I read this large collection of stories over several months and as a result some of the stories have faded from memory. At the start I was under-impressed with the collection and found elements of the stories tedious and not conducive to an easy reading, some were so dense. I encourage fellow readers to skim those that don't interest. I mention this so that others who read the collection not give up. Take your time. Taking breaks let me get through it and enjoy the high points.

There lies in this collection one of the most powerful and affecting short stories I have ever read. There are other very good and excellent ones but nothing quite like 'Sans Farine' by Jim Sheperd. The story originally appeared in Harper's magazine. It is set primarily at the time of the French revolution and in particular during the reign of terror and it touched me (and it educated me) in a way that few stories do. Jim Shepard is now on my short list of authors to read more.

Another story I really liked, and very timely, coincidentally, is set during the flu pandemic of 1918. It is a little odd and emotionally touching with a bit of horror. It is called 'L. DeBard and Aliette, A love story' by Lauren Groff. It appeared in The Atlantic and you can read it online here: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/08/l-debard-and-aliette/305035.... .

I was also moved by Mary Gordon's 'Eleanor's Music' - it was such a sad story.

In sum, there are some boring, skippable stories and a couple stories have some horrific bits, but there are enough good stories in this collection to be worth the read.

Included stories from wikipedia:
Author Story Where story previously appeared
Louis Auchincloss "Pa's Darling" Yale Review
John Barth "Toga Party" Fiction
Ann Beattie "Solid Wood" Boulevard
T. C. Boyle "Balto" Paris Review
Randy DeVita "Riding the Doghouse" West Branch
Joseph Epstein "My Brother Eli" Hudson Review
William Gay "Where Will You Go When Your Skin Cannot Contain You" Tin House
Mary Gordon "Eleanor's Music" Ploughshares
Lauren Groff "L. DeBard and Aliette: A Love Story" The Atlantic Monthly
Beverly Jensen "Wake" New England Review
Roy Kesey "Wait" Kenyon Review
Stellar Kim "Findings & Impressions" Iowa Review
Aryn Kyle "Allegiance" Ploughshares
Bruce McAllister "The Boy in Zaquitos" Fantasy and Science Fiction
Alice Munro "Dimension" The New Yorker
Eileen Pollack "The Bris" Subtropics
Karen Russell "St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves" Granta
Richard Russo "Horseman" The Atlantic Monthly
Jim Shepard "Sans Farine" Harper's Magazine
Kate Walbert "Do Something" Ploughshares ( )

A wonderful selection of short stories. Stephen King put in hundreds of hours reading hundreds of short stories, along with the series editor, Jodi Pitlor, and they agreed on this group of stories as the best printed in 2007. For purposes of this series, "American" includes Canadian, as it should. Technically it should also include South American but I can imagine that would complicate things because of the different languages.

There were a few stories I didn't quite understand, but most of them I found to be terrific. I have read stories or novels by several of the authors but many others were unfamiliar to me. The stories run the gamut from funny to deadly serious to out of this world strange. Each one, though, is a gem. ( )

In “Best American Short Stories” Stephen Kings laments in his introduction about the lowly stature short stories have in our society. Like poetry, they just don’t seem to capture the American public’s attention. Is this a sign of our multimedia, electronic, high-speed driven world? You’d think given the supposed shortened attention span that our youth are often accused of having that they’d readily embrace the short story as one of their own.

The first five or six were tight and descriptive which I like, but as I read more stories, what I’ve noticed about this collection is that the style of writing seems to be similar with very rich, dense text. It doesn’t really sound like different writer’s, more like they could have all been written by the same person, almost. I’m not seeing much variety in voice and don’t know if that is because of editor favoritism or if this is what is expected from this short story collection.

The information is so compact, dense and rich, that it’s like eating a whole pan of brownies in one sitting. I can do it, it just doesn’t feel too good afterward. My mind feels too full. Take them slow.

A few stories were so compact that I had a hard time following them. The particulars were a bit lost in the overly descriptive world in which they took place. Further in I found a few that were much lighter in tone with a decidedly feminine touch. It really left me wondering about the choices in the book and whether Stephen King, guest editor, picked them or series editor Heidi Pitlor. ( )

As a great reader of short stories I was anxious to try this volume edited by Stephen King. Since I don't tend to read a book such as this in one sitting I have been perusing it for a few years. There are stories from wonderful authors like T.C. Boyle, Louis Auchincloss, Ron Kesey and Alice Munro.

My favorite story was by Jim Shepard entitled Sans Farine which means with outflour. It chronicles the lives of the royal and later state executioners. These men and their families had a somewhat inherited occupation and were restricted in many the ways they could live their lives. They were in a way pariahs with no way to rise out of their caste.

During the Reign of Terror this job had many ramifications affecting their personal and professional lives. The history in this story was fascinating. ( )

Stephen King is not the kind of guy who will do anything half-assed, and his selections for this year's BASS collection are no exceptions. Unlike most editors, he didn't just go through the pile the series editor forwarded him--he bought and read nearly every short-story periodical that exists, and read far and wide from them. As a result, the anthology he put together includes an impressive variety of stories, from the French revolution to futuristic military plague-carriers to a road trip through a snowstorm toward a funeral. What the stories have in common, though, is the heart--each story has a voice and a point, an emotional impact that's been lacking in much of my other recent reading.

Each story is also marked by King's aversion to brevity, but there were only one or two I felt were running long. This is an improvement over some recent years' BASS collections. ( )