If you're interested in seeing the gamut of what a short story can do, read this. It helped me learn how to write short stories, all of which are unpublishable, while feeling like I understand what I'm trying to say.

These collections are always difficult, given the selection of editors, and the world weary vision that must eventually infuse the reading process for professional readers. There are great stories in this book - William Trevor always a joy - and then a fair amount of mediocre stories that fly under the radar of 'experimental.' Sometimes, as in "The Bear" the experiments pay off, but frequently they are more frustrating than anything else. That said, it was a great teaching book because it demons...

So far this is such a good collection. "Summer: with Twins" is beautiful and The Scent of Cinnamon is atmospheric, a perfect ghost story, and beautiful example of how wonderful genre writing can be.

It's relevancy and writingthat lead me to a lesser scorefor this anthology than the year afterSome slices of the human lifejust don't wring my bellsor appeal to my peelingsI suspect this is dueto my taurishnesswhich is at star warswith my mooning aquariansand rising with the librans...or some such truckThus...when I likes itI likes itmy preciousand there ain't no explainingIt's just universal stuffMaybe star dustMaybe fairy dustMaybe corpse powder

I picked up this collection so I could get better familiar with the types of stories that were not only being accepted by literary journals across the country, but being honored in some way as well. Instead of reading dozens upon dozens of literary journals to understand every niche market, this was my way of researching the cream of the crop selected for these journals. I can’t say all these stories were all that deserving, but I can count my self educated. I bought (and started reading) this c...

the o'henry prize collections are always so great because you get to read the work of young writers who have never published before, but happen to have written something brilliant, right next to the work of the likes of alice munro. of course, the material is uneven (the william trevor that the editors liked so much to me was brutally boring) but the highs make up for the lows.

I'm calling it quits on this one. I tried to like it, but after reading more than a quarter of the stories in this collection, not one of them moved me at all. I can picture all the authors, sitting at home, dressed in black turtlenecks and hunched over their keyboards, maybe smoking thin cigarettes. They just have that literary coolness to them that (to me) winds up just plain inaccessible. I tried, I failed. What else is new?

Same as with Best American, insightful as to what garners attention in today's short fiction world. "The View From Castle Rock," by Alice Munroe, is as good as she consistently is. Nice work with varying points of view. "Mudder Tongue," by Brian Evenson, has stuck with me long after I read it, though I keep questioning why. "Djamilla," "Summer, with Twins," and "City Visit" were also standouts. I wasn't a huge fan of William Trevor's "The Room," which was the opening short in this book.

Best stories: The company of men- Jan Ellison

I know it's not a fair comparison, since O. Henry pulls its stories a bit differently than Best American does, but man, did this blow BASS 2007 out of the water. For one, I was able to read it in about 1/25th the time. For two, the stories were actually really good (see my review of the Best American Short Stories 2007 for what those were like -- hooboy). This collection was diverse enough to never be boring, and had very few pieces that stood out as clunkers. It also had way fewer of the "usual...

So far I have read "Galveston Bay, 1826" by Eddie Chuculate;"The View from Castle Rock" by Alice Munro; and "A Stone House" by Bay Anapol. I have been dazzled by them all, especially Galveston Bay and Stone House. If stories could be wallpapered to a room for a week or two, or however long you felt like, I would choose those two.

Reading the stories in this collection can be inspiring and depressing simultaneously. There are so many good ones. There are so many bad ones. It seems inevitable that the good ones are different for everybody. The bad ones are never agreed upon and some of the stories are never even mentioned by anyone ever again. Those are probably the most bloodless, toothless tales that shouldn't have gotten in anyway. How can twenty people write such good work every year and still fall into obscurity? Has

As usual with these collections, there is a mix of treasure and trash. For me the standouts were Charles Lambert's "The Scent of Cinammon," Yannick Murphy's "In A Bear's Eye," and Christine Schutt's "The Duchess of Albany." Alice Munro's "The View from Castle Rock," is good too I suppose but I'd already seen it in so many other places that it didn't really have any impact this time. I'm beginning to agree with my friend Cyndi that the O'Henry collections, even though they're not 100%great, are a...

Well, its O.Henry Prize Stories, which means this is a collection of short stories in one book. I found some very impressive plot in the book that I feel sense of perfection after reading it; and of course some quite opposites that I literally need to skip the whole story. Below I'll list some ones I really like:Galveston Bay, 1826 by Eddie Chuculate, ManoaWar Buddies by Joan Silber, Land-Grant College ReviewMudder Tongue by Brian Eveson, McSweeney's QuarterlyEl Ojo de Agua by Susan Straight, Zo...

A lot of people whose opinions I respect really like these annual short story anthologies. After I finish this one and the Best American 2007 (maybe Stephen King can really pick 'em?), I solemnly swear to quit buying them because they never fail to disappoint.After my carping above, the collection picked up, but I am still not convinced that I should continue to invest my money and time in these "best of" collections. I ended up skipping 3 stories and really enjoyed about 3 or 4, particularly th...

Although not every short story in this set deserves five stars, the overall thrust of this collection is splendid --kudos to editor Laura Furman.O. Henry stories are characterized by their unexpected endings, and most of the titles in this compendium utilize said technique. Yet the range of styles and topics is such that this literary resource never gets boring.Great for variety when traveling or for those with short attention spans ;-)

A great collection of short stories. I've had this book for a long time and am trying to clear my shelves. I wish I had paged through the whole book before starting to read individual stories because at the end there were explanations by each author, describing their inspirations for the stories they wrote.

I enjoyed this anthology well enough, but what has stuck with me is a single piece of (repeated) imagery from one of the stories. None of them have really stuck with me beyond that, and I found that I wasn't particularly absorbed in what I was reading much of the time. I guess that's all to say that the 2007 collection wasn't particularly worth the 1 year wait to get it from my library. (Though I think the wait had more to do with it being ordered & processed & read by the cataloging dept than i...

I particularly liked "Gringos" by Ariel Dorfman, "The Gift of Years" by Vu Tran, and "The Scent of Cinnamon" by Charles Lambert. What do these 3 stories have in common? I ask myself. Strong settings (wish I could travel more) and a sense of surprise--what I thought was happening (and at times what the characters thought was happening) wasn't necessarily what was really happening. How did Dorfman, Tran, and Lambert do that?

I read half of this latest from the O'Henry awards on the plane. There are some stunning stories here (even one from Sana--I know her!), and I delighted in the diversity of styles. I tend to enjoy this anthology series better than the Best American.