Every time I get a recommendation request where one of the five recent reads contains a collection of short stories, I get extra excited because it means I may be able to recommend a book of short stories to that person. I get excited because, in my decade-plus of professional book recommending many readers, even very dedicated readers, will say that they’ll read just about anything, except short stories. To me this is, to use a highly technical term, totally bonkers. A great short story cannot be topped. When a bunch of great short stories are gathered together in a book, this is even better, like having the world’s greatest candy sampler sitting chairside, which is not a bad thing to indulge in while also reading great short stories. I’m going to do my best to tempt at least some dedicated non-short story readers into giving this unique pleasure a shot. Collection for people who remember that one cool story from high school: When I would ask my first-year college students to name a short story they remembered (and liked), the most popular choice, by far, was Shirley Jackson’s classic morality tale, “The Lottery,” which is found in “The Lottery and Other Stories,” an amazing collection that showcases Jackson’s skill at wielding both dark humor and suspense. Read one story a week from this book over a long period of time to allow the full effect of each installment to land. Collection if you’re interested in poetic beauty in the face of troubled times: There is no single book I’ve loaned out more times only to never get it back than Denis Johnson’s “Jesus’ Son,” a semi-biographical collection of stories about a period when Johnson dealt with a near-debilitating addiction. The way Johnson finds crystalline moments of sublime beauty amid self-negating depravity delivers repeated shocks to the limbic system. Collection if you like your stories novella length: Richard Russo excels at novel length, but in “Trajectory: Stories” he shows off what can be done in that space between a short story and a full-length book. It has all of Russo’s signature wit and compassion. Collection if you like bite-sized stories: No story in Kevin Brockmeier’s “The Ghost Variations” is longer than two pages. Each one brings us in contact with spirits experiencing life after death. Collection that will bend your mind into a pretzel: Ted Chiang is truly a master of the modern speculative science fiction story. In “Stories of Your Life and Others,” by mixing high-concept, suspense and genuine philosophical conundrums, Chiang manages to make the heart race while your brain is also puzzling over the dilemmas he visits upon his characters. Collection for people who want stories to read like a novel: There are a number of candidates here, “The Things We Carried” by Tim O’Brien, “The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing” by Melissa Bank and “A Visit from the Goon Squad” by Jennifer Egan (which is labeled as a novel but is definitely stories). I’m going to specifically recommend a book that is probably not on as many radars as those mentioned above, “The Circus in Winter” by Cathy Day. The Great Porter Circus is holing up for the winter in a small town. Now, we get to go deep inside the lives of these circus people. Collection if you want to become untethered from reality: Kelly Link has a knack for taking the recognizable world, twisting it about eighteen degrees, and suddenly revealing something stranger than you can imagine. The stories in “Magic for Beginners” are simultaneously entirely recognizable and totally unfamiliar, a winning combination. Who have I tempted? John Warner is the author of “Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities.” Twitter @biblioracle Book recommendations from the Biblioracle John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read. 1. “The Women” by Kristin Hannah 2. “Let Me Be Like Water” by S.K. Perry 3. “The Great Mistake” by Jonathan Lee 4. “Margo’s Got Money Troubles” by Rufi Thorpe 5. “The Wedding People” by Alison Espach — Kathleen F., Michiana Shores, Indiana This novel is off-kilter, and tense at times, but I think it’s a good fit for Kathleen: “Sugar Street” by Jonathan Dee. 1. “Moonraker” by Ian Fleming 2. “Trust” by Hernan Diaz 3. “You Like It Darker” by Stephen King 4. “The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper” by Roland Allen 5. “The Best of Me” by David Sedaris — Allen P., Crystal Lake Whenever I see a reader of David Sedaris, I want to make sure they’ve read a writer who, sadly, is no longer with us, but was a friend of Sedaris’, and is very much his equal in terms of wit and generating pathos, “Fraud” by David Rakoff. 1. “Devil Makes Three” by Ben Fountain 2. “The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store” by James McBride 3. “The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder” by David Grann 4. “The Searcher” by Tana French 5. “Empire of Ice and Stone” by Buddy Levy — Mike S., Arlington Heights For Mike, I’m recommending an epic war novel, “Matterhorn” by Karl Marlantes. Get a reading from the Biblioracle Send a list of the last five books you’ve read and your hometown to [email protected].