) do you think have the best modern prose—like from around 2000 onward? And what is it about their writing that you like?
By blue_tiger
I can totally see the appeal of experimental stuff and what it’s going for, but I don’t usually end up feeling it emotionally. Most of the time I’m just like: “Oh, nice, they really went there… anyway.” I’m a native German speaker too and I even studied German lit, so I know there are plenty of really interesting experimental writers in “my” language. Arno Schmidt and Thomas Bernhard are two I’d actually say are fun to read for me, but a bunch of others don’t really land. Any experimental authors you’ve liked both on a brain level and on a gut level?
By cloudyAcorn
Got this as a Christmas gift this year and I was actually pretty excited to start it. The opening pulled me in a bit - and then it just kind of crashed. Honestly this might be one of the worst books I’ve ever finished. It’s not scary at all, it keeps repeating itself, it’s packed with really heavy-handed God imagery/symbolism, and at times I could barely tell what was even going on. A few things that stood out to me: - tapeworm pregnancy/birth ???? - bashing a salamander with a rock for kink stuff - being gross at work and getting fired over it - the predatory lesbian thing - “science proved there’s no afterlife, so mass suicides happen!” - cheating on your husband with an angel who maybe is also your husband’s missing son - an actual crucifixion - body horror… sort of… but dumb - ghosts???? - a guillotine in some weird old guy’s attic I don’t know, I just needed to say it. 0/10 would not recommend. Maybe 4/10 only because it was so completely unhinged that I spent over an hour with my friends tearing it apart and laughing at it. Edit: - I didn’t realize the author was he/they nonbinary! That’s really cool. Glad another nonbinary person is getting published. I still think this book is terrible, and honestly the lesbian fetishization feels even worse because they should know from being in the LGBT community how bad that is. - I’m a nonbinary lesbian myself, just to be clear. The fetish stuff and the badly written “”””BDSM”””” relationship are not okay. It doesn’t just play into the predatory lesbian stereotype, it gets to the point where Zoe is saying, like, a few conversations in that she wants to literally own someone. It felt like straight people trying to do cybersex as lesbians, with no real nuance at all. Just fetishy stuff mixed with some random gross-out “horror” that wasn’t interesting. And there’s basically no build-up, it just jumps from “I want to own someone” to “smash a salamander with a rock and eat rancid pork so you get a tapeworm” almost immediately. Even if you don’t care about the bad lesbian rep, you have to admit it goes from 0 to 9,000 way too fast. - The title is exaggerated. Obviously read it if you want, if you listen to random internet strangers, that’s your call. - I’m not squeamish. It wasn’t too intense for me, it just felt like the author grabbed random spooky things and tossed them in for effect. It was boring and badly written. More like a teenager’s first creepypasta than an actual horror novel. - I forgot to mention the main character in the third story literally, and kind of randomly, calls his husband racist. I may have missed something since I was skimming by then, but like… huh? - I edited out my meaner comment about the stories not being worth publishing. That was rude, sorry. Edit 2: - This didn’t make me uncomfortable in the way horror is supposed to. I like extreme horror! Dead Space is my favorite game series ever. It made me uncomfortable because the first story felt fetishizing. - And again, the title is HYPERBOLIC. Read what you want. Please use some reading comprehension.
By readswindow
Hey everyone! I’m pretty new here, so I hope I’m not breaking any rules with this post. I’m looking for recommendations for short story writers. I mostly read novels, but I’ve been thinking about trying to write something myself, and short stories seem like a good place to start. So I figured reading some really solid short stories would help me figure out what works. I know the classics like Chekhov and Borges (I think I read his stuff first), but I’d love to hear about more modern authors too. Also, English isn’t my first language, and I’m not planning to write in it anyway, so I’m not going to mess things up with terrible grammar :)
By draft_ribbon
In *In the Dream House* she really goes into what an abusive relationship feels like. It was kind of a rough read just because of the topic, but I still think it’s worth it if you want to understand how abuse works and how the whole dynamic can play out. She pulls in a lot of other references and stuff to line up her own experience, and it also gets into what her abuser was doing and why. There are also bits about other real cases of abuse, which made it hit even harder. If you’ve ever wondered why someone might stay with an abuser, or how these relationships start and end up getting worse, I’d definitely recommend it.
By DawnBookworm2
I’m starting a short story club at my university next semester, and I’m trying to find some great short stories that’ll work for a really mixed group of readers. I want the reading list to actually reflect a bunch of different authors—different ethnicities, backgrounds, genders, time periods, and both classic and more modern stuff, plus different genres too. I’m really hoping it’s not just the same old white guys / Western canon stuff, except maybe a couple. Any suggestions would be awesome, because I’m still not sure what to pick. Thanks!
By inburntBookmark
Short stories are honestly my go-to, and it feels like they don’t get talked about enough. What collections are you all loving? And are there specific writers who mostly do short fiction? Some of my favorites so far: “Her Body and Other Parties” (Carmen Maria Machado), “The Story of Your Life and Others” (Ted Chiang), “North American Lake Monsters” (Nathan Ballingrud), and “Orange World” (Karen Russell). They’re all pretty newer picks, but I’ve been really into current speculative stuff lately.
