9 Top short stories books like McSweeney's #61 by Claire Boyle

Cover of McSweeney's #61 by Claire Boyle

McSweeney's #61

By: Claire Boyle

3.77

Format: 224 pages, Hardcover

McSweeney’s returns with a back-to-basics collection of the best literary material we can find. Fea…

If you liked the short stories plot in McSweeney's #61 by Claire Boyle , here is a list of 9 books like this:

Cover of Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin, Megan McDowell, Ruth Sepp

1. Fever Dream

By: Samanta Schweblin , Megan McDowell , Ruth Sepp

3.72

Format: 183 pages, Hardcover

Experience the blazing, surreal sensation of a fever dream… A young woman named Amanda lies dyin… read more

Similar categories in Samanta Schweblin's Fever Dream book and Claire Boyle's McSweeney's #61

  • fiction
"There’s only so much searching you can do, either a horse is there or it’s not."

-Samanta Schweblin, Fever Dream

"I’m just tired, that’s what I tell myself, and sometimes I’m afraid when I think that everyday problems might be a little more terrible for me than for other people."

-Samanta Schweblin, Fever Dream

"But I’m going to die in a few hours. That’s going to happen, isn’t it? It’s strange how calm I am. Because even though you haven’t told me, I know. And still, it’s an impossible thing to tell yoursel…"

-Samanta Schweblin, Fever Dream

"My mother always said something bad would happen. My mother was sure that sooner or later something bad would happen and now I can see it with total clarity, I can feel it coming toward us like a tan…"

-Samanta Schweblin, Fever Dream

Cover of McSweeney's #50 by Dave Eggers

2. McSweeney's #50

By: Dave Eggers

3.61

Format: 300 pages, Hardcover

Each issue of the quarterly is completely redesigned. There have been hardcovers and paperbacks, an… read more

Similar categories in Dave Eggers's McSweeney's #50 book and Claire Boyle's McSweeney's #61

  • short stories
  • fiction
Cover of Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins

3. Jitterbug Perfume

By: Tom Robbins

4.23

Format: 342 pages, Paperback

Jitterbug Perfume is an epic, which is to say, it begins in the forests of ancient Bohemia and does… read more

Similar categories in Tom Robbins's Jitterbug Perfume book and Claire Boyle's McSweeney's #61

  • fiction
"All dreams continue in the beyond."

-Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

"I mean that gods do not limit men. Men limit men."

-Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

"Breathe properly. Stay curious. And eat your beets."

-Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

"Birth and death were easy. It was life that was hard."

-Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

Cover of Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation by Michael Pollan

4. Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation

By: Michael Pollan

4.15

Format: None pages, Hardcover

Fire, water, air, earth--our most trusted food expert recounts the story of his culinary education … read more

Similar categories in Michael Pollan's Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation book and Claire Boyle's McSweeney's #61

Cover of Travels with Charley: In Search of America by John Steinbeck

5. Travels with Charley: In Search of America

By: John Steinbeck

4.37

Format: None pages, Paperback

An intimate journey across and in search of America, as told by one of its most beloved writers, in… read more

Similar categories in John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley: In Search of America book and Claire Boyle's McSweeney's #61

Cover of David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, Jeremy Tambling

6. David Copperfield

By: Charles Dickens , Jeremy Tambling

4.03

Format: 882 pages, Paperback

David Copperfield is the story of a young man's adventures on his journey from an unhappy and impov… read more

Similar categories in Charles Dickens's David Copperfield book and Claire Boyle's McSweeney's #61

  • fiction
"Trifles make the sum of life. "

-Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

"the sight of me is good for sore eyes"

-Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

"Procrastination is the thief of time, collar him."

-Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

"My advice is, never do to-morrow what you can do to-day"

-Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

Cover of Life, the Universe and Everything (Hitchhiker's Guide, #3) by Douglas Adams

7. Life, the Universe and Everything (Hitchhiker's Guide, #3)

By: Douglas Adams

3.71

Format: None pages, Paperback

The unhappy inhabitants of planet Krikkit are sick of looking at the night sky above their heads-so… read more

Similar categories in Douglas Adams's Life, the Universe and Everything (Hitchhiker's Guide, #3) book and Claire Boyle's McSweeney's #61

  • fiction

8. The Lathe of Heaven

By: Ursula K. Le Guin

4.48

Format: 334 pages,

George Orr is a man who discovers he has the peculiar ability to dream things into being -- for bet… read more

Similar categories in Ursula K. Le Guin's The Lathe of Heaven book and Claire Boyle's McSweeney's #61

9. The Witches: Salem, 1692

By: Stacy Schiff

4.03

Format: 208 pages, Hardcover

Pulitzer Prize winner Stacy Schiff, author of the #1 bestseller Cleopatra, provides an electrifying… read more

