My Stack!

After asking for recommendations, raiding friends bookshelves, and trawling other blogs about short stories, i have cobbled together a nice starting stack of books. These will more than likely be the first of many collections i choose from.  As i toggle between these books, i assume i'll find a method of choosing my daily story.  I also expect an avalanche of other works to come my way as i make "short stories" my new hobby.  Once you inject yourself into a certain world it becomes the only thing you see.

Perhaps i will complete all of these anthologies.  More likely however, these will be a platform or a foundation for others that come along.  Here is what i'm looking at right now on my reading/typing desk:

O’Henry- 100 Selected Stories

HP Lovecraft- Omnibus 1

Mark Helprin- Ellis Island

TC Boyle- If The River Was Whiskey

Philip Dick- Selected Stories

Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche- The Thing Around Your Neck

Anton Chekhov- Stories

Various- Glimpse of Truth (100 greatest short stories collection)

Nathan Englander- What We Talk About…

Alice Munro- Runaway

Jon McGregor- This isn’t the sort of thing…

Joe Frank- The Queen of Puerto Rico

Nam Le- The Boat

Jorge Luis Borges- Collected stories

Raymond Carver- Fires

Haruki Murakami- Blind Willow/Sleeping Woman

Half of these authors are entirely new for me. All of these stories, with the exception of some of the O'Henry works (and these I will skip over) will be first time reads.  For the sake of diversity, i will probably limit my O'Henry consumption to a few dozen. 

I will also dip into The Best American Series. These are yearly anthologies of published short stories printed yearly and edited by famous authors.  I have ones edited by Stephen King, Sue Miller, Walter Mosely and a few of the Non-required Reading series edited by Dave Eggers.

That should be more than enough to start out.  As always i encourage recommendation and input as the year goes along.  

Grading Each Story

METHODOLOGY

I understand that greatness of art isn’t something that can be determined by rankings or assigning a numerical grade to it.  However, for my own personal process of going through this project, I’d like some help putting all 366 stories in perspective.  It will also help me hone my critical eye. So I came up with a rudimentary and non-scientific grading system that I may or may not stick to the whole year.

I will critique each story using the following 4 categories giving each a 1-10 rating.  So a perfect short story will get a 40.  

Quality of writing- Judging quality of art is a mostly-completely subjective exercise; in the same way that saying Mozart is a higher quality of music than say Justin Bieber; sure artistic appreciation is subjective however, some things are unequivocally higher quality.

Quality of plot/idea/concept- Short stories often hinge upon the concept.  As the story unfolds you say “wow, what a crazy situation”.  These clever or tragic or cringe-worthy moments more than anything make a short story what it is.  With so little space, character development takes a back seat.  Often the concept is enough to make a 2-page story memorable. As an example the ironic, heart breaking, and ultimately redeeming plot in Gift of the Magi would be a perfect score in this category.

Execution/Polish/Finish- Just as concept can make a story memorable, many short stories leave us wanting more.  Some writers use their short stories as springboards for larger novels.  Their collections of these out takes, tidbits, and first drafts are valuable workshops for writers but a pure reader wants a finished product, we don’t care to see how the sausage is made. Great short stories should stand on their own.  Because the short story genre is so vast, its hard to qualify this one.  The litmus here will be up to the author. Whatever the short story sets out to do, it should do well.  

X-Factor- Because the genre is so expansive and encompasses writers of all milieus (yes, I wanted that to sound snobby) its hard to use a one-size-fits-all criteria to judge them.  This category can cover anything from originality to richness of character.  Basically, whatever the story sets out to accomplish beyond storytelling.  

365 welcome

Well, here’s another one of my crazy personal projects.  I plan on reading 1 short story a day for an entire year, starting May 1st.  I’m calling it 365...but its really 366 with February 29th popping up late in the project.  

I feel that with all my reading, the short story genre is somewhat lacking.  Although a quick look back at my Goodreads lists make me realize I’ve read more of them than I thought.  By giving myself this assignment, i feel by years end (well...it won't be the calendar year) i’ll have good handle on what good short story writing is all about.  Or perhaps I’ll at least know what i don't know, which in a way is all i could ask for.

I have a good starting stack and i plan on reading through a few author’s collections.   I will most likely go through some multi-author compendiums as well.  While i plan on having full weeks reading only one author, i will try to mix it up some.  I assume my methods and execution for this project will change throughout the year.  

The only real rule i have is I want all 366 to be new stories for me, thus i will be skipping some well known stories in the genre.  What this will NOT be is an effort to read or find the best 366 short stories out there. I expect to find some clunkers along the way.  And that leads us to the grades.  I have come up with a method of grading each as I read them.  This is only a personal attempt to hone my critical eye.  It should not be seen as a way to rank or put judgment on the art for others.

OK...I hope some of you will read along or hop aboard this train.  I hope you all send along advice, recommendations and critiques as i go along. I assume that some points in the blog i will be unable to write long reviews, but I plan to at least keep a list here each day of what i’m up to.