I made it!This omnibus consists of four short story collections by Lydia Davis, written between 1986 and 2007. Being famous mostly for her micro-stories, I expected it to be a sort of coffee-table book you could pick up, read a couple of stories at random and put down again. Only it’s not; it’s four books packed back-to-back begging to be judged individually on their own merits. Once I understood that, I decided to read the books and stories in order, from cover to cover.What I enjoyed most abou...

I can't finish this. Someone please tell Lydia Davis that a story is not a quirky ancedote.

Some of the stories in this collection are genius. I especially like the ones where she plays with the whole notion of truth/fiction/lies and how slippery those concepts can be. On the other hand, some of the "stories" are not even really stories. I've written better-thought-out stuff in my personal journal on a bad day. Here is the full text of one "story": "Gainesville! It's too bad your cousin is dead!" Aw come on gimme a break. If I, an unknown writer, were to submit this to any literary jou...

Lydia Davis is certainly different, and i can't say i'd read anything quite like this (except in terms of brevity) up until this collection. i can't say i adored it though, or even that i really liked most of what was here. four story collections are combined: Break it down (1986), Almost No Memory (1997), Samuel Johnson is Indignant (2001) and Varieties of Disturbance (2007), and i want to say as a new reader of hers, i probably did her a disservice by reading her in this fashion, in a complete...

Soulless stories, lacking heat, heart and blood. As if written by a technical-engineering-report-writing analyst. Or a 1990s version of an AI.Innumerable times Davis uses the continuous present tense (first person, second and third), but rather than drawing in the reader to the story and character's viewpoint, you soon end up thinking - again and again - that these stories are purely exercises in technique, in the mechanics of storytelling. A clever mind dashing them off over a coffee or cup of

A book that took me forever to read, not due to its content (I don't think), but more by design. I tend to read short story collections very slowly, and almost not wanting to finish them. I think I read 80% of "The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis" in the bathtub. So if I take a bath everyday, how many baths is that? Nevertheless it will not have anything to do with Davis' writings, which are precise, focused, and not one wasted word. In other words, they're sort of perfection in practice. There...

I almost didn't want to tell anyone I was reading this because it blew my mind so hard that I'd almost prefer it to have been a dream or something. Let's just never mention it.

Interesting and challenging. At times very funny. She writes excellent stories, but some of the early work has an absurdist/minimalist aspect that is wearying. Though the good stories make it worthwhile wading through the rest. Favorite stories include “In a Northern Country,” “Marie Curie, So Admirable Woman,” “Mr. Burdoff’s Visit to Germany,” and “The Furnace.”

People often say they read books for escapism. I certainly read for solace and comfort. This kind of reading is not for escaping, I think, but for enduring - "I will read this until this situation has passed"; "I will read this until this feeling has gone away". The mood I find hardest to ameliorate with books is that one where you drift restlessly round the house, picking things up and putting them down, starting things and then walking off again - when you're feeling a little fractured, a litt...

Lydia Davis shits out tiny nuggets of pure golden prose and says 'oh, this old thing?' This is 5 stars of brillance, and an extra star for the stories that will manifest in your mind as your imagination takes over to fill in the unmentioned and try to place the greater horizons of these characters circumstances.Like her stories, I'm keeping this short. However, these stories will leave a long lasting impression. Highly recommended, especially for fans of flash-fiction and authors such as Amelia

The only complaint I have with this book has nothing to do with Davis marvellous stories. I really liked that part, her tone, her ideas, she's all over it, and I loved it. The problem for me was the edition. Short stories are not exactly my favourite form of fiction, since they develop to a certain point, and that is it. Putting so many in one edition seems silly to me, I mean, 700 pages? I know I know, why did I read it then? Well, I am an obsessive who can't just leave the book and read anothe...

These stories don’t so much bloom and bleed over their blank pages as hold their breath, fill up their lungs and wait for you to tiptoe past. They’re claustrophobic and lonely, a three floor walk-up to an elbow apartment with pale sunlight and the city below under glass.“Break It Down,” though, gets five stars.

How to read a book like this, that's what's interesting me most in the community reviews on Lydia Davis' collected short stories. I've begun accidentally, by my boyfriend reading me two of the stories--knowing I'm a Russia fan, reading me the mock historical-travel piece, 'Lord Royton's Tour,' in which she perfectly captures the tone of those old travel writings of the eighteenth century, capturing perfect detail--the names of conveyances, the brilliant sense of landscape. Being somewhat famili...

I have been reading The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis like drinking a fine wine. There's a taste of Kafka, a hint of Richard Brautigan, definitely a flavor of Borges... Russell Edson lurking in there somewhere, too. And a couple of others I have not yet been able to identify. Not that Davis in any way derivative, that's not what I mean. It's a distinct pleasure to read her and make all these associations. Her stories are a fine blend of the absurd and the lyrical, the emotionally disturbing a...

I was all geared up to declare Lydia Davis the best living author, on the strength of these four collections (I haven't yet read Can't and Won't: Stories or The End of the Story, but I'll get there), and while I stopped myself when I remembered the juggernaut that is Pynchon, I'm still not sure I was too far off the mark. She's certainly, with Borges and O'Connor gone, the best living author of short stories, with apologies to Amy Hempel. So why am I so impressed with Lydia Davis? Part of it is

This is the masterful translator of Madame Bovary and Swann's Way, and she just won the Man Booker Prize for her own stories, which some guy who learned how to write from Pitchfork says "fling their lithe arms wide to embrace many a kind," whatever the fuck that's supposed to mean. Would you have described a dude's stories as "lithe," guy? Anyway, Davis is famous for writing short stories that are very short, and here's an example:They Take Turns Using a Word They Like"It's extraordinary," says

I don't know what this book is supposed to be: poetry, essays or fiction, or some combination, but the title suggests fiction.I am far too tired to review this nicely, but I will say this book is a cure for insomnia. 731 pages long, I don't know how many "stories," and I found maybe seventy five pages of any interest. I don't read to see how authors can use words; I don't read to revel in the perceived cleverness of an author; and I really don't like reading books that suggest fiction but seem,

Preview.A Man Questions His Future.Will he ever read this? He doesn't know. And if he does, will it make any difference?Well, that's my attempt at writing a Lydia Davis story. Of course I'm not the crafter that she is with the sentence and the word.In the Mar 17 2014 New Yorker, Dana Goodyear writes of Ms. Davis, her stories, her persona, her life, and her translations. (Did anyone in the Proust Group last year read her translation of Swann's Way? She thinks it's better than Moncrieff's, since i...

I find Lydia Davis a more glib and wry version of Amy Hempel. Or maybe Hempel is her more emotional and piercing counter-part? Regardless, Davis's short shorts are very smart, and well-crafted. Anyone who aspires to be a writer should study her ability to parse the right amount of dialogue with narration, and to put narration where it best moves the story along. At the same time, I find her work too... academic? Too obviously for the writer-in-training? Still, someone worth reading if you like l...