Similar categories in Stacy Schiff's The Witches: Salem, 1692 book and Claire Boyle's McSweeney's #61

10. The Satanic Verses

By: Salman Rushdie

4.25

Format: None pages, Paperback

One of the most controversial and acclaimed novels ever written, The Satanic Versesis Salman Rushdi… read more

Similar categories in Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses book and Claire Boyle's McSweeney's #61

11. Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches

By: Tony Kushner

4.11

Format: None pages, Paperback

Pulitzer Prize-winner for Drama, 1993. The first part of Tony Kushner's epic drama of America in th… read more

Similar categories in Tony Kushner's Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches book and Claire Boyle's McSweeney's #61

12. The Red Badge of Courage

By: Stephen Crane

3.68

Format: 330 pages, Paperback

During an unnamed battle, 18-year-old private Henry Fleming survives what he considers to be a lost… read more

Similar categories in Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage book and Claire Boyle's McSweeney's #61

13. Cathedral

By: Raymond Carver

3.74

Format: 70 pages, Paperback

Raymond Carver's third collection of stories, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, including the cano… read more

Similar categories in Raymond Carver's Cathedral book and Claire Boyle's McSweeney's #61

14. The Nix

By: Nathan Hill

3.72

Format: 294 pages, Hardcover

A hilarious and deeply touching debut novel about a son, the mother who left him as a child, and ho… read more

Similar categories in Nathan Hill's The Nix book and Claire Boyle's McSweeney's #61

Cover of The Eyes and the Impossible by Dave Eggers

15. The Eyes and the Impossible

By: Dave Eggers

4.25

Format: 256 pages, Hardcover

The illustrated story of a dog who unwittingly becomes a hero to a park full of animals. Johanne… read more

Similar categories in Dave Eggers's The Eyes and the Impossible book and Claire Boyle's McSweeney's #61

  • fiction
"What monster would turn up his snout at the thought-through help of all the friends he had?"

-Dave Eggers, The Eyes and the Impossible

"Every reasonable creature knows that the worst thing any creature can do all day is think of themselves. If there are troubles in your mind, you should think first of the troubles of others; it is th…"

-Dave Eggers, The Eyes and the Impossible

Cover of Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton

16. Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands

By: Kate Beaton

4.41

Format: 430 pages, Hardcover

Celebrated cartoonist Kate Beaton vividly presents the untold story of Canada. Before there was … read more

Similar categories in Kate Beaton's Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands book and Claire Boyle's McSweeney's #61

Cover of Flights by Olga Tokarczuk

17. Flights

By: Olga Tokarczuk

3.76

Format: 416 pages, Hardcover

From the incomparably original Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk, Flights interweaves reflections on tra… read more

Similar categories in Olga Tokarczuk's Flights book and Claire Boyle's McSweeney's #61

  • short stories
  • fiction
"The truth is terrible: describing is destroying."

-Olga Tokarczuk, Flights

"the truest argument was an old one—the earth is round, let us not be too attached, then, to directions."

-Olga Tokarczuk, Flights

"Drawing is never reproducing - in order to see, you have to know how to look, and you have to know what you’re looking at."

-Olga Tokarczuk, Flights

"I believe, unswervingly, agonizingly, that it is in freaks that Being breaks through to the surface and reveals its true nature."

-Olga Tokarczuk, Flights

Cover of Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung

18. Cursed Bunny

By: Bora Chung

3.78

Format: 251 pages, Paperback

Cursed Bunny is a genre-defying collection of short stories by Korean author Bora Chung. Blurring t… read more

Similar categories in Bora Chung's Cursed Bunny book and Claire Boyle's McSweeney's #61

  • fiction
  • short stories
  • anthologies
"Her husband had pursued an “alternative lifestyle"

-Bora Chung, Cursed Bunny

"One can break the curse, but it is impossible to cure their blindness from greed. They were always ready to wage another war"

-Bora Chung, Cursed Bunny

"But there I remained, standing in the bathroom, waiting for someone to miraculously find me, to release me from my ties to this life."

-Bora Chung, Cursed Bunny

"Once you experience a terrible trauma and understand the world from an extreme perspective, it is difficult to overcome this perspective. Because your very survival depends on it."

