Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Favourite Short Stories

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. Each week there is a new topic for bloggers to choose and list their top ten. This week’s theme is Top Ten Favourite Short Stories.

I don’t read a lot of short stories so when I first saw this week’s topic I thought I’d struggle to come up with a couple, let alone ten, books that I could feature. Then I looked through my Goodreads ‘read’ list and realised there were a lot of books that fit the theme; anthology collections, novellas from my favourite series, and even a book or two I managed to read in only a couple of hours.

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The Language of Thorns: Midnight Tales and Dangerous Magic by Leigh Bardugo

I love Leigh Bardugo’s writing and I love her Grishaverse world. I’d already read three of the short stories in this collection but I loved reading them again. The Language of Thorns read like a series of dark fairytales, my favourite kind, and I was left wanting much more from a lot of the stories.

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Moonrise by Sarah Crossan

This may seem like a strange pick for this week’s topic considering its 400 pages long, but Moonrise is a collection of poems so I sped through it. Moonrise is a beautiful and emotional read that may have only taken me an hour and a half to finish, but that stayed with me for far longer.

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A Court of Frost and Starlight by Sarah J. Maas

A Court of Thorns and Roses is one of my favourite series so I was thrilled we were getting more. It was nice to see more of Feyre and Rhys in A Court of Frost and Starlight, but what this book made me more excited for was the next full-length novel putting the secondary characters in the spotlight.

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Night of Cake and Puppets by Laini Taylor

One of my favourite parts of Daughter of Smoke and Bone was the setting, and in Night of Cake and Puppets we get to spend a little more time in Laini Taylor’s Prague with Zuzana and Mik. They each ended up becoming two of my favourite characters in this series so I loved reading their origin story.

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Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman

Before I picked up Norse Mythology I knew very little about Norse mythology, so this book was a brilliant introduction. Gaiman’s gives an overview of the characters and their stories that left me wanting to learn everything; I really loved how he looked both at the past and forwards to Ragnarok.

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Because You Love to Hate Me: 13 Tales of Villainy by Ameriie

No anthology is perfect, and this book was no exception because there were a few short stories I wasn’t a massive fan of. Because You Love to Hate Me focuses on the villains and anti-heroes, and features some of my favourite authors; Samantha Shannon, Marissa Meyer and V.E. Schwab.

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My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Winter Romances by Stephanie Perkins

Again there were a few duds in this anthology but overall it was full of cute and fluffy romance stories. Also one thing I loved about My True Love Gave to Me was that it was full of Christmas-y stories to keep you warm on a cold night, it’s rare to see YA contemporary set during Christmas.

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Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire

I’d heard a lot of amazing things about Every Heart a Doorway before picking it up and while it wasn’t what I expected it’s a great book, and both a beautiful and haunting story. There was a lot Seanan McGuire needed to fit into 170-odd pages but the plot and development never felt rushed.

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A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

A Monster Calls is such an emotional story, I was nearly in tears reading it but I couldn’t put it down. I fell in love with Conor, his situation and his struggles, and I enjoyed the stories the monster told within this story. What’s more the illustrations make this a truly unique reading experience.

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Fairest by Marissa Meyer

I struggled choosing between this book and Stars Above by Marissa Meyer for my list this week, but in the end went for Fairest because I loved the look into Levena’s past it gave us. For a villain I really felt for her as I saw everything she went through that made her into the queen she is when she’s introduced in Cinder.

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So what do you think? Did you take part in this week’s Top Ten Tuesday, if so let me know what your favourite short stories are? Did any of the books I featured make your list? Are you a big reader of anthologies and novellas or are you someone who doesn’t read short stories?