Next week’s story The Masque of the Red Death by Edger Alan Poe

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Rated Explicit

Caleb J Ross (@calebjross) dropped by this week since Gerald is still on his amazing vacation (no, I’m not jealous at all). Caleb is the author of several books including the novels Stranger Will and I Didn’t Mean to be Kevin. He is also one of the hosts of the Important Question Podcast and possibly the most well read person I’ve ever had the opportunity to chat with. He both elevated the conversation and drove it right into not safe for kids territory.

Axolotl was a fascinating story and I left the taping with a long list of books added to my TBR pile. The highlight has to be, Anais’ final question… wan the narrator crazy? We debated surrealism versus magical realism, the uncanny valley and how specific the language was in the story compare to the emotions in evoked. I hope you enjoy this episode as much as we did.

Sam gave us a link to an entire pdf of a book of short stories by Julio Corázar check out these this collection Blow-up and the novel Hopscotch.

Don’t forget, to rate the story! For the history of our goofy system, see Anais’ post “Read Short Stories or Ray Bradbury Cries.” If you want to design a Bradberry, we’d love to see it. While Anais and I didn’t really enjoy last weeks episode, you guys definitely did. I was really excited to hear the different opinions and I am determined to give last weeks story a re-read once I’ve had some distance. Y’all rated What We’re Sure of by Brandi Reissenweber, 5.25 Bradberries.

So tell us, on a scale of 1-6 Bradberries, how do you rate Axolotl? Tell us in the comments below or via voicemail, and we will give you the final tally on the next episode.

Next week we are reading The Mask of the Red Death by Edger Alan Poe

Next week’s story Constance’s Law by Bridget Hardy

This podcast is available on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spreaker. Please take a few moments to leave a review ( for Spreaker follow & heart us). Those reviews encourage us and help us be found by new listeners.

This week both Gerald and Maya both found the story difficult to enjoy, while Anais loved the story enough to give it 5 Bradberries. Despite Kenechi’s absence due to exams, this weeks podcast prompted a great discussion about what it is that lets a reader to get close to a story. You can find the Author Spotlight for Haruki Murakami.

Yes, we do have a rating scale based on Bradberries! For the history of this goofy system, see Anais’ post “Read Short Stories or Ray Bradbury Cries.” If you want to design a Bradberry, we’d love to see it. Anais has the urge to create a Bradberry collage… Imagine, Bradberries on your desktop! You gave last week’s story, Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O’Connor, 3.75 Bradberries.

On a scale of 1-6 Bradberries, how do you rate ‘Tony Takitani‘? Tell us in the comments below or via voicemail, and we will give you the final tally on the next episode.

Next week we are reading Constance’s Law by Bridget Hardy.

Discussion Notes: The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World

Next week’s story is Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O’Connor

This podcast is available on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spreaker. Please take a few moments to leave a review ( for Spreaker follow & heart us). Those reviews encourage us and help us be found by new listeners.

Wow, we found a Magical realism story Gerald liked! I was over the moon with excitement and the podcast doth bubble over. The messy video is on our Youtube page, and the glistening audio podcast is above. Check out the great article Kenechi wrote for the Author Spotlight on Gabriel García Márquez. You can feel the passion he has for this author and it’s a wonderful read.

Yes, we do have a rating scale based on Bradberries! For the history of this goofy system, see Anais’ post “Read Short Stories or Ray Bradbury Cries.” If you want to design a Bradberry, we’d love to see it. Anais has the urge to create a Bradberry collage… Imagine, Bradberries on your desktop! You gave last week’s story, “The Old Man at the Bridge” by Ernest Hemingway, 4 Bradberries.

On a scale of 1-6 Bradberries, how do you rate “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World“? Tell us in the comments below or via voicemail, and we will give you the final tally on the next episode.

Our Special Guest Host for next week, Jocelyn Johnson chose the next story! We’ll be reading Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O’Connor. I hope you enjoy it!

Gabriel García Márquez (Ulf Andersen/Getty Images)

Gabriel García Márquez, who doesn’t know Gabriel García Márquez? Affectionately known as Gabo throughout South America, Márquez is widely renowned as one of the most significant authors of the 20th century.

García Márquez was a Colombian author, known for works such as One Hundred Years of Solitude, Love in the Time of Cholera and Chronicle of a Death Foretold. During a career that spanned several decades, his work earned him many accolades including the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1972 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982. He is considered an early pioneer of magical realism.