-Bora Chung, Cursed Bunny

Cover of Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange

19. Wandering Stars

By: Tommy Orange

3.89

Format: 315 pages, Hardcover

The eagerly awaited follow-up to Pulitzer Prize-finalist Tommy Orange’s breakout best seller There … read more

Similar categories in Tommy Orange's Wandering Stars book and Claire Boyle's McSweeney's #61

  • fiction
"And in the year 1924 Indian citizenship will have been granted, even though they will mean to dissolve tribes by giving citizenship, dissolve being another word for disappearance, a kind of chemical …"

-Tommy Orange, Wandering Stars

Cover of Liberation Day by George Saunders

20. Liberation Day

By: George Saunders

4.00

Format: 256 pages, Hardcover

The "best short story writer in English" (Time) is back with a masterful collection that explores i… read more

Similar categories in George Saunders's Liberation Day book and Claire Boyle's McSweeney's #61

  • short stories
  • fiction
"...or said some racist thing out loud at church..."

-George Saunders, Liberation Day

"It is always regrettable to have attracted the attention of adult son Mike."

-George Saunders, Liberation Day

" You are trapped in you, the beam said. Yeah, well, who isn’t? she thought."

-George Saunders, Liberation Day

"It was always falling down around you, everything has always been falling down around us. Only we were too alive to notice."

-George Saunders, Liberation Day

Cover of Music Is History by Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson

21. Music Is History

By: Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson

3.86

Format: 352 pages, Hardcover

A New York Times bestseller, Music Is History combines multi-Grammy Award winner Questlove’s deep m… read more

Similar categories in Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson's Music Is History book and Claire Boyle's McSweeney's #61

Cover of Stay True by Hua Hsu

22. Stay True

By: Hua Hsu

4.03

Format: 208 pages, Hardcover

From the New Yorker staff writer Hua Hsu, a gripping memoir on friendship, grief, the search for se… read more

Similar categories in Hua Hsu's Stay True book and Claire Boyle's McSweeney's #61

"My parents are great, I said. Unbelievably non-stereotypical."

-Hua Hsu, Stay True

"The first generation thinks about survival; the ones that follow tell the stories."

-Hua Hsu, Stay True

"You were describing people we had not yet met, maybe people we ourselves would become."

-Hua Hsu, Stay True

"It was a sign of personal growth, I thought to myself, that I could be friends with someone who liked Pearl Jam this much."

-Hua Hsu, Stay True

Cover of A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance by Hanif Abdurraqib

23. A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance

By: Hanif Abdurraqib

4.60

Format: 301 pages, Hardcover

A stirring meditation on Black performance in America from the New York Times bestselling author of… read more

Similar categories in Hanif Abdurraqib's A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance book and Claire Boyle's McSweeney's #61

"When someone loves loudly, with everything they have in them, the withholding of that loud love, even briefly, feels impossible to endure."

-Hanif Abdurraqib, A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance

"If I am going to be afraid, I might as well do it honest. Arm in arm with everyone I love, adorned in blood and bruises, singing jokes on our way to the grave."

-Hanif Abdurraqib, A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance

"I have wanted to die enough times in my life to understand the idea that wanting to die is not a foolish thing... I don't mean to prop up the idea of wanting an exit, but for me, not to imagine it as…"

-Hanif Abdurraqib, A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance

"Of the many things America loves to pat itself on the back about, one of the things is an obsession with exploration, or the desire to seek places beyond the places you are from or the places you hav…"

-Hanif Abdurraqib, A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance

Cover of The Many Deaths of Laila Starr by Ram V.

24. The Many Deaths of Laila Starr

By: Ram V.

4.30

Format: 128 pages, Paperback

Humanity is on the verge of discovering immortality, which means the avatar of Death is out of a jo… read more

Similar categories in Ram V.'s The Many Deaths of Laila Starr book and Claire Boyle's McSweeney's #61

  • fiction
"Perhaps it is enough to remember at story's end the miracle that it was simply to have lived."

-Ram V., The Many Deaths of Laila Starr

"If life's an exercise in making memories...no one really goes away as long as they are remembered."

-Ram V., The Many Deaths of Laila Starr

"It’s what happens when things die. They go away, but you don’t realize all the parts of you that they were holding up until after."

-Ram V., The Many Deaths of Laila Starr

"And in the days that follow, the possibilities of what could've been begin to fall away. Leaving you with less, each time-- more precious, to be savored. Like a cigarette. The point of life, my frien…"

-Ram V., The Many Deaths of Laila Starr

Cover of Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency by Olivia Laing

25. Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency

By: Olivia Laing

4.01

Format: 272 pages, Hardcover

“One of the finest writers of the new non-fiction” (Harper’s Bazaar) explores the role of art in th… read more

Similar categories in Olivia Laing's Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency book and Claire Boyle's McSweeney's #61

  • short stories
"Empathy is not something that happens to us when we read Dickens. It’s work. What art does is provide material with which to think: new registers, new spaces. After that, friend, it’s up to you."