By careful_bottle
Has she ever actually said who Carmen is? Like, do you think Carmen is someone she came up with, or is it meant to be Lana, or maybe she’s just singing about a real friend? I can’t really tell.
By simple-market5111
I stumbled on this “Personal Anthology” thing where people (writers + editors) put up their 12 favorite short stories, and it’s like thousands of recommendations total. So I started asking myself who keeps getting pushed to the top. Like… who are the repeat favorites? It’s basically a whole ladder of names (Le Guin, Carver, Cortázar, Lahiri, Saunders, Machado… then Erskine, then Ballard/Paley, then Joyce/Walsh, all the way down and up again). Alice Munro is there and I wasn’t really shocked—she’s pretty much treated like the top living short story writer and she won the Nobel in 2013. But Lydia Davis is the real eyebrow-raiser. She somehow beat everyone on the list, even Munro. And what really gets me is that while one Davis story (Break it Down) shows up a few times, most of the recommendations are totally different. That feels wild to me. Also: Lorrie Moore is paired up with Borges and Kafka, and honestly that makes sense. I think Birds of America is her best collection, and People Like That Are The Only People Here is probably the best individual story. For Borges, I’d point to The Aleph and The Garden of Forking Paths. For Kafka, A Country Doctor and In the Penal Colony. And if you haven’t, Carter’s The Bloody Chamber, Calvino’s The Distance of the Moon, and Mansfield’s Bliss are all worth your time too. So yeah—what stories from these writers are you into? Any writer you feel like is missing? And do you have a go-to short story collection?
By folio-needle
I’m really into short story collections and I’m trying to find some great ones that I might’ve missed. What are your favourites (especially ones that aren’t talked about as much)? I’ve got two Hemingway collections: one is just a small selection of stories, and the other one is basically his whole short story output from Everyman’s Library. I do like him, but I have to be in the right mood—otherwise I find him kind of dry. When it clicks though, I really end up admiring the way he writes. Another author I’ve got a bunch of short stuff from is Murakami. He’s probably my most-read author, and I’ve already worked through Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman and After the Quake (I loved both). I’ve also just started Kazuo Ishiguro’s *Nocturnes*. I finished the first story, “Crooner,” about half an hour ago, and I’m getting the feeling I’m going to adore this collection. It was pretty melancholy, but still close and gentle, and it honestly felt like it was up there with the best short stories I’ve read so far. My last collection is Dostoyevsky. I really respect him and I know how highly people rate his work, but I can’t seem to get into it. I’ve tried multiple times with *Crime and Punishment* and I just didn’t feel interested, and I even started *White Nights* but didn’t finish that either. I keep wanting to be able to say I’m a fan, because of course I do… but right now I can’t honestly say I enjoy his writing. I also have a Chekhov collection (kind of a “short novel” thing, I guess), and I’m not sure if that even counts for this list. I’ve never read it yet, but I’ve been meaning to for ages. Anyway—what short story collections have you loved, and what is it about them that makes you keep going back? Edit: Thanks for all the suggestions everyone! I might not be able to reply to every comment, but I’ll definitely read them all and look into the ones that sound like my kind of thing. It’s also cool to see such a range, and some more well-known collections I haven’t checked out yet. Thanks again!
By red_hare56
I basically use books as a way to not deal with the fact that I’ve got basically zero romantic prospects, so please indulge me. I’ll kick it off: “My own perceptions were no longer enough to constitute the physical world for me. Every sound, every syllable that reached me I wanted to filter through his consciousness.” — *The Idiot*, Elif Batuman Ugh, this just nails that whole obsession thing—like the minute you feel a connection with someone, your brain starts orbiting them and it kinda takes over.
By Panther_Cloudy
CW for domestic/sexual abuse Carmen Maria Machado’s “In the Dream House” felt way too close and super intense, but in a good way—like it really gets under your skin. I can’t fully tell if it’s the way it’s written (second person stuff) or just how plain and open the sentences feel, but it stuck with me. It made me think hard about queer abuse and how messy the effects of relationships can be, especially ones people don’t really talk about. I haven’t read a ton of memoirs, but the ones I have always had this weird gap between me and the writer, like they’re trying to perform the story for you instead of letting you live in it. This book doesn’t do that. It leans into the closeness even though everything is awful. She doesn’t really try to play the “poor me” card, but you can tell she’s talking from the worst kind of truth. It hits the emotional center fast, no pause button. She doesn’t ask for pity either. Instead she kind of pulls you in and makes it clear that stuff like domestic abuse isn’t this distant thing—it’s right there if you pay attention. The bookending about archives worked really well for me, and the poetic parts still felt necessary, not just pretty. Overall it all clicked, and it hit hard. I’m really glad I got to read it.