García Márquez was born in Aracataca, Colombia in 1927 and raised by his maternal grandparents, whose ideological and political beliefs would heavily influence his later work. One Hundred Years of Solitude was the culmination of his desire to write a novel based on his grandparents house where he grew up. He struggled with the idea of this novel initially, but once he broke through his writer’s block, he worked on the novel every day for eighteen months. Cien Años de Soledad, the novel’s Spanish title, was released in 1967 and was critically and commercially popular, with William Kennedy calling it, “the first piece of literature since the Book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race.” Carlos Fuentes, fellow novelist, called him the “most popular and perhaps the best Spanish writer since Cervantes.”

Some recurring themes and elements present in his work include solitude, armed conflict, and the setting of a fictional village called Macondo. Magic realism is a staple, with many of his stories featuring events that are seemingly impossible, yet often treated as mundane, commonplace and even expected by the characters within them. Between 1962 and 2004, García Márquez published many novels, short stories and short story collections. He died of pneumonia at age 87 in April 2014.

After his death, then-president of Colombia, Juan Manuel Santos, described him as the greatest Colombian that ever lived. Such a description is typical of the respect that Márquez commanded, a result of his respectable body of work. If you haven’t read any of his work, I suggest you do so now. Seriously, stop right now and check this week’s short story “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World”. That should get you started. After that, I personally recommend One Hundred Years of Solitude, or Love in the Time of Cholera.

Kenechi

Discussion Notes: The Magic Chalk

Next Week’s Story is The Old

Man at the Bridge By Ernest Hemingway.

This podcast is available on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spreaker. Please take a few moments to leave a review ( For Spreaker follow/heart us). It helps us immensely.

This week’s story was an interesting one that prompted discussion on the difference between magical realism and fantasy, and why a reader might like one and not the other. When Anais made a point about fantasy having rules within the world and magical realism breaking rules all my brain tingles went on high alert. Great conversation, interesting story and deeply varying experiences as readers. The messy video is on our Youtube page, and the glistening audio podcast is above. Anais also wrote an excellent post on Kobo Abe that included an enlightening interview with a PhD student of Japanese Literature.

Our rating scale just got a lot more epic. Listener, Todd Williams, sent us a lovely email with a bradberry designed just for us! Thank you Tom, we love it. For the history of this goofy system, see Anais’ post “Read Short Stories or Ray Bradbury Cries.” If you want to design a bradberry, Anais has the sudden urge to create a bradberry collage… Imagine, bradberries on your desktop! You gave last week’s story, “The Laughing Man” by J.D Salinger, 4.5 Bradberries.

On a scale of 1-6 Bradberries, how do you rate “The Magic Chalk“? Tell us in the comments below or via voicemail, and we will give you the final tally on the next episode.

After Anais’ quiz, we selected “The Old Man at the Bridge” by Ernest Hemingway as next week’s story. I hope you enjoy it, I’m sure Gerald will.

Discussion Notes: The Circular Ruins

Next week’s story is Eminence by Caroline Casper. 

This podcast is available on iTunes, Stitcher and podcatchers. If you can take a few moments to leave an iTunes and/or Stitcher review, it would help us immensely.

On today’s episode, we had a great discussion of The Circular Ruins by Jorge Luís Borges. This story proved divisive, in many ways highlighting how each of us views reality though our personal experiences and beliefs. It was also our first translated story. Make sure you listen to this episode if you haven’t already. The crazy messy version is on the Youtube page, and the glistening audio version will be available by morning.

We do have a rating scale. For the history of this goofy system, see Anais’s post “Read Short Stories or Ray Bradbury Cries.” For last week’s story, you gave “The Cheater’s Guide to Love” by Junot Diaz 3.6 Bradberries.

On a scale of 1-6 Bradberries, how do you rate “The Circular Ruins”? Tell us in the comments and we will give you the final tally on the next episode.

Next week’s story is Eminence by Caroline Casper.  This is our first Pushcart Prize nominee! The Pushcart Prize is an American literary award by Pushcart Press that honors the best “poetry, short fiction, essays or literary whatnot” published in the small presses over the previous year.

We hope you’ll enjoy the read and join us next Tuesday for the live discussion. The podcast will be available on iTunes and other podcatchers by Wednesday morning.

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