It's always really difficult to rate a collection. There are stories that I really love and others that are not quite my cup of tea. This collection has a number of really good pieces that I enjoyed reading. By far, my favorite is Ayse Papatya Bucak's "The History of Girls." Every line is powerful. The images...wow!! The subject matter is painful but she handles it with such fierce imagery and care. The entire time reading the piece, I knew I was in expert hands. I look forward to reading more f...

Interesting how the quality of this annual anthology varies from year to year. Somehow I think it shouldn't. Of the thousands of short stories published annually, the best 20 or so, whoever are the judges, should meet a pretty damn high standard of excellence. This year (2013) the O. Henry Prize Stories are especially good. For one thing, two of the three judges (Edith Pearlman and Jim Shepard) are among my favorite contemporary short story writers (top five?). For another, it's great fun to dis...

Though this year's collection seems to get off to a slow start, the quality of the selected stories is still mind-boggling. Difficult to overstate the quality of writing. Exciting new voices and wonderful pieces from cherished old hats. If you love reading short stories, have ever thought about reading short stories, or even hate short stories, this is the book for you. Recommend.

I wanted to like this collection more than I did, especially as it was a gift from an old and dear friend, but I frankly found most of the stories tedious and boring. My favorite stories were by Donald Antrim, Alice Munro, and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (all previously published in The New Yorker).

About what I expected from an anthology like this one: several stories that I enjoyed - Asako Serizawa, Ann Beattie, Alice Munro, Andrea Barrett - a few that were ok, and a bunch that were forgettable.Reading an essay by one of the O. Henry jurors, I came across the word/expression, "Eisenberg-y". My first thought was that I had no idea the this expression existed. My next thought was, is there any reason for this expression to exist?, and was at a complete loss to come up with any reason.

A necessarily diverse collection of short (and not-so-short) stories, all exquisitely crafted. Some resonate; a few do not - early-on there is a preponderance of tales of well-off Manhattanites drowning in ennui. It is, of course, hard to give a damn about them, but the anthology does even-out as it progresses, and includes several stories with genuinely sympathetic characters.

This book and I did not get along. I'd really like to give it a 2-2.5, but in order to keep myself honest I gave each story a rating as I finished it, and the average was closer to 3.I am coming to realize that I just don't enjoy mainstream fiction 95% of the time, particularly contemporary mainstream fiction with no hints of the fantastic whatsoever.Most of the stories in this collection were not, in my opinion, worthy of a prize, much less one names after O. Henry. A few stood out as better, o...

Absolutely great selection of short (and some like Andrea Barrett's novella length) stories. Many of the writers were quite familiar,like Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and Alice Munro; others were new and unknown to me. I particularly liked the judges observations as well as the author's comments on inspiration and background of their stories.

I did not read all of the stories, excluding some due to subject matters or other personal reasons. For the rest, I found this year's collection of excellent quality and quite a few surprises. It gives me more exposure to authors I did not know before. Here are some of my story notes:Your duck is my duck. Eisenberg. A taut and unsentimental view of the ruins of rich meaningless, either in the lives of Ray and Christa, the rich hosts, their attendants, or the natural world corrupted by such heart...

There is something refreshing about reading a good book of short stories. It is different than reading a book of fiction and different from reading a book of nonfiction. Like eating a tray of delicious and varied horderves. You may not like every single story but with this many to choose from and with this great variety and quality, you will enjoy a lot.

I always enjoy reflecting on the best short stories of the year. In this collection, White Carnations and He Knew shined, while They Find the Drowned, Aphrodisiac and The Visitor left a bit to be desired.

I really enjoyed this compilation. This was my first venture into the O Henry prize short stories. The winning short stories are picked from literary magazines in Canada and the U.S. By picked judges blind reading. I think my favourite was the Summer People being one of the first "magic realism" stories I've really enjoyed.If you like short stories I really recommend dipping into one of the annual O Henry books.

This is my first time finishing an O. Henry collection, and I noticed some significant differences between the stories in here and those regularly published in another prize anthology, The Best American Fiction. The biggest difference is length. The first four stories in this collection total 105 pages. Add the length of the final story and you have 152 pages. (By contrast, the five stories in the same positions in the 2013 Best American collection total 88 pages.) So O. Henry’s Laura Furman has...

It's hard to rate an anthology. Some of the stories are really good -- I'm going to reread them before I return this to the library. Others, I lost interest and couldn't finish. Favorites so far: The Particles, Sugarcane, The Summer People, and, if not the whole story, the description of the puppet opera involving South Pole explorers, dog teams, and penguins (all with vocal parts) in Your Duck Is My Duck.

Another fine collection here. Standouts include: Kelly Link's "The Summer People" (a masterful blend of magic and realism), Jamie Quatro's "Sinkhole" (a brilliant introduction to the term sexorcism), and Ayse Papatya Bucak's "The History of Girls" (a short story about girls who are dead or dying in the aftermath of an explosion). Otherwise, Munro writes a Munro story, and everybody else seems to be stuck 30 years in the past.

A varied collection that took me forever to read because I skipped around, liking some and not others, then setting it down again. By far my favorite in this collection is "The Summer People" by Kelly Link, which is a story at the intersection of two genres, young adult and steampunk. It's about a girl charged with taking care of fairy tenants, who is conflicted by duty and a desire to escape.

I received this book from Goodread Givaways. It contains a very fine collection of short stories selected by judges that have a very talented eye for talented writing. Several of them I found interesting, amusing, and/or entertaining to read. Other's were boring, bland, and easily forgotten. I was actually a little disappointed by the handful of short stories that didn't catch my attention or liking, considering the amount of talent that should be on these pages. I'm not necessarily a picky read...

I don't love anthologies and this was one of the only ones I've ever finished. Three stories particularly stood out to me: "The Summer People" by Kelly Link; "Sinkhole" by Jamie Quatro; and "The History of Girls" by Ayse Papatya Bucak. I also enjoyed the notes from the authors on the writing of their stories, something I always wonder about.

Got this for Christmas. More eclectic than the typical Best American annual. Not all of the stories manage to hold my interest. A nice mix of a few familiar names--Eisenberg, Beattie, Antrim--and fresh ones. Halfway through, and Eisenberg's is my favorite. One of the best features of an anthology like this, for a writer, is the index of Publications Submitted at the back, which provides an up-to-date snapshot of journals publishing top stories. To my surprise, several are not listed in Duotrope....

As with any anthology, I liked some authors and stories better than others, but overall this collection is an enjoyable compilation of contemporary short story writers. There's a pretty good mix of authors of different genders and ethnicities, which is always appreciated. I also liked the balance of early career vs. more well-known writers — there's a piece by Alice Munro (!!) as well as the very first published short story from another author, Derek Palacio.