Speed dating with books

Short story compilations are a hit-or-miss for me, in a way that it's very much like speed dating.  You'll either walk away wishing that you could get back your precious lost time, or you'll walk away, wistful for something a promise of more chapters; something deeper! 

In either case, at least you dive into reading knowing that there is no pressure to commit to finishing the book, and the stories themselves are so short that you can always look forward to reading the next one if you don't hit it off with the story you're currently reading.

In Kazuo Ishiguro's case, Nocturnes was a bit of a disappointment, especially since I had high hopes for Ishiguro.  While I had hoped for deep and touching stories about closure, departure, farewells and nostalgia, he took Nocturnes to a trite and very literal manner, often having these stories merely taking place at sunset and calling it a night. Similarly for the musical motif, instead of writing stories to correspond with the quiet and somber nature of nocturnes, he simply wrote stories with characters that just happened to play an instrument, or some random song was playing in the background while the characters were interacting.  The 'nocturne qualifier' was so superficial that the entire compilation seemed gimmicky.  The characters themselves weren't likable, and while Ishiguro's strengths are in his descriptions of everyday life, the situations he puts his characters in are over the top. I'm a cellist so I'm obviously biased, so of course "Cellists" angered me the most. This anthology was weak in its binding and the stories just fell short.  I rarely bash books, but man, I wasn't feeling it on this one.


On the other hand, I totally fell in love with Interpreter of Maladies, by Jhumpa Lahiri.  This one was sooooooo good!  All the stories were so diverse, with completely different characters, elegant writing, and sentimentally evocative situations.  A Temporary Matter cuts right at the heart with a couple's strained but healing (or is it?) relationship, Sexy dances between the line between seduction and morality, and The Third and Final Continent bids you ado with a look back on beginnings and a farewell that comes with heading into a new adventure.  There were many more stories that I could gush about, but take my word on this one - this is one book you want to push up on your TBR list!

Lahiri is so incredibly good at creating the worlds in each story that you know in great detail what the characters wear, how they jar their masala, how they pickle their vegetables, watch the news for updates on the war, adjust to a new world, find purpose in a harsh state of poverty, or wallow in misery in spite of great wealth.  I wanted to keep reading even after I finished, and I wished that many of the stories were converted to standalone novels; they were that good!

Do you have any short story compilations that you recommend?