Short Story Collections Community Read Along - July 2013

Hola All ~

Not sure I can create a thread as well as Sir Richard, but alas, welcome to July short story reading! My June fizzled due to travel and work and such, but July is off to a bang (no 4th pun intended)!

I just finished my Early Review copy of Bobcat and Other Stories by Rebecca Lee, which was a literary darling, but fell a bit flat for me. I put up a short review.

On the heels of that, I finished We Live in Water: Stories by Jess Walter and while gritty, grimy and at times nausea-producing, I actually liked these stories. There was underlying humor regarding the absurdity of life and being human that did make me laugh out loud a few times. There is also these glorious few stories where the "bad guys" get their just dues and there is just something gratifying about that! I will review it shortly.

Now I am reading This Close: Stories by Jessica Francis Kane and it is too early to tell ... the first story was so-so.

What short story collections are you all into for July? Please share!

Hi Carolyn! I just discovered this group - I am trying to read more short stories this year, after years of ignoring them...

Right now, I am in the middle of Asimov's Mysteries by (of course) Isaac Asimov. As you might guess from the author and title, these stories are all mysteries with a science or sci-fi twist.

Hi Leslie ~ Welcome!

I just finished and reviewed the perfectly forgettable collection This Close: Stories by Jessica Francis Kane and am off to novel-land for a bit.

Just received Two or Three Years Later: Forty-Nine Digressions by German author Ror Wolf. Looks very intriguing.

Currently reading Easy in the Islands by Bob Shacochis ...

Yesterday I read Valerie O'Riordan's 28-page story collection Enough. It contains ten stories, well-written, each no longer than three or four pages, and sometimes much less. Interesting.

Yahoo! Just received my ER Uncorrected Proof of How they Spend Their Sundays by Courtney McDermott - South African short stories! Off to read them!

I just inished and reviewed the outstanding How They Spend Their Sundays by Courtney McDermott.

Just starting Winter's Tales by Isak Dinesen. I read her Seven Gothic Tales earlier this year, which I found to be on the long side for short stories but so far that isn't the case with this collection.

I finished and reviewed the lovely News from Heaven: The Bakerton Stories by Jennifer Haigh.

I am reading Short Cuts by Raymond Carver.

Squeaked in that last collection for July - just finished and put up a small review of Short Cuts by Raymond Carver.

I ended up Pearl Ruling the last few stories in Easy In The Islands so not putting up a review. Just a lot of the same ol' but then, one can only do so much with drunken, ex- pat type white guys running amuk in the Caribbean. Like a joke that goes kinda flat after the seventh telling.

Just picked up a collection, Nothing Gold Can Stay by Ron Rash. Came highly recommended.

I've embarked on Italo Calvino's posthumously published Under the Jaguar Sun.

I have a stack of oldish magazines in my office, and in order to finally (if gradually) get rid of them, I make myself read articles from the magazine at the top of the stack between each book I read. Then I recycle the magazine. I just finished, the 1994 New Yorker fiction issue, more or less a short story anthology, and I read just about everything in it. There was what I found to be a rather pointless and obvious story by Nicholson Baker, then excellent stories by Judy Troy, Alice Munro, Elmore Leonard (featuring Raylon Givens!),William Trevor and David Foster Wallace. There was a hilarious walk through that month's NY Times Top Ten list by Anthony Lewis that literally had me laughing out loud in several spots, and a terrific profile of James Thurber by Adam Gopnik. I started but then gave up on John Updike's very, very, very long review of Jeffrey Meyers' biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald (takeaway: Updike had no use for Fitzgerald's work, other than Gatsby). This was a fun publication to wander through.

Starting Nothing Gold Can Stay by Ron Rash

Just finished reading a marvelous collection of short story/essays by Franklin Burroughs, entitled Billy Watson's Croker Sack.