-Olivia Laing, Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency

"The Argonauts is about these small, miraculous domestic dramas, and the acts of readjustment and care that they require, but it is also a reconsideration of what the institutions established around s…"

-Olivia Laing, Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency

"Fiction can do that: can make a space for reflecting, for generating novel ways of responding and reacting to lies and guns and walls alike. The mere act of cracking open a book, Smith thinks, is cre…"

-Olivia Laing, Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency

"These narratives are interesting in and of themselves, but Nelson isn’t just airing her feelings out. She’s bent on using these experiences as ways of prying the culture open, of investigating what i…"

-Olivia Laing, Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency

Cover of Antkind by Charlie Kaufman

26. Antkind

By: Charlie Kaufman

3.71

Format: 720 pages, Kindle Edition

The bold and boundlessly original debut novel from the Oscar-winning screenwriter of Being John Mal… read more

Similar categories in Charlie Kaufman's Antkind book and Claire Boyle's McSweeney's #61

  • fiction
"Would that I could be a gay man. I would like myself better. But I am the most heterosexual of all my many acquaintances."

-Charlie Kaufman, Antkind

"Comedy is a lie, too, of course. It’s a defense, an aggression. It is a thing created to separate, to say, “I am not like this."

-Charlie Kaufman, Antkind

"I have often felt that I am being watched. That my life is being witnessed by unseen forces, that adjustments are made as these forces see fit, to thwart me, to humiliate me."

-Charlie Kaufman, Antkind

"Not much of note in my waking life. People get sick, or don’t. People die, or don’t. I watch TV, or don’t. Sometimes I smoke without remembering lighting up. I continue to go to a deranged hypnotist …"

-Charlie Kaufman, Antkind

Cover of Kali by Daniel Freedman

27. Kali

By: Daniel Freedman

3.58

Format: 176 pages, Hardcover

From Daniel Freedman (Raiders) and Mondo and DICE artist Robert Sammelin comes an original graphic … read more

Similar categories in Daniel Freedman's Kali book and Claire Boyle's McSweeney's #61

  • fiction
Cover of McSweeney's Issue 68 (McSweeney's Quarterly Concern) by Daniel Gumbiner

28. McSweeney's Issue 68 (McSweeney's Quarterly Concern)

By: Daniel Gumbiner

3.91

Format: 201 pages, Hardcover

Coming this October, the 68th issue of our National Magazine Award-winning McSweeney's Quarterly fe… read more

Similar categories in Daniel Gumbiner's McSweeney's Issue 68 (McSweeney's Quarterly Concern) book and Claire Boyle's McSweeney's #61

  • short stories
  • fiction
Cover of McSweeney's #63 by Stephen Dixon

29. McSweeney's #63

By: Stephen Dixon

4.07

Format: 216 pages, Hardcover

McSweeney’s Quarterly returns with our first issue of 2021, a handsome and sturdy hardcover with a … read more

Similar categories in Stephen Dixon's McSweeney's #63 book and Claire Boyle's McSweeney's #61

  • short stories
  • fiction
Cover of McSweeney's #61 by Claire Boyle

30. McSweeney's #61

By: Claire Boyle

3.77

Format: 224 pages, Hardcover

McSweeney’s returns with a back-to-basics collection of the best literary material we can find. Fea… read more

Similar categories in Claire Boyle's McSweeney's #61 book and Claire Boyle's McSweeney's #61

  • fiction
  • short stories
  • anthologies
Cover of McSweeney's #62: The Queer Fiction Issue by Patrick Cottrell

31. McSweeney's #62: The Queer Fiction Issue

By: Patrick Cottrell

3.94

Format: 296 pages, Hardcover

McSweeney’s 62: The Queer Fiction Issue collects absurd, bold, bleak, humorous, and astonishing wor… read more

Similar categories in Patrick Cottrell's McSweeney's #62: The Queer Fiction Issue book and Claire Boyle's McSweeney's #61

  • fiction
  • short stories
  • anthologies

17 Best fiction books like McSweeney's #61 by Claire Boyle

Transform Your Habits

Fever Dream

Samanta Schweblin , Megan McDowell , Ruth Sepp

3.72

Transform Your Habits

McSweeney's #50

Dave Eggers

3.61

Transform Your Habits

Jitterbug Perfume

Tom Robbins

4.23

Transform Your Habits

David Copperfield

Charles Dickens , Jeremy Tambling

4.03

View all the books

6 must-read classics books like Travels with Charley: In Search of America by John Steinbeck

Transform Your Habits

On the Road

Jack Kerouac

3.61

Transform Your Habits

Travels with Charley: In Search of America

John Steinbeck

4.37

Transform Your Habits

A Moveable Feast

Ernest Hemingway

5.00

Transform Your Habits

The Sun Also Rises (Fiesta)

Ernest Hemingway

3.79

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