I’ve always found short stories the perfect reading material for sunny days spent outdoors. Of course reading any novel or non-fiction book in the park on a warm afternoon is hard to beat, but there’s just something about the short story. You get to explore a life, or a place, or a situation over a concentrated few pages. Plus, you can more than likely finish a story between strategic blanket-moves to stay in the shade! Below are a few of my favorite short story collections for spring afternoons:

Etgar Keret The Nimrod Flipout
Keret, a contemporary Isreali writer, has plenty of short stories under his belt. Most of the selections in The Nimrod Flipout are just a couple of pages long but are funny, clever, and positively surreal.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez Collected Stories
Love in the Time of Cholera might take more than a bright, warm day of reading to finish, but lucky for us Garcia Marquez wrote some wonderful short stories, translated from Spanish and collected in the edition above.

Various The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories
And of course, if you can’t make a commitment to one author, try the Anchor Book of New American Short Stories. With plenty of authors to choose from, you’ll be soaking up the sun all day!