In February, during my last trip beyond my country's borders, and my last trip to a real bookshop, I bought this book. I'd been meaning to buy it for a while, but I didn't want to order it online. Instead I wanted to pick it physically from the shelf of a real bookshop because the reading of it was to be a ceremony of sorts: my way of paying tribute to a Goodreads friend who died last year. I chose this particular book because he'd recommended it to me, and when I read it, I realised that I coul...

I love the short story form and Varieties of disturbance is one of the most innovative short story collections I've come across. I appreciated the stories with a very dead-pan reportlike feel and the use of repetition. My favorite story was We Miss You: A Study of Get-well letters From a Class of Fourth-Graders. There were so many that just left me exhilarated. I loved being surprised by all the different angles and techniques. I think the book really suits my way of thinking, this kind of going...

I really liked this book, and took my time reading it. Some of the stories are very, very short. Some of them are a little long. All of them are interesting with a unique perspective. One of my favorites was "Tropical Storm," which I can quote in its entirety: "Like a tropical storm, I, too, may one day become 'better organized.'"There's another story that analyzes the get well letters sent to a 2nd grader by his classmates. Not the typical short story topic, but seems to fit right in. Another a...

When I first heard about Lydia Davis, I felt like I should have already known of her. This is my first attempt to remedy that absence. I'm not surprised that the friend who recommended her comes from my book club that read Infinite Jest, as there is one story in this set that makes me think of David Foster Wallace (where the footnote is longer than the story.)And most stories in here are short. Short is an understatement. Tiny. I believe the word is micro fiction. Many are more like poetry. And

'varieties' is accurate in that she has several techniques, vaguely constellated around her interests (of translation and epistemology, of 'deep ideas' of self). she's a great bridge to the Modernists... she's thinking about them--Kafka, Proust, Beckett, Woolf--throughout, but we hear her thinking in a very contemporary language, one that is constructed and fragmented *from* modernism, a cento of modernism. relatedly: she's a good mimic. beyond this also, she's several of her own styles. the sh...

Lydia Davis’ Varieties of Disturbance is a unique short story collection with stories ranging in length from multiple pages to a single sentence. The stories are often clever with an underlying humor, but some I just fond plain odd. Perhaps I missed the point in a few of them. Quite a few of the shortest stories were more like humorous observations of life rather than stories. This collection of short stories is very character-driven. With a few of the stories, you aren’t introduced to the chara...

Do you remember when you were a teenager, and your friends all really liked this one band, but you just didn't understand the appeal of their music? And you had a sneaking suspicion that at least a few of your friends were pretending to like it to seem cool? And maybe even you pretended to like it to seem cool, too?That is how I feel about this collection, though I'm old enough now to not bother wasting time pretending to be cool. I just straight up don't get it. Another review I read said altho...

Well basically my favorite book. Sean calls it "Proust tweets for Baller," Baller being me. I guess that is accurate. My favorite was the one in which she reads and doesn't read Worstward Ho on the bus.

Ones I liked: "Grammar Questions," "What You Learn About The Baby," "Passing Wind," "For Sixty Cents," "Order," "The Strangers," "The Caterpillar," "The Fellowship"

This was a librarian recommendation. Probably more of a 3.5? I liked the shorter fiction better than the longer fiction. It gave me a lot to think about the nature of stories and storytelling and even how we analyze texts.

Hm. Stars. I don't know what to do about those pesky little stars...I related to the stories on an intellectual level, that I can say for certain. They were well written and thoughtful. Problem is, I didn't relate to the stories emotionally at all. At all. And that, for me, is the most important part. I like stories that make me feel SOMETHING. Stories do not have to make me feel good, in fact, the best ones leave me feeling very unsettled. These stories, unfortunately, left me feeling... nothin...

Index EntryChristian, I'm not aPublished in 2007, this is the last volume of Davis' short fiction in The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis. Varieties of Disturbance was a Natural Book Award finalist.Following Collected Stories came two more collections ...The Cows, 2011Can't and Won't: Stories, 2015Davis has produced two published translations in this century: Swann's Way: In Search of Lost Time, Vol. 1, 2004; and Madame Bovary, 2011; both available in Penguin Classics Deluxe editionsVarieties o...

Subtle and remarkable. I understand the misgivings some have regarding "micro-fiction" in general, but I would offer this as an argument for the form. Will post a link to my extended review, when I write it.

I admit that when I received this book in the mail nearly a year ago, I read the shortest stories first and these two-line stories made me feel (with a trace of shame) like Lydia Davis was cheating. Afraid that she would not live up to all the Lydia Davis hype, I tucked the book away in my shelves.Last night, this book seemed to want attention so I said okay and started reading from the beginning. Few stories are more than a page. The three long-ish stories in the book are all set up like lab re...

I put that word on the page,but he added the apostrophe.- Collaboration with Fly, pg. 8* * *Like a tropical storm,I, too, may one day become "better organized."- Tropical Storm, pg. 19* * *Representatives of different food products manufacturerstry to open their own packaging.- Idea for a Short Documentary Film, pg. 22* * *Beyond the hand holding this book that I'm reading, I see another hand lying idle and slightly out of focus - my extra hand.- Hand, pg. 30* * *If your eyeballs move, this mean...

http://www.dailycamera.com/news/2007/...Lydia Davis' 'Varieties of Disturbance'By Jenny Shank For the CameraFriday, September 14, 2007Lydia Davis writes experimental short fiction, a practice that would seem to confine her work to the audience that reads obscure literary magazines. But Davis' stories are so skillful, incisive, and funny that she enjoys a much broader reach, publishing widely and earning many accolades and awards for her fiction, including a 2003 MacArthur Fellowship.How does Dav...