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5 Great and 5 Not-So-Great Short Stories for Your Train Commute

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The point of this month’s 30 Day Lifestyle Experiment was to expand on and to improve the experience of my daily commute to/from work each day.  I spend anywhere from 7-10 hours per week (364-520hrs/year) commuting so why not try to make that chunk of my life better?  Back in September I did another public transit experiment where I had one new conversation per day with strangers on my commute to work.  That experiment actually resulted in many casual friendships and now I routinely chat with people while waiting for the train or even for the entire ride.  Even though I find it to be fun and fulfilling, I can’t just chat up people on the train every day, most of the time I just read books or take naps.  I thought about reading poetry, essays, or speeches but eventually selected short stories because I’ve been reading books on my commute to work for a few years but still I’ve only been through a handful of different authors.  Therefore I felt that reading a new short story every day would be a good way to find new authors that I might like.

I soon realized how perfect short stories were for train commuting, I’m sold and I highly recommend giving them a try.  It can be difficult to immerse yourself in a long novel (depending on the length of your commute).  I can generally get through 10-15 pages of a dense book during my commute, so you can see how reading a 500 page book only 10 pages at a time can be kind of annoying.  Especially for a really intense book, hopping in and out of the plot can be tough.  The short story was perfect because you can read most of them from start to finish in about 20 minutes.  Some of the deeper yet shorter books I actually read twice during the same commute.  There was something gratifying about finishing a story on the way to work, I felt like I had accomplished something during a time where had I been driving, I’d simply be sitting in traffic.

I started off getting all of my books from the Boston Public Library, which worked great because I did it all online.  You can go online, login, reserve books, the staff will find them for you, and then you can pick them up at your convenience.  However, this can take 5 business days and eventually lacking the foresight to do this ahead of time, I only managed to do it for the first two weeks.  I found it much easier to do a Google search for a pdf of the short story and then just read them on my computer.  What took me 45 minutes in a library (not counting the walking to and from) only took me 15 seconds on my computer using Google… and the internet wins again.  I could have also gone with the Kindle route but I didn’t want to spend the money on one and didn’t get around to borrowing a friends’.

As expected, there were some stories that I really liked, some that I really disliked, and a bunch that were somewhere in the middle.  Here are my personal recommendations on 5 great and 5 not-so-great short stories for the young and urban train commute.

Great:

  • The Second Bakery Attack by Haruki Murakami – In an attempt to lift a curse off their lives, two newlyweds robbed a MacDonalds at 3am for 20 Big Macs… and they lived happily ever after.  I thought the story was told really well, it was a very interesting read, and I didn’t expect the ending.  Great for a short read on the train.
  • To Build a Fire by Jack London – A fantastic story of (not) survival in the heart of an Alaskan winter.  It came to me recommended by many people and I’ll turn around and recommend it to others, it was captivating through and through.
  • The Secret Life of Walter Mitty by James Thurber – Walter Mitty leads a painfully boring life so he routinely  escapes to alternate fantasy realities where he’s the world’s best trauma surgeon, a WWII pilot, a man on trial for murder and others.  His fantasies took me right into the plot and his unfortunate reality I recognize everywhere and empathized with.
  • The Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe – A man murders his elderly housemate and when the police come to investigate, the sound of the old man’s beating heart drives him insane and he confesses.  A classic we all read in middle school but totally worth revisiting as an “adult”.
  • Eiger Dreams by Jon Krakauer – A tale of Krakauer’s defeat on the Eiger’s legendary north face.  I’m bias toward adventure stories and while this may not be the most classic short story out there, I loved it.  I also recommend the audiotape version, particularly if it’s winter and it’s snowing outside.  This story came in a book of adventure short stories, all of which I’m planning to read soon.

Not So Great:

  • The Use of Force by William Carlos Williams – An uncomfortably creepy story about a doctor who is in romance with the pain of his patients, especially a little girl with a throat infection.  I didn’t find the story to be engaging and I couldn’t empathize with any of the characters.  Simply a creepy doctor with a fetish for pain, I don’t recommend it.
  • A Perfect Day for Banana Fish by J.D. Salinger  – This girl has a sketchy boyfriend, she takes a nap, he comes in from the beach… and then blows his brains out in their hotel room while she sleeps.  That’s pretty much the whole story right there, I’d rather read the story about her waking up and the events afterward.  I definitely wouldn’t read it again.
  • The Happy Man by Jonathan Lethem – A man’s soul will routinely leave the real world to visit hell.  The only way to leave Hell is to visit the Happy Mal, a colonel who rapes him repeatedly. The story was told very well, dream-like and captivating, I’m just not that into brutal raping and child molestation.  It had so much potential, but stories of repressed sexual abuse just don’t jive well with my train commute.
  • In the Penal Colony by Franz Kafka – An officer explains an elaborate torture device that he manages for his country’s army despite it having been out of favor with everyone for a long time.  He realizes this and then uses it on himself in hopes for a glorified death.  However, instead of the intricate and somehow spiritual death he’s always dreamed of, it malfunctions and brutally kills him.  On a scale from 1-10 I give it an, “Eh”.
  • The Gunslinger by Stephen King – A gunslinger is chasing a sorcerer through the desert.  Sounds awesome right?  However, instead of any chasing, the story includes him repeatedly having sex with a large ugly barmaid and then the story ends with him shooting every living person in the town and leaving for the desert.  I’ve heard the rest of the series is better, but I wouldn’t recommend this as a short story on its own.

