Two years and one month after beginning; completion! My kids aren't the only ones who get easily distracted.

5 stars:
1)Barn Burning
2)Death Drag
3)Elly
4)That Evening Sun
5)A Justice
6)Lo!
7)Victory
8)Turnabout
9)My Grandmother Millard and General Bedford Forrest and the Battle of Harrykin Creek
10)Mountain Victory

4 stars:
11)Shingles for the Lord
12)The Tall Men
13)A Rose for Emily
14)Centaur in Brass
15)Dry September
16)Uncle Willy
17)Red Leaves
18)Wash
19)The Artist At Home
20)Black Music

3 stars:
21)Two Soldiers
22)Hair
23)Mule in the Yard
24)That Will Be Fine
25)A Courtship
26)All the Dead Pilots
27)Dr. Martino
28)Fox Hunt
29)The Brooch
30)Golden Land
31)There Was A Queen
32)The Beyond
33)The Leg
34)Mistral
35)Carcassonne

2 stars:
36)A Bear Hunt
37)Shall Not Perish
38)Ad Astra
39)Crevasse
40)Honor
41)Pennsylvania Station
42)Divorce in Naples ( )

Five stars for the stories about the south. I would have appreciated a seeing a year of composition shown for each of the short stories. They are organized primarily by locale, so that there is no convenient way to track the author's changes of style over time. Some stories seem dated beyond the historical value of that. None use his stream-of-consciousness style, an asset in my view.

According to Wikipedia, with some of his Nobel Prize award Faulkner established funds to support new fiction writers and to help educate African-American teachers. ( )

Some of his stories are real gems with fascinating characters and quirky plots. Others made no sense to me. The group of stories set in Italy were especially difficult to comprehend. ( )

I tried - and failed - to read a Faulkner novel, so thought his short stories would be a more accessible introduction to his work. Be advised, this is a pretty mammoth tome: 42 stories over 900 pages, and by no means all the stories are easily comprehensible. I found myself numerous times on Google, trying to check out the interpretation of a particular tale.
Faulkner writes in a 'blokey' style: his stories feature war, American Indians, the racial divide, drink, revenge. I don't ever see myself reading anything else by him, but I absolutely appreciate the quality of his writing. The final story, for example, 'Carcassonne', describing rats:

"It was dark, a darkness filled with a fairy pattering of small feet, stealthy and intent. Sometimes the cold patter of them on his face waked him in the night, and at his movement they scurried invisibly like an abrupt disintegration of dead leaves in a wind, in whispering arpeggios of minute sound, leaving a thin but definite effluvium of furtiveness and voracity."

My favourite stories were : 'Two Soldiers', narrated by a child whose beloved elder brother is off to War; 'Red Leaves' (once I figured what's going on) where two American Indians are in pursuit of a slave, who is destined to die with his dead master; 'Turnabout' (where two arrogant American soldiers come to realise the courage of the young English marine who they initially despise). I also liked 'Elly' and 'Carcassonne' (I may not have correctly understood the latter, but it's intensely moving.)

Would give this 3.5. I'm glad I've finished it, but glad too that I read it ( )

This collection of Faulkner's short fiction is divided into geographical settings, starting in the familiar land of Yoknapatawpha County and extending outward to encompass the rest of the country and beyond, with the final section involving elements outside of this world. I personally found the stories in the first few sections the most compelling. They involve many of the characters and settings familiar from his novels and provide us with a variety of viewpoints of life in the county. Of the latter stories, many involve military service and utilize unexplained lingo and events I was unfamiliar with, so that may have colored my perception. A few favorites for their unique narration and/or unexpected plot: "A Rose for Emily", "Dry September", "Elly", "That Will Be Fine", "Turnabout" and "Beyond".