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I was surprised how well I liked this collection. I'd bought it not actually realizing it was going to be short fiction -- I thought it would be a compendium of some of the New Yorker's endless stream of profiles and "aww gee, only in New York!" 'Talk of the Town' pieces. But in actuality, it's short fiction first published in the New Yorker which is set in New York. Given my aversion to my former home -- I've had a rough go of it lately, and as a friend reminded me recently, "Remember that no m...
Miraculously, I only skipped over only 3 of these stories. This is truly a superb collection and makes me want to renew my New Yorker subscription. I highly recommend this for any lover of the short story format.
Some wonderful stories set in New York from many years of The New Yorker. The last one by Susan Sontag was a little disappointing but I can see why they included it. Sontag was a very famous New Yorker and her piece encapsulates a lot of the emotion around HIV/AIDS without ever using those terms. I didn't realise until I read this (and googled her) that she had died.
The New Yorker will probably always be the top contributor to Best American Short Stories. Of course it only makes sense b/c they likely get the most submissions—but even so, they've always had these crazy talented editors... Loved most of the stories chosen here, some not so much.
Lots of different kinds of stories about New Yorkers. It was ok. Not great.
So many eccentric stories with clearly very different styles — amazing collection to read, especially now.
I got this at an estate sale, and as you can tell, I've been reading this tome for a year and a quarter. This is one of those books that I use to "clear my palate" between longer works (OK, Dean Koontz, Stephen King, S-F, Patricia Cornwell, Lee Child, fun stuff). This is a tour de force of excellent short stories from about 1927 to about 1999. This is a thoroughly enjoyable compendium of stories about New York, and represents a literary Who's Who, from Woody Allen (His "The Whore of Mensa" gives...
Stories including:The Five-Forty-Eight by John CheeverDistant Music by Ann BeattieSailor off the Bremen by Irwin ShawPhysics by Tama JanowitzThe Whore of Mensa by Woody AllenWhat It Was Like, Seeing Chris by Deborah EisenbergDrawing Room B by John O'HaraA Sentimental Journey by Peter TaylorThe Balloon by Donald BerthelmeSmart Money by Philip RothAnother Marvellous Thing by Laurie ColwinThe Failure by Jonathan FranzenApartment Hotel by Sally BensonMidair by Frank ConroyThe Catbird Seat by James T...
A good number of short stories, some only a few pages long, the longest is about 30 pages long.On average, it felt that the stories developed slowly and ended abruptly. Often, too much was left to imagination; others might like it but I didn't. I like the story told until the end. This might be a thing with all short stories, or it might be a thing with me.When I got used to the style I enjoyed most of the stories, and some of them were downright brilliant (for example: "The smoker", "Midair", "...
The good, the bad, and the ugly.
I found this for just $2.00 and am glad i don't pay more for it. Its interesting but the theme of New York becomes a bit repetitious and frankly in most cases it could be any city as a backdrop. I love The New Yorker for its variety and would have preferred if this collection had taken that approach with a broader scope.
3.5 Stars - Good bookAs you might expect with a short-story collection, some are winners and some are losers. The winners were fantastic, and the losers... well, they're they made the reading experience less enjoyable. The rating is an average of the ratings of every individual story and then divided by the number of stories in the book - 44 to be exact. My favorite story in the collection is one quite early-on and one of the shorter one's in the book - Sailor off the Bremen by Irwin Shaw. The s...
this is a wonderful book for anyone who enjoys short stories. the pieces date back to the beginning of the new yorker and capture the essence of manhattan in a somewhat anecdotal fashion. of course, this isn't your sappy chicken soup for the whomever's soul. the stories are literary and classic. it's...wonderful.
What part of a collection of short stories from The New Yorker requires explanation or justification for reading it? The reputation for consistency in publishing some the best writing in the English language continues.
Eclectic collection of short stories by some of our greatest writers. Most were enjoyable - some did not grab me as much.
I haven't read every single story; this was the "textbook" for a creative writing class I took over the summer. It was good. It contains stories from the New Yorker. I gave it a 4 instead of a a 5 for some degree of pretension and samey-ness.
Maybe the New Yorker fiction section is not for me. Too many of the stories were of the John Cheever Saul Bellow Philip Roth John Updike kind, in which a middle aged man puts on his raincoat and leaves his office and gets on the train to Scarsdale and reminisces about an affair he had, and then gets off the train. Maybe its good that I don't get these stories, because maybe that means I don't share their life of middle aged desperation. Maybe.On the other hand, there's the always funny Sj Perelm...
Fun short stories from many well-known writers, all set in New York. From "The Whore of Mensa"(Woody Allen) to "The CatBird Seat" (James Thurber), apocalyptic, humorous, and everything in between. These stories were fun to read and evening more entertaining to listen to. Now if I could just find something similar about LA....
When a story is great it's great. When it isn't, it isn't. So this is a mixed batch. I CONFESS. I didn't read everyone. Partly because of the uncomfortability of being returned to past decades when I first started reading T.N.Y. The Salinger story isn't very good. Lorie Moore - holds up.
I am so behind on my book-keeping (ha ha). But I did finish this book -- the second volume of short stories I've read this year, a genre I am not generally drawn to. But this one was stories about New York City from the New Yorker magazine over the years. A lot of authors you'd expect -- Updike, Salinger, Cheever, Thurber, Janowitz -- and a few I wasn't familiar with. Some were better than others, to me. Some seemed quite dated. Whatever the story was about, New York City was really the main cha...