Nests

The robins have found our lamps. The sparrows are nesting in our flower boxes. All the birds are making homes around and from our home.

***

Speaking of nests, I've been given the gift of a plethora of story collection titles and authors--I can build my own reading nest out of 'em. Here's what the Facebook folks have to recommend:

Shaindel Beers

If you haven't read Alex Mindt's Male of the Species, you need to. Julie Orringer's Breathing Under Water is amazing. Of course, Kyle Minor's In the Devil's Territory and Chrisopher Coake's We're in Trouble.

Lee Herrick

Daniel Chacón's Unending Rooms.

Stacey Lynn Brown

Antonya Nelson--either Nothing Right or Female Trouble. Some Fun is great, too. I've been reading her nonstop. She's amazing.

Shaindel Beers

Birds of America by Lorrie Moore...

Renée Roehl

Brad Watson's Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives

Terry L. Kennedy

Girl Trouble - Holly Goddard Jones

Paul Scot August

Love Begins in Winter, or The Secret Lives of People in Love. Both by Simon van Booy.

Alison Pelegrin

Ben Fountain's collection Brief Encounters With Che Guevara

Phayvanh Luekhamhan

Sightseeing by Rattawut Lapchareonsap (sp?)

Jeannine Hall Gailey

Haruki Murakami's After Dark. Kelly Link's Stranger Things Happen. Osamu Dazai's Blue Bamboo.

Mark Mazzoli

The Lover of Horses by Tess Gallagher. Incredible character-driven works.

Leonard Orr

The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis [or the four separate collections that went into this]; Yasunari Kawabata's Palm-of-the-Hand Stories.

Kawita Kandpal

The Shell Collector by Anthony Doerr.

Vince Gotera

Richard Cortez Day, When in Florence. These stories comprise a cycle, but not the way we usually think of it. The organizing principle is the city itself. In each story, there's a very minor character (like a guy leaning on a lamppost) who becomes the main focus of the next story.