Other Notable Books from my Train Commute this Month:

To see more of the books I’ve read and reviewed, check out my virtual bookshelf from Shelfari.com:

The Use of Force by William Carlos Williams – A Short Story Review

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This was kind of a bizarre and a little bit disturbing story. A doctor gets called on a house-visit to diagnose the sore throat of a little girl. However, each time the doctor tries to look down her throat she freaks out. First she tried clawing at his eyes, then was held down by her father screaming, then she bit down on the tongue depressor, splintering it which caused her mouth to bleed, then he roughly shoved a metal spoon down her throat until she gagged. She indeed have a sickness and has been hiding it for days, mystery solved.

The weird part about this story was that the doctor was a little bit insane. He actually started to enjoy it more and more as the girl fought back. He even goes as far to mention that he had fallen in love with the little brat. Eventually he started to go a little insane, wanting to and loving to tear her apart with his own bare hands, “It was my pleasure to attack her.” Finally he sees her throat but not after a disturbing set of thoughts that ran through his mind, nothing too graphic but disturbing nonetheless. I can’t say that I would recommend reading it, I know I surely wouldn’t read it again.

About the Author William Carlos Williams:
William Carlos Williams (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963) was an American poet closely associated with modernism and Imagism. He was also a pediatrician and general practitioner of medicine with a medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Williams “worked harder at being a writer than he did at being a physician” but excelled at both.

To see more of the books I’ve read and reviewed, check out my virtual bookshelf from Shelfari.com:

The Second Bakery Attack by Haruki Murakami – A Short Story Review

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I enjoyed this story a lot, not so much because of its plot, but rather just the way it was told, I was engaged from start to finish. A couple had recently got married and both awoke in the middle of the night with severe hunger pangs. They had hardly anything to eat in the house because they had just moved in. It reminded the husband of the time he robbed a bakery as a kid because he was so hungry. The robbery didn’t turn out so well because the owner of the bakery told them they could have as much bread as they wanted as long as they sat through one of his classical music albums. Putting their knives away, they awkwardly sat through some music and then took as much bread as they could carry. This was kind if bizarre for them because they had expected to steal it, but instead they had simply earned it. He’s felt weird about it ever since and randomly gets these hunger pangs in the middle of the night, it’s just that now it’s also affecting his wife. He told his wife this story and she realized right away that the only way they could fix this situation was to go rob another bakery, but properly this time. They drove around with ski masks on and a shotgun in the back of the car but couldn’t for the life of them find a bakery that was open at 3am. They settled for a McDonalds. They stuck up the place, and made the workers make them 20 Big Macs. Instead of stealing the Big Macs, they paid for everything except the bread, this way they actually stole the bread thus reversing the “curse” the husband was experiencing from his first failed bakera ttack. Ultimately, the hunger pangs and “curse” went away and the lived “happily ever after”.

Like I said, I liked this story a lot but it certainly wasn’t for the plot. I found it to be unexpectedly exciting. I definitely expected the wife to be largely unimpressed with his story of holding up a bakery. Instead, she offered to do a second robbery with him. He was certainly surprised as well. She seemed to be a pro at it too. The fact she had ski masks, a shotgun, and obvious experience in dealing with hostages wasn’t explained at all, it just sort of happened. The story was almost as if they were a version of Bonnie and Clyde who had got married, found decent jobs and moved to the suburbs instead of robbing people for a living.

About the Author Haruki Murakami: Haruki Murakami (村上 春樹 Murakami Haruki, born January 12, 1949) is a Japanese writer and translator. His works of fiction and non-fiction have garnered critical acclaim and numerous awards, including the Franz Kafka Prize and the Jerusalem Prize, among others. Murakami’s fiction, often criticized by Japan’s literary establishment, is humorous and surreal, focusing on themes of alienation and loneliness. He is considered an important figure in postmodern literature. The Guardian praised Murakami as “among the world’s greatest living novelists” for his works and achievements. (Courtesy of Wikipedia.org)

To see more of the books I’ve read and reviewed, check out my virtual bookshelf from Shelfari.com:

The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant – A Short Story Review

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This was another book on the top 50 short story list I found. After reading the story I remember having heard of it. A poor, yet beautiful woman borrows a “diamond necklace” from her friend so she won’t look poor at a ball. She has an amazing time escaping her poverty, if at least for one night being the object of affection. Then once her and her husband returned to their shabby apartment she realized that she had lost the necklace. Her and her husband then bought a replacement and spent the next 10 years paying off the debt they had incurred. The irony was that after 10 years she finally told her friend what had happened, only to be told that the diamond necklace was actually a fake and cost only 500 francs, not 36,000 francs. Bummer.

This story is more than just the necklace itself. The necklace is symbolic of envy and the story describes what can happen when envy gets the best of us. They spent 10 years of their life in debt, sounds pretty familiar doesn’t it? The average American with a credit card is over $10,700 in consumer debt at any given time (doesn’t include things like mortgages). My home state of Maine is among the worst in the country with almost $20,000 of consumer debt per person on average. Yikes. Even though this story was written in the 19th century, it still rings true today.

About the Author Guy de Maupassant:
Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant (5 August 1850 – 6 July 1893) was a popular 19th-century French writer, considered one of the fathers of the modern short story and one of the form’s finest exponents. A protégé of Flaubert, Maupassant’s stories are characterized by their economy of style and efficient, effortless dénouement. Many of the stories are set during the Franco-Prussian War of the 1870s and several describe the futility of war and the innocent civilians who, caught in the conflict, emerge changed. He authored some 300 short stories, six novels, three travel books, and one volume of verse. The story “Boule de Suif” (“Ball of Fat”, 1880) is often accounted his masterpiece. His most unsettling horror story, “Le Horla” (1887), was about madness and suicide. (Courtesy of Amazon.com)

To see more of the books I’ve read and reviewed, check out my virtual bookshelf from Shelfari.com: