I've just got a little bit left to finish, but I just love O. Henry's stories. I read a couple of his short stories in high school, and was hooked. It is just positively amazing what he can cover/accomplish in just a few pages! Also how true what he has to say, and quite humorously too! Wish I could write like that! AND I have way too many exclamation points in this review...

In high school I read "The Last Leaf". It was brilliant and simplistic. Many years later I decided I wanted to read more of O. Henry's work and Barnes and Noble provided the fodder. "Selected Stories of O. Henry" is a sort of Best Of collection of 45 short stories by O. Henry. The tip of the ice berg compared to his tiresome output over a short period of time.O. Henry is considered by many to be the greatest American short story writer. This cross section of his work shows why. He is able to wea...

simple, short and brilliant.

These stories were so good I wish I would have read a complete collection.

I READ FEW OF O HENRY'S SHORT STORIES IN MY HIGH SCHOOL. HE WAS MY FAVORITE AUTHOR SINCE THEN. HIS STORIES INSPIRED ME A LOT. I WAS SWEPT OFF MY FEET BY AFTER TWENTY YEARS, GIFT OF THE MAGI AND LAST LEAF THOSE WERE NOTHING BUT THE SLICES OF LIFE. THE O HENRY AWARD IS THE MOST PRESTIGIOUS AWARD FOR SHORT FICTION. I BELIEVE HIS WIT IN THE TWISTS AND ENDINGS OF THE STORY DESERVES IT. SO, I DECIDED TO READ HIS STORIES BUT HE HAS INCREDIBLY WRITTEN MORE THAN ONE COULD IMAGINE OF ABOUT 600 STORIES. SO...

Even though this book took me forever to read, I really enjoyed it. Everyone is familiar with "The Gift of the Magi," and I had read a couple of his short stories in school, but I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I picked up this volume. I enjoy short stories from time to time, but I usually end up liking some stories more than others. Most of the time, short story collections are "meh" for me. Not so in this case. I can honestly say that I enjoyed each and every story. I was real...

Loving these short stories! The unexpected endings are great, and his humor is right up my alley. Just enjoying some light reading in the midst of life...

I love this author with his fabulous short stories!

O. Henry is a great delight. He transported me to his world of joy and wonderful surprises.

I was so impressed by 'The Last Leaf'(not available in this book 🤦‍♂️) that I (almost) immediately bought this book and I must admit that it turned out to be one of the enriching bibliophilic investments that I have done in the recent times.The book contains stories that encompass a variety of human emotions and themes like men, town life, nostalgia, humour, friendship and even sorrow. Almost every story has a typical O. Henry twist at the end, however, the reader can guess it, after reading sev...

With a few exceptions, probably one of the most interesting short stories I have read. He will never become irrelevant and his stories will never age. I absolutely recommend this book to anyone who needs some irony and melancholy.

It’s hard to believe that O.Henry died penniless. Perhaps his facility to peer inside an individual’s soul took its toll. He wrote of people from all walks of life and his egalitarian position was that everyone deserved to be written about. Every human being possessed vitriol, pathos, and humor. His ability to define character via humor is a revelation that will never pale beside more current work and it is what continues to resonate once a story is complete.“Jeff Peters has been engaged in as m...

O. Henry is famous for his surprise endings (which i guess makes them a little less surprising) as well as his light humor. while that makes for entertaining reading, i wouldn't call it frivolous. more gentle than his contemporary Mark Twain, but with greater realism, his stories deal with various classes of New York society, sometimes in the same story, and always make me think or feel something i didn't expect to.

When reading a short story collection, especially a collection by only one author, I always face the problem of fatigue. Of being "authored - out". Becoming so familiar with the writer's style that the stories blur together and it gets. . . yeah, maybe a little boring and a bit of a chore to finish.There were times that I did feel that when reading this collection. When, I suppose, the O.Henry "twist" became O. Henry "rote" and I had to step away a read something else but. . . more often then th...

These are...fine. I think reading these in quick succession, one after the other, actually cheapens the effect of O. Henry's Big Twist At The End. It becomes pretty easy to see how everyone will reunite at the end or who will be put in the wrong or the right. It's like an episode of Law and Order or Elementary: when there's a prominent guest star introduced early (or a detail from the past or a minor character who receives any attention in O. Henry's case), they're always going to come back arou...

Funny and clever. These aren't just gripping yarns, though; they're wonderful period pieces and cut to the heart of an atmosphere. Much of the setting and the characters may be larger than life, but the impression is wonderful, especially the elements that repeat over stories: the dizzying freedom of the open prairie during last days of the real "West"; the casual fierce loyalty of the cowboys who lived there; the plucky resourcefulness of hardworking shopgirls and flippant con men alike; the vi...

"The Last Leaf," "The Gift of the Magi," "The Ransom of the Red Chief," and "A Retrieved Reformation" are his best short stories.

One of my favorite authors!

This is not great literature; the introduction says the same. These stories remind me of those I read in The Saturday Evening Post when I was young (a long time ago).However, the stories are sometimes clever and enjoyable. It is also apparent that O. Henry was very well-read and his extensive reading shows up in the stories.At about the halfway point (25 stories under my belt), I began to feel like I was reading the same story over and over again. Nearly all the stories were about courtship; the...