Under Western Eyes by Joseph Conrad

"In life, you see, there is not much choice. You have either to rot or to burn. And there is not one of us, painted or unpainted, that would not rather burn than rot.” 
― Joseph Conrad, Under Western Eyes

Selected Short Stories for 9th Graders

 "The Monkey's Paw" by W.W. Jacobs - "The Beginning of Grief" by Larry Woiwode -
"Masque of the Red Death" by Edgar Allan Poe - "Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. - "The Bet" by Anton Chekhov - "The Egg" by Sherwood Anderson - "In Another Country" by Ernest Hemingway - "Gryphon" by Charles Baxter - "The Doll's House" by Katherine Mansfield - "Old Mother Savage" by Guy de Maupassant -  "The Black Sheep" by Italo Calvino - "The Secret Lion" by Alberto Alvaro Rios - "Day of the Butterfly" by Alice Munro "The Child by Tiger" by Thomas Wolfe - "The Prisoner Wore Glasses" by Bessie Head - "Once Upon a Time" by Nadine Gordimer - "Barn Burning" by William Faulkner - "The Three Strangers"by Thomas Hardy - "The Possibility of Evil" by Shirley Jackson - "The Destructors" by Graham Greene

Barbara Pym, et. al

Barbara Pym and Cat

Stella Gibbons

Philip Larkin

Elizabeth Taylor

Muriel Spark

The Wisdom of Anita Brookner

"And what is the most potent myth of all?' she went on, in the slightly ringing tones that caused him to make a discreet sign to the waiter for the bill. 'The tortoise and the hare,' she pronounced. 'People love this one, especially women. Now you will notice, Harold that in my books it is the mouse-like un-assuming girl who gets the hero, while the scornful temptress with whom he has had a stormy affair retreats baffled from the fray, never to return. The tortoise wins every time. This is a lie, of course,' she said, pleasantly, but with authority, the kiwi fruit slipping back unnoticed onto her plate. 'In real life, of course, it is the hare who wins. Every time...Hares have no time to read. They are too busy winning the game. The propaganda goes all the other way, but only because it is the tortoise who is in need of consolation. Like the meek who are going to inherit the earth,' she added with a brief smile...." - from Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner