The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud

"Darlings! Welcome! And you must be Danielle?"

Opening line to The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud

If the emperor has no clothes, what will his children wear?

In The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud, Marina Thwaite is working on a book. She hopes it will make her reputation, maker her a journalist/social critic  like her father the successful Murray Thwaite. Murray has done very well for himself: a long prosperous career as a journalist, a successful marriage, a substantial apartment in a good neighborhood in New York City. Even his affairs are successful. In between the jobs that pay his bills, Murray works on a book of philosophy. He's not sure it will ever be published, but he turns to it more and more now that he is approaching retirement age, reviewing what he has learned over the years.

Marina has been working on her book since she came up with the topic as an undergraduate. No one thinks she'll finish it. Not her parents. Not her close friends Julius and Danielle. No one but her fiance, an Australian journalist who's moved to New York to start a magazine that will expose the pretenses of American culture. He thinks Marina's book, The Emperor's Children Have No Clothes, is a perfect fit for his magazine, hires Marina on as an editor and moves into the life of Murray Thwaite, a man he openly dismisses as a fraud to anyone who'll listen.

The small circle of family and friends who populate The Emperor's Children have been living a delusion.  They believe that they are something they are not, that they are dressed in fabulous clothes that everyone would see if they'd just open their eyes.  Murray is invited to receive honorary degrees and give commencement speeches, but what he has to say is largely regurgitated axioms, nothing new. Julius writes reviews for the Village Voice but  lives in a crummy downtown apartment and goes through a series of bad relationships. Danielle is the least delusional of the bunch. She has a career in television journalism, but even there the meaningful stories she'd like to do are cut in favor of celebrity profiles.

Enter cousin Bootie, Murray's nephew from Michigan. Bootie drops out of college to move in with his Uncle, the great Murray Thwaite.  Bootie who worships Murray hopes to learn through  working with a great mind only to find that his uncle is a fraud, a man who says things that he knows will please his audience instead of speaking truth. After he discovers his uncles book of philosoply, Bootie begins work on an expose about Murray.  He'll show the world that the emperor has not clothes.

While there is plenty of plot to go around in The Emperor's Children, it's beside the point as far as I'm concerned. The Emperor's Children, like Ms. Messud's first book The Last Life, is a novel about characters. Because the narrative shifts  focus from character to character, giving each of them their turn in the spotlight, Ms. Messud is able to flesh out each one.  This made The Emperor's Children the sort of novel one reads not so much for the plot, but because one likes spending time with the characters. I can't say that I liked them all all of the time, but I came to like them all and to want the best for each of them.

About half way through the book I realized that it was set in March of 2001 and I began to worry. I was tempted to leap to the back just to see what date the story ended on. None of the characters were aware of what was in store for them that September;  no hints were given by the narrative. I would have finished the book in any case, but knowing what was in store for New York City transformed The Emperor's Children into a page turner. I stayed up long past bedtime to finish it.  The September 11, 2001 attacks make The Emperor's Children a commentary not just on a small group of New Yorkers but the entire country. Like most of America, just about all of it to be honest, the characters in the novel continue with the drama of their daily lives, convinced that they are wearing fabulous clothes until someone comes along and points out that they are naked after all.

The Commitments by Roddy Doyle

--We'll ask Jimmy, said Outspan. --Jimmy'll know.

Opening sentence The Commitments by Roddy Doyle

Roddy Doyle is one of a handful of authors who consistently make me laugh out loud. I don't think I'm a particularly gloomy person, I just don't often find the experience of reading funny. Roddy Doyle's Barrytown novels are an exception. Like The Van and The Snapper, The Commitments is a very funny book.

The Commitments is the story of a group of friends who put together a band though they have no business doing so--several of them have no real idea how to play their instruments. But why let that stop you. Through the sheer will of their manager, Jimmy Rabbitte who knows music, The Commitments form, rehearse and become something of a small scale hit. A band with a purpose, The Commitments are dedicated to bringing soul music to Dublin. Ireland, they believe, is a land of soul-- it just doesn't know it yet.

To his credit and the novel's betterment, Mr. Doyle keeps his story focused on the band. His ensemble of players are fully fledged characters who do have lives outside of the band, but it's the band we care about and it's the band Mr. Doyle gives us. No need for pesky subplots in The Commitments. The rehearsal scenes, the gigs, time spent hanging with the band members, are full of overlapping dialogue, jokes, put-downs, gossip, insight, musical references-- all the stuff a bunch of people who love what they're doing even though they don't really know what they're doing would talk.  It's easy to see why a movie based on The Commitments would be a hit.

Maybe I should watch it.   

Short Story Sunday: "The Last Pennant Before Armageddon" by W.P. Kinsella

Months later, after the cycle of dreams began their nightly invasion of his body, Al Tiller recalled the night the archangel had telephoned the radio station, and he realized that then, and not on the evening of the first dream, was when his troubles had started.

Opening line from "The Last Pennant Before Armageddon."

Al Tiller is not a bad team manager. Through his long career in baseball he has managed all levels of players, from bush league minors to big time professionals. By big time professional I mean the Chicago Cubs, a team notorious for losing season after season. It's hardly Al Tiller's fault that he gets his job with the Cubs years before they finally made it to the series ending a 100 year title drought, the longest of any team in professional baseball.

When the Cubs start to do well, when it looks like they might make it to the playoffs, might actually win the pennant, Al begins to have dreams and to encounter odd interviews on the late-night sports radio call-in shows. These dreams and signs lead Al to a disturbing conclusion-- if the Cubs win the pennant, Armageddon will arrive. Just when Al should be enjoying what looks like a sure shot at the World Series, he begins to wonder if he should start throwing games in order to save the world.

In 1984, when W.P. Kinsella's collection of stories about baseball, The Thrill of the Grass, was first published, this was probably a delicious old joke. Many a Cub fan, many a Cub foe had probably made just such a remark after a brief winning streak. Maybe will win the pennant this year. Sure, but if that happens won't the world end. Today, Mr. Kinsella's stories offer a kind of nostalgia, a vision of what baseball used to be like when professional sports still had a kind of innocence about them. It's easy to like his characters, to root for them even when they are bound to fail.

There's something about baseball, or at least about baseball stories, that looks backward to a simpler time, a lost age before we all had to face reality. I suspect this is, at heart, a form of escapism. If so, just take me out to the ball game.

If you've read a short story recently and would like to participate in Short Story Sunday please leave a link to your blog below.

Dakota Picks a Winner and Banned Books Week Begins

First a brief and amusing public service message found via Maw Books Blog.




And now, Dakota picks a winner.

Thanks to everyone who entered. Keep an eye out for our next book giveaway

Friday Picture Reading #11

Suzanne Reading And Blanche Painting By The Marsh At Giverny by Claude Monet.

Time for a Confession

I love keeping this blog.

But it's taking over my life.

I've posted here everyday for over a year. It's paid off in traffic and more importantly in the people I've met, not to mention the free books. The author interviews have been rewarding to do. I've come to read a wide range of material that I never would have given a second look. Making videos with Dakota is a blast, too.

I just don't think I can keep on posting seven days a week.

I've tried. Short Story Sunday helps. Quick reads; brief reviews; I can prep three or four in an afternoon. I enjoy reading them, too. I made Fridays easier by alternating a blast from the past with Friday Picture Reading; both quick, easy and fun to do. Booking Through Thursday is a great way to generate one post each week. (Some of the BTT posts have been my favorite projects.) Dakota is usually good for one post a week either a Saturday giveaway video or an update on her eating habits.

That leaves three days a week for book reviews. For a while, this worked.

I like young adult fiction, and the fact that YA novels take two hours to read has helped. But since I've been posting seven days a week, I've been avoiding longer books. Anything over 300 pages has become suspect.

Along came the Random Reading Challenge, which sounded too fun to pass up. I rolled a hand full of dice, counted down my TBR stack and landed on an 800 page book. So I did it again and fell on Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. Third try, 600 pages. Fourth, 500. Try, try again.

So now I'm almost done with a 400 page plus novel that I just couldn't finish in time to review for today's post and I'm thinking maybe I should   stop trying to post every day. 

I'll be back tomorrow for Booking Through Thursday, but if you stop by one day and find the same thing at the top of the page that you did the day before know that I'm off somewhere happily reading a rather long book and will return as soon as I am done.

Stealing Death by Janet Lee Carey

In his sleep, Kipp heard hounds baying in the foothills.

Opening line to Stealing Death by Janet Lee Carey.

Janet Lee Carey is one of those authors who've stayed under the radar. She has a growing body of successful novels, but still has yet to reach best seller status or widespread, award winning critical acclaim. Though she has written many excellent books for young readers, I'd count myself as one of her fans on the basis of her novel Dragon's Keep alone. If you haven't read it yet, you should. As someone who has been following her for some time, I'm pleased to see a new fantasy, Stealing Death.

Stealing Death is the story of Kipp, a boy on the cusp of manhood gifted with abilities he does not yet understand. He is able to see things others are not. When his family home burns down killing his parents and his younger brother he sees the arrival of the Gwali, a mystical being who carries a sack called the Kwaja. The hooded Gwali steals the souls of those who've died keeping them in his Kwaja forever. Most people believe the Gwali is just a legend told to frighten children, but when Kipp sees him take the souls of his family, he vows to find a way to steal the Kwaja and bring his family back to life.

Stealing Death is an ambitious novel. It's themes are not easily worked through, certainly not in the context of an adventure tale. One must go through a lot before coming to terms with death. Kipp's journey takes him away from his homeland, into and out of danger, across the countryside, up into the realms of the gods before he finally finds his place in the world and the reason why he was able to steal death.

I imagine it must be difficult to write another novel after writing one as good as Dragon's Keep. As a reader and a fan, I admit my expectations were very high.  Stealing Death is a good book; many young readers will find it both enjoyable and thought provoking. However, it left me a little wanting. The story travelled to so many places that the plot began to lose focus. I felt that the events got sidetracked into tangents that were exciting, but didn't add enough to the main storyline. I became overwhelmed by the details; many things about Kipp's world needed explaining. While plot tangents and detailed settings are both aspects of epic fantasy many readers enjoy, they just didn't work for me this time around. But if I were still giving stars, Stealing Death would get four out of five.

Janet Lee Carey is working on another book set in the world of Dragon's Keep which should be out soon. When it is, I'll be at the bookstore buying my copy in hardback.

Full disclosure: I received a free advanced copy of Stealing Death from the publisher. Janet Lee Carey is also the author of Molly's Fire and The Double Life of Zoe Flynn reviewed here last year.

Life Class by Pat Barker

They'd been drawing for over half an hour.

Opening line from Life Class by Pat Barker

Pat Barker's novels about the first world war come across as so detailed, so accurate, that a reader could be forgiven for thinking Ms. Barker survived the war herself. She knows what she is talking about. She understands what the soldiers and those on the home front went through. How is it possible that she was born decades after the war was over?

Life Class, like Ms. Barkers Regeneration trilogy, mixes historical figures with fictional ones to tell the story of one man's experience in an army hospital just a few miles from the front lines. Paul Tarrant is a student at the Slade School of Art before the war begins. Paul is a scholarship student, but his circle of friends includes Elinor Brooke, daughter of privilege, with whom he begins an affair at the start of the war.

Paul does not qualify for the army, his physical condition keeps him from enlisting, so he takes a job as a hospital orderly in the hopes of becoming an ambulance driver. Ironically, this puts him in harms way long before actual British soldiers arrived on the battlefront. Paul and Elinor exchange letters; Elinor even pays Paul a visit by disguising herself as a nurse to get into the forbidden zone where Paul works. Afterwards, the letters become less frequent as Elinor decides to pursues art and withdraw from everything that has to do with the war.

Ms. Barker's war novels are concerned with what happens to the artist during wartime. In the Regeneration trilogy she tells the story of several well known poets who fought and died during World War I. In Life Class, she deals with painters. While the poets were able to produce work during the war, things are not so easy for the painters. Paul is able to find an attic room in a village near the hospital where he can set up a studio. There he does some of his best work, an accurate portrayal of life in the army hospital. His former art teacher back at the Slade School of Art sees that the painting is very good, but also that it is not something anyone will ever allow in a gallery show. Who would buy such a painting? While Paul tries to bring his wartime experience to his painting, Elinor rejects all thought of war, hiding herself in a rarefied world of artists who traffic in beauty above all else, simply disregarding everything that does not fit into their vision of what is art.

It's easy to see how these questions affect the novel, Life Class, itself. How much of what World War I was really like can one put in a novel? Can the reader face the experience any more than the viewer of a painting can? Ms. Barker does not shy away from the horror of war, nor from anything else for that matter, not as far as I can tell, but she is writing about a war very few, if any, of her readers have first hand experience with. Recently there was some controversy over whether or not the Associated Press should publish photographs of American soldiers who have been wounded in Afghanistan. I doubt anyone would seriously suggest that the story should not be written about, but photographs of war--arguably an art form--continue to stir debate. Should we be allowed to see what it is like? Would we be willing to look if we were?

One of the teachers at the Slade School of Art, Professor Henry Tonks, is based on an historical figure, a surgeon who was hired to paint before and after portraits of soldiers with facial wounds who went through pioneering reconstruction surgery. The portraits were not intended for public viewing and remained unseen until a recent gallery exhibition. They make for compelling viewing.

Life Class by Pat Barker makes for compelling reading.

We are giving away one copy of Life Class as part of our massive book giveaway. Click here to enter. Enter by Sept. 26, 2009 to win. This is an international book giveaway.

Short Story Sunday: "The Chauffeur" by Marc Villard

Taking up the cause of the short story has been like finding a new genre. There's a wealth of material, short stories, out there that I'd never considered reading before I started featuring short stories every Sunday. It's like being a kid in a candy shop filled with candies you've never seen before. What to try next.

Paris Noir is one in a series of short story anthologies featuring crime fiction focused on a single city. There is a volume for Los Angelos, Brooklyn, San Francisco, Istanbul, London and many others already published and still to come in this on-going series. The stories I've read so far in Paris Noir are among the most hard hitting, hard-boiled crime fiction I've read to date. Not a detective in sight, just one criminal after another, walking Paris streets so mean no tourist would dare enter.

"The Chauffeur" by Marc Villard and translated by Nicole Ball starts off Paris Noir with a classic set up-- a man hired to be the personal driver for a very high class prostitute falls in love with her. Hard-boiled crime fiction is full of men falling for women they've no business being in love with and no new ground is broken in "The Chauffeur." That said, the story is an excellent one. We may know how it's going to turn out long before it does, but that's not a problem here. The journey is well worth the ride.

Mr. Villard's prose is perfect for his subject matter:

I wasn't too far from Les Halles, that's my fate.

Above the parking garage.

Right next to the Sunside with its tenor sax crazies. I'd pace the streets at noon along with the type of people who never work, but also Krauts smashed on beer and sluts from the Midwest.

Leather and lobotomy.

Raymond Chandler goes to Europe.

Paris Noir is not the Paris I suggest you seek out when you go to visit, but it is a glimpse into the city within the city, the dimly lit passages in the city of lights.

If you've read a short story lately and would like to participate in Short Story Sunday please leave a link to your blog using Mr. Linky below.

Full Disclosure: The photo of Les Halles metro comes from WoHill.com.

Massive Book Giveaway

Just in case I went too fast for you in the little video here are the titles you can choose from:

Downsiders by Neal Shusterman
Ragged Dick by Horatio Alger
Red Lights by Simenon
Life Class by Pat Barker
The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
Bringing Tony Home by Tessa Abeysekara
Blindness by Jose Saramago
St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell
The Enthusiast by Charlie Haas
Travels in the Scriptorium by Paul Auster
Annie's Ghosts by Steve Lucenberg
Fear the Worst by Linwood Barclay
Beat by Amy Boaz

This giveaway is international. Please enter by leaving a comment below before Saturday morning, September 26. Dakota will select a winner after her breakfast.

Dakota's Favorites: Dark Reflections

I've read just a handful of Samuel R. Delany's large body of work, but what I've read has been consistently good. Both his science fiction and his mainstream work tend towards the experimental which does not make for easy reading, but I think the rewards are worth it. This review first ran here in 2007.

Dark Refections by Samuel R. Delany really got under my skin. The book is a series of three novellas that work together but could each stand on their own. They all feature Arnold Hawley, a gay, African American poet who's never made it big and just manages to get by on his salary as a adjunct professor in New York City. He's never been in love, lives in a small rent controlled apartment, and has few friends outside of his books. For all intents and purposes so much of life has passed him by that I was left wondering what he had to write poems about. After all, he has failed to make a single true connection with another person in his entire life.

Yet, I was completely taken in by this character and his story. I enjoyed every minute of the time I spent with him and I feel the better for it. Maybe Samuel R. Delany intends to present the reader with a man who has nothing but literature, nothing but a love for language and the way it expresses ideas. What kind of life would this sort of man live? What could he have to offer the reader?

I cannot answer these questions after reading Dark Reflections but I must admit I am intrigued by them. That may be why I enjoyed the book so much.

Dark Relfections is slightly experimental in its structure. The three sections move backwards in time rather than forwards. We start with Hawley as an older man and go back to his college days in Boston and then New York. But having seen what will happen to Hawley, we are not really in a wiser position to look at the events in each section. We get his most of his life story in each section without dramatic irony. Instead, each section reads like it's own novel. The author knows all of Hawley's life and he presents it to us in three different ways, focused tightly on three different key points. The structure of the book gives us three points of view on the same character. These points of view do not really make us understand him any better but they are all very interesting and they do finally make us connect with Hawley, which may be the point in the end. Hawley is a man who only really connects with language. He is also a character created solely by language. If there reader connects with him, the reader must do so with language.

There is a lot of heady stuff in Dark Reflections that probably won't appeal to everyone. But I'd have to say that this is a book that will probably stay with me for a while. So, I'm giving Dark Reflections by Samuel R. Delany five out of five stars.

BBAW: Win an eReader.

IREX Technologies is giving away an eReader to one lucky BBAW participant. (To enter go here.) To qualify one must post what you most want in an eReader.

Indestructibility. There are two main reasons why I am reluctant to by an eReader. My dog, Dakota, loves to eat books. What if she got her paws on my eReader? One good bite or two and I'd could be out of luck. The second reason is that I often read in bed. When I read in bed I sometimes fall asleep and drop my book on the floor. Books don't break; an eReader could. So I want a very sturdy eReader. I want one that does well in one of those crash tests they used to show in automobile commercials to demonstrate how air-bags work.

That, and a large print option.

Full disclosure: This is a shameless attempt to win a cool prize.

BBAW: How do you read?

Congratulations to Lee Wind of I'm Here, I'm Queer, What the Hell do I Read for winning the BBAW award for Best LGBT Blog.  If you haven't visited his site you should check it out.  

Now, a quick meme from BBAW.

Do you snack while you read? If so, favorite reading snack?

I am not above eating while I read, but I don't "snack" like I would at the movies.  I take a book with me just about everywhere I go.  If I sit down to eat lunch or have a coffee, I open up my book.  I do go out to coffee shops just to sit and read for a while.  While there, I enjoy a mocha.  

Do you tend to mark your books as you read, or does the idea of writing in books horrify you?

When I was a student, I marked like a madman.  Now I rarely ever put a mark in a book.  I know this is considered sacrilege by some, but I like books that have been marked up.  They're like reading a book and what another reader thought about the book at the same time.  

How do you keep your place while reading a book? Bookmark? Dog-ears?

I'll dog-ear in an emergency, but I usually use the little bookmarks that the bookstore gives you.  Those or the receipt from the library.  I'll use any little slip of paper at hand.  With a hardback, I use the inside flap of the cover.

Laying the book flat open?

Worse.  Much worse.  I fold the book in half often breaking the spine.  Just with paperbacks.  You can't do this with hardbacks.  If you could, I probably would.  

Fiction, Non-fiction, or both?

I read both, much more fiction than non.

Hard copy or audio books?

I subscribed to Audible.com last month and I'm trying to get into audio books.  I don't think they're going to become a passion.  

Are you a person who tends to read to the end of chapters, or are you able to put a book down at any point?

I read to the end of a chapter, or at least to a break.  If dinner has to wait a minute or two, then dinner has to wait a minute or two.  If they phone is ringing, the machine will pick it up.

If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop to look it up right away?

I have never in my life stopped reading to look up a word.  I have marked them and gone back later to look them up.

What are you currently reading?

Blood and Thunder a non-fiction book about Kit Carson and the conquest of the American West.

What is the last book you bought?

I just went shopping for books last night.  I bought City of Thieves and four others.

Are you the type of person that only reads one book at a time or can you read more than one at a time?

I go through phases of each.  I currently have two books going.

Do you have a favorite time of day and/or place to read?

My favorite place to read is any random coffee shop.  My favorite used to be the back patio of Just Desserts on Church Street in San Francisco.  Closed now.  Today, if I could  pick anyone in the world I'll take a random coffee shop in Paris on a rainy summer day.

Do you prefer series books or stand alone books?

I prefer good books.  Series or stand alone makes no real difference to me.

Is there a specific book or author that you find yourself recommending over and over?

This changes all the time.  This past year I've been pushing Half of a Yellow Sun one just about everyone I know.

How do you organize your books? (By genre, title, author’s last name, etc.?)

Read and unread.  Every couple of years I put all of my books in the dinner table, sort them and reshelve them by authors last name.  It doesn't last long.

Full Disclosure:  The photo comes from Paris Breakfasts.

BBAW: First Books

To celebrate Book Bloggers Appreciation Week I decided to try something different. I invited some of my favorite bloggers to write a quick paragraph about a first book. It could be the first book you read, the first book your children read, the first book you read twice, anything that comes to mind.

Thanks to Nymeth, Sandy Nawrot, Amanda, ds, Teresa, Trish and Sam Sattler who sent the following entries.

First Fantasy Novel by Nymeth of Things Mean A Lot.

Believe it or not, I only became a reader of fantasy when I was in my late teens: The Hobbit was the book that did it. I could tell you all about how the world Tolkien created immediately drew me in, or about how I loved the characters, the richness, the detail. But instead, I’ll share a little anecdote: The Hobbit was also responsible for my first encounter with the word “dwarf”. I was familiar with the concept of a dwarf, but now with the English word. (Back then, I was only just starting to read books in the original.) For some reason, when I first came across “dwarf” I imagined a group of smallish dragon-like creatures, each of a different colour, coming to get Bilbo to take him on an adventure. And because the image felt so right, I didn’t check the dictionary until I was quite a few chapters in… Confession: dwarves are nice and all, but I quite liked my dragonish, rainbow-coloured versions.

My First “Grown-Up” Classic by Teresa of Shelf Love.

I’ve always been a reader—so much so that my mother used to joke that she had to take my books away and make me go play outside. But I didn’t choose books that challenged me. Through my pre-teens, my reading choices were firmly ensconced in the YA world. I gravitated to books about relationships and making friends because I thought that’s what girls my age were supposed to read. Blume and Conford and Cleary were the staples of my reading diet.

Then in 9th grade, my English class read Great Expectations. To my younger self, Dickens was one of those serious authors that only smart grown-ups read. I had no idea that such authors could also be great storytellers, but what a story this was! A spooky graveyard, an escaped convict, and a crazy lady in a wedding gown. I loved the abridged version in our textbook so much that I had to read the unabridged version and get the whole story. From then on, I became an avid reader of classic literature. Hawthorne and Hardy, Austen and the Brontes---these writers are now my literary touchstones. I can’t imagine my life without them.

The First Book that Was Magic to My Child by DS of Third-Storey Window.

“The Owl and the Pussycat” by Edward Lear was a favorite childhood poem, recited many times by my exhausted mother in an effort to get my brother and I to sleep.

“The owl and the pussycat went to sea/ in a beautiful pea-green boat..."

The rhyme was soothing, the rhythm hypnotic--and at the end shone

“the light of the moon, the moon, the moon.”

When the now-college student was small, and I was the exhausted mother, I found this beautiful edition illustrated by Jan Brett, set in the Caribbean. Brett is known for the detail of her art, and the themes that she carries from page to page, like waves in the sea. CS demanded it nightly. Some time later, the preschool teacher had everyone bring in favorite books to share with the class. This was our choice. CS on lap, I began reading. Made it to “pea-green boat.” CS stood up and recited without error the entire rest of the poem. It is a moment neither of us will ever forget. Magic.

First Horror by Sandy Nawrot of You've GOTTA Read This.

Thought I’d write to you about my first adult book, which also happens to be my first horror book. I was in 8^th grade, and had loudly expressed an interest in reading something by Stephen King. This interest had been motivated by a recent viewing of Carrie (What was I doing watching a rated R movie at that age? Where was my mother?). Up until that moment, I had entertained myself through primary and middle school with Judy Blume, Nancy Drew and V.C. Andrews. My boyfriend at the time was an eager-to-please fellow, and he promptly went out and purchased “The Stand” for me, and proudly presented it to me (along with Styx’s Pieces of Eight Album!). What a guy! I dove into that tome, which ran about 1,200 pages, like a hungry stray dog into a freshly grilled burger. And after I’d finished it, I read it again. Then I proceeded to read everything else King had published at that time, plus a few dark and twisted Dean Koontz novels. I was euphoric. My imagination had been set on fire, and no number of books would extinguish it. To this day, I believe The Stand to be King’s greatest masterpiece. I attached the picture below because this was the cover of the book I owned.

First Classic by Amanda of The Zen Leaf.

Before I hit 13, I was already tired of all the books I could find. I didn’t like mid-90s YA (Sweet Valley High, RL Stine, etc) and the books we read in school bored me. I tried adult genre fiction (Anne Rice, Stephen King, Danielle Steele) and didn’t like that, either. I decided there weren’t any books out there for me, and stopped reading for pleasure. In 2001, when I was almost 22, my husband encouraged me to pick a book off the shelves at Barnes & Nobles. I chose Mrs. Craddock by William Somerset Maugham. I read it in a few days, and realized several things. First, not all classics were boring. Second, there were books out there I could enjoy! They just weren’t in genre fiction! That year, I read a classic every week. While I didn’t enjoy all of them, I enjoyed a lot, and I've been an avid reader ever since. If it weren’t for Mr. Maugham – who is still one of my favorite authors – I probably wouldn’t be a reader today.

First Adult Book by Sam Sattler of Book Chase.

I grew up in a small southeast Texas town, population just over 12,000, whose only public library was a four-mile bike ride from my house. The little library was home to about 3,000 books at the time and about 1,000 of those were children’s books. I now realize, in looking back to those days in the late 1950s, that I was lucky to have even that many choices.

I was one of those hooked-on-books kind of kids. I lost myself in the adventures of Robinson Crusoe or Treasure Island, the full-length versions of the watered-down fairy tales I first discovered in Golden Books, and most anything else in that section of the library. Soon, though, there was nothing left for me to read in the library’s children’s section and I began to eyeball the adult section from afar. Luckily, the library’s only employee was a little old lady who remembered what it was like to be on the borderline between childhood and adult reading.

She listened to my moaning and granted me access to anything on the adult shelves she thought I could handle. At first, I was a bit unsure of myself but I remember my first choice (although, as it turns out, not very clearly anymore), a novel set in Africa entitled Mr. Moses. Almost fifty years later, I remember few details about the novel – but I remember that, by the time I finished reading it, I was convinced that I was a genuine reader, one capable of tackling any book. And I remember that little old lady who was so instrumental in recognizing that I worth taking a chance on despite the fact that most librarians would have never let me near those adult shelves.

I am forever grateful that my first librarian, Mrs. Porter, steered me to my first “adult” novel when she did. Her timing was perfect.

First Literature by Trish of Trish's Reading Nook

It wasn't until I was a senior in high school when I was getting ready to write my senior paper that I developed a true love for literature. Our teacher provided us a list of books to choose from to write our papers, and my first choice was Pride and Prejudice, my second choice Wuthering Heights. Of course Lisa B. got P&P and I was stuck with Wuthering Heights. But I devoured the book and fell deeply in love with Cathy, Heathcliff, and Emily Bronte's writing. I poured myself into the paper (which was on imagery or something such) and started to finally sit up and pay attention during class.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I had gotten my first choice of Pride and Prejudice. Don't get me wrong, I like the book well enough. But the language in Wuthering Heights is enough to make me drunk: "I lingered round them, under the benign sky: watched the moths fluttering among the heath and hare-bells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth" (308). It was the first time I fell in love with literature and I’ve never looked back.

I would love to do a second First Books post this Saturday to close out BBAW, so now it's your turn. If you have a first book you'd like to write about, you can leave a longish comment below, or send me an email at 204 mountain at comcast dot net. I'll put them all together after school, Friday.

What's your "First" book?

BBAW: Two Visions of Blindness by Jose Saramago

I wanted to do something out of the ordinary for Book Blogger Appreciation Week. Sandy Nawrot of You've GOTTA Read this has done several guest posts for Ready When You Are, C.B. over the past year, (here and here.)I've done one for her blog as well. So I suggested we try doing a tandem book review. We each read Blindness by Jose Saramago, since it was on both of our TBR shelves anyway, and had an email discussion about the book which we immediatly compared to the recent film adaptation. The book conversation is below, the movie conversation is over at Sandy's site. Both published today at the exact same time in celebration of Book Bloggers Appreciation Week.

James: Let's start with the source of the blindness. It starts mysteriously and seems to spread like a virus from one person to another. Saramago never tells us where it comes from; the characters in the book don't know either. I guess a religious person might see it as a punishment from God, but I don't remember this line of reasoning discussed in the book. Mass blindness is not an unusual idea, almost everyone on earth goes blind in John Wyndham's The Day of The Triffids for example and I just know this happened on Start Trek at least once.

Saramago is more interested in how universal blindness affects the world than he is in what caused it or in how to cure it. It's very similar to P.D. James's novel The Children of Men which looks at what the world would be like if no one had anymore children. But Blindness is a story of individual survival. How could the individual survive in a world gone blind? He can't. So how will the characters adapt to a situation with no happy ending possible? How long can they remain civil? These are the questions I think Saramago is interested in exploring. He does not appear to have a high opinion of civilized man.

Sandy: I must admit, I like explanations, but wasn’t going to get any with this story. To me, it had a definite feel of Stephen King. Sort of a supernatural, you’re-not-meant-to-understand-so-just-go-with-it kind of plot. Personally, though? To satisfy my need for answers, I am choosing to believe that this is a warning, or lesson from God. Like the flood. A comment is made later in the book (I can’t seem to find the quote), a realization, that when they COULD see, they were still blind - they saw without seeing. It implies that there are lessons to be learned from the sins of the past. The jury is out on whether they will move forward and actually learn from their mistakes or not. What do you think?

This also brings up the question…why did one woman NOT lose her sight? Am I not meant to have an answer for that one either? Is she supposed to bear witness, and use it to lead the masses down a higher path?

You are absolutely right, we see first-hand what Saramago thinks of man, and it isn’t good. What the blindness does is strip away all the layers of decency and dignity and reduce us to animals, fighting to survive. I found myself thoroughly horrified at how quickly everything disintegrated. The infected immediately abandoned hygiene and modesty, and the strong (aka the ones with the weapons) take what they want and dominate the weak. I imagine it wasn’t so different back in the stone age. It causes me to look inward, and ask myself a few questions. Would I maintain my dignity in this scenario? If I were forced to choose between eating and succumbing to the criminals, what would I do? Would I have the courage to fight back?

James: You raise two good points here: what is the moral purpose of the blindess epidemic and how would the reader behave in this situation? The two are closely tied. Once the blindness epidemic is over, the survivors will have to face what they did to survive. There's going to be a lot of survivor guilt.

While reading Blindness, especially the section in the hospital, I kept thinking back to Viktor Frankel's book Man's Search For Meaning. The way the concentration camps were run is reflected in the way the hospital culture developed. In the camps, a select group of prisoners were put in charge of everyone else and ruled through brute force. Frankel describes them as often more vicious than the actual gaurds were. In their defense, the capos did what they thought they had to do in order to survive. The thugs who rule the hospital where the blind are quarentined do the same, they become much more vicious than the capos ever did, but they are trying to survive, too. Reader's can't help but wonder what they would do in this situation. Would they cause others to suffer in order to ensure their own survival?

Frankel described people in the concentration camps who acted selflessly and generously towards other prisoner in his book. In Blindness there is a core group of characters who look out for each other and the doctor's wife who can see but chooses to go with her husband. She has historic parrallels with the concentration camps as well; there were people who chose to follow their loved ones to the camps.

I can see the first part of Blindness as an allegory for the concentration camps. The hospital becomes more like a camp as time passes and more and more people are imprisoned there. Things change in the second half when the hospital burns down. Instead of becoming free like the camp survivors did, the blind patients enter a larger prison/world.

Sandy: You know, when I spoke of the people in charge with the weapons, I wasn’t even thinking of the guards. You are right, they were just doing their jobs, albeit a little trigger-happy. I am actually hung up on the thugs. I find it interesting, almost like observing an experiment, how in just about any stressful or chaotic situation, the most brutal rise to the top and assert themselves. I’d like to say it is survival of the fittest, but I’m not sure I like that thought. I can’t seem to get past the idea of having sex with vulgar, stinky thugs for food. While my husband would stand by and say that I would probably do anything for food, I’m not sure I would do THAT. Unless my kids were starving.

I like your parallel to concentration camps, which is basically what we have in the first half of the story. You probably also remember from Man’s Search for Meaning that when camp victims were eventually liberated, they had severe difficulties in adapting to the free world. The victims became angry and lashed out at the injustice of their imprisonment, plus, as you said, they have survivor’s guilt. So I maintain that if we were allowed to expand on a sequel to Blindness, we would see a lot of really serious dysfunction and chaos. If it was God trying to prove a point, I don’t think the point would be well-taken and lessons not learned.

On a different subject, I wanted to bring up the topic of the prose in this novel. Very different, huh? Sort of stream of consciousness, almost like Cormac MacCarthy. I bet Saramago’s middle school literature teacher is rolling over in his or her grave. It was hard to read at first, but I became so engrossed in the horror of the story, I stopped noticing the quirky, run-on sentences and entwined dialogue.

James: It's hard for me to judge the prose since I'm reading the book in translation. I'm just going to assume that it is a faithful translation, but the book is better in the original, and say what I want to say. After a short while I got used to the prose, the way Saramago entertwines the dialogue with the narrative without using standard punctuation and line breaks. But to be honest I don't think it added to my reading experience. I felt he used too many literary devices when just telling the story would have done the job. Why make things harder on your readers; the book's material must send enough people heading for the hills as it is. I didn't like the fact that the characters are unnamed either. It just defied logic a little too much for me. In a world full of blind people knowing each others names will probably come in pretty handy. And that so many of the core group is identified by eyes--the eye-doctor, the girl with dark glasses, the man with the eye-patch--struck me as a little precious. This also leaves the only sighted person being identified as "the doctor's wife" which got on my nerves. Why can't the docter be "the seeing woman's husband"? I read the first page of the new sequal, Seeing, in the back of my edition. The dog of tears has a name, but she's still "the doctor's wife."

Sandy: See, while the twisted, intermingled sentences were different and required some brain-tweaks, I thought it DID add to the book. To me, it made me FEEL the chaos. It implied that people were talking over each other, in a rush of panic and confusion, which I imagine would be pretty close to reality. I guess I did not view it as a literary device. What I DID see as a hokey device was the lack of names. I understand the author is trying to emphasize that when you are blind, names aren’t important, but like you said, the references (the boy with the squint, the girl with the dark glasses) required sight to identify. So unless you were the doctor’s wife, it made no sense at all. It didn’t bother me so much, it just didn’t add.

Overall, this was an intense, disturbing but satisfying read for me. I generally don’t like gentle or predictable, and this was far from that. I’m a student of Stephen King, which has prepared me to embrace the cataclysmic collapse of society and dignity of mankind in literature. I like to have my nose rubbed in the fact that we are precariously balancing between civilized and animal behavior. It keeps me humble! Out of five stars, I’d give it a 4.5.

James: You make a very good point about feeling the chaos because of the prose style. And I guess it would be harder to identify who is talking if everyone was blind, the lack of standard punctuation does bring that home. I've read more Stephen King novels than an English Major should probably admit, too, which made reading Blindness easier for me than it probably is for many readers. That raises another set of issues for me: why does a book like this one help give an author a Nobel Prize for literature while a book like The Stand does not. (I would not rank The Stand as among Stephen King's best work, by the way.) If forced to, I would say Blindess is better than The Stand, but I would not give it a five out of five. I'm going to go with four out of five. I used to teach 5th grade math which includes fractions and decimals; I now avoid them whenever possible.

If you'd like to see what we had to say about Blindness the movie please stop in at Sandy's blog, You've GOTTA Read This.

"In Ashes" by Helen Keeble

Since buying my first iPod earlier this year, I have become a fan of several short story podcasts. Subscribing to podcasts through iTunes is free. There are a growing number of excellent short story podcasts at iTunes including Podcastle, the fantasy story podcast. Don't run away yet, non-fantasy readers. At Podcastle, fantasy doesn't mean unicorns and elves--once in a while sure, but not every week. The fantasy genre is exploding these days; all sorts of new ideas, new settings, new fantasies are taking shape. The genre has come a long way since Bilbo Bagins first headed east to rob a dragon.

One of my favorite stories from Podcastle is Helen Keeble's "In Ashes" first published at Strange Horizons.


From the time my twin brother and I were four, our mother only gave us raw food.

Opening Line "In Ashes" by Helen Keeble.

"In Ashes" is a masterful piece of story-telling. Ms. Keeble grabs the reader's attention from the first line and holds it throughout by slowing teasing out information, answering our questions in ways that lead to more questions. Why does the narrator's mother only feed her children raw food? Is she abusive?

We soon find that the narrator's brother can sense the slightest trace of heat in cooked food even food that has been left to cool for days. For this reason his mother keeps him out of sight, locked indoors most of the time. They live in an isolated forest cabin. His father wants nothing to do with him and has taken his two older sisters away to live in the next town over. When the narrator takes him to see their father in an attempt to win their father's love, her brother becomes mesmerized by the sight of a lit fireplace. What is the boy's obsession with fire?

How strong is the bond between twins? What will one give up in order to save the other?

As she tells her story, Ms. Keeble introduces the reader to her fantasy world. She does this slowly enough and convincingly enough to bring along more skeptical readers. The reward at the end of the story is worth the suspension of disbelief. "In Ashes" makes for excellent listening.

If you'd like to participate in Short Story Sunday please leave a link in a comment below.

Dining with Dakota

Just for the record, I have never "traded" and ARC. I always follow the law with them. I keep them, I give a few of them away here and to friends, and I recycle the ones Dakota eats.

Friday Picture Reading #10

Painted by Gustave Caillebotte. This picture comes to Ready When You Are, C.B. via Harriet Devine's Blog.

BTT: Information Please

This week from Booking Through Thursday:

What’s the most informative book you’ve read recently?

The most informative book I read recently is a work of fiction--Ragged Dick or Street Life in New York with the Boot Blacks by Horatio Alger.

The story of Ragged Dick, a shoe shine boy living on his own in 19th century New York City is so full of details about the day to day struggle to survive and to better one's self that it becomes a very practical how-to.  I'm very fortunate in that I do not have to overcome the hardships Dick faced, but if I did, following the steps Mr. Alger sets out in Ragged Dick would probably do the trick.  

It turns out Horatio Alger is much more realistic and down to earth than I thought he would be when I started the book.

Full Disclosure:  I found the photo of Ernestine the Operator here. 

Red Lights by Georges Simenon

He called it "going into the tunnel," an expression of his own, for his private use, which he never used in talking to anyone else, least of all to his wife.

Opening sentence, Red Lights.

Georges Simenon was once the best selling author in the world. In the 1930's he was a writer of pulp fiction but once he began writing detective stories featuring Inspector Maigret, he became famous under his own name. He wrote over 100 Maigret stories along with a series of Roman durs, novels depicting the psychological anxiety that lays under the surface of everyday routine.

His novel Red Lights is based on the opening scene in Hardy's Mayor of Castorbridge. In each a man has an alcohol fueled argument with his wife that ends in abandoning her to the hands of another. In each the man comes to regret his actions.

Red Lights is set in 1950's New York, among the set of people who could afford to send their children to summer camps in Maine. Steve and Nancy Hogan are on their way to pick up their children at the end of summer when Steve decides to stop at a roadside tavern for a drink. (It's the 1950's...there was a lot of drinking.) He argues with Nancy who threatens to take the car and drive on alone. Steve takes the keys from the ignition to teach her a lesson. When he later returns to the car Nancy is gone, a note left on the windshield informing him that she decided to take the bus to Maine.

Steve regrets the argument and his actions. He gets in the car to look for the bus but soon becomes lost. He again stops in a roadside bar where he meets a man on the run from the law. Steve knows from the television broadcast in the previous bar that the man is an escaped convict but he decides to strike up a conversation with him anyway. Surely this man, Steve thinks, is a man unhindered by obligations to society, to work, to women and family. In his drunken state Steve is attracted to this and to the idea that he too could be a man among men such as this.

After they leave the bar, the convict forces Steve to drive him northwards toward Canada. While there is a gun at his back, Steve is far from reluctant. He helps the convict sneak through a police roadblock and probably would have taken the convict all the way to Canada had the car not suffered a blow-out. Steve drinks all night long, the book takes place in a single 24 hour period, and passes out beside the road. When he comes to he sees that he is at a junction next to a repair shop and roadside diner. He is alone; the convict is gone. Since the diner has a bus stop, Steve asks the waitress inside if she has seen his wife. She shows him an article in the newspaper. A woman fitting his wife's description was attacked alongside the road that night. She is in the hospital recovering. Was his wife attacked by the convict, Steve wonders.

While Simenon's books are about profound psychological issues and his characters motivated by complex and conflicting emotions, his writing style is always accessible. He deliberately used a basic vocabulary so that all of the people he wrote about would be able to read his books. Red Lights is no exception. Steve Hogan's descent "into the tunnel" makes for compelling reading; Simenon was once a writer of pulp thrillers and his skills are well used here. Steve's story is one that lays close to the surface, just underneath the skin of ordinary life. How many people have argued with their partner while travelling, enough to stop the car and have a drink with a stranger, enough to think about stopping the car. It's this ability to find situations his readers can identify with that make is possible for Simenon's psychological novels to get under the skin as well as the do.

Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together by Bryan Lee O'Malley

Ramona.....
Shhh...Don't you just wish this moment could last forever?

First panel. Scott Pilgrim Gets it Together

Scott Pilgrim by Bryan Lee O'Malley is a graphic novel series about a Canadian slacker in his early twenties. Ordinarily a character I'd avoid if at all possible. Somehow, he kept popping up on my radar so I picked up a couple of volumes at my local library. I'm glad I did.

Scott lives with his gay roommate, hangs out with a small group of similar friends, and does battle with his new girl friend's seven evil ex's. When I say he does battle, he really does battle. Ramona, his new girlfriend, is a sort of super-hero who can shift between dimensions. (I'm not really sure how this works since I started the story with volume three.) Her ex's, who also have super powers, have a disturbing tendency to come after Scott with samurai swords capable of cutting through transit buses. Neither Scott nor Ramona has said the "L" word yet, so he's not even sure if she's the one he should be fighting killer ninjas for but fight them he does. Scott must also face the usual trials of early twenties: getting around to getting a job, finding a new place to live, finding a way to become an adult and still live with himself.

The two Scott Pilgrim books I read have a very cool sensibility and a wicked sense of humor. Each time Scott does something that moves him along on the road to adulthood he gains levels of experience like a character in a video game. Sometimes these things are defeating one of Ramona's evil ex's in battle, other times it's becoming more mature like when he finally gets a job and chooses not to brag about it to Ramona and the rest of his friends. (It's not that great a job. He's still at a fairly low level in the game.) It's like Scott is a character in a video game and, at the same time, a character with a regular life that is also a video game. Graphic Novels, like children's and young adult literature, are a place where interesting experiments in narrative abound.

I hope the library gets the rest of the books in the series soon.

BBAW: We Made the Short List!

The Book Blogger Appreciation Week short list has just been posted. I'm pleased to say Ready When You Are, C.B. has made the short list for Best GLBT Review Blog.

The other nominees include A Guy's Moleskin Notebook, I'm Here I'm Queer What the Hell do I Read, Jessewave and YA Fabulous--a very distinguished group.

To vote go here. Voting closes at midnight Saturday.

1001 Short Stories You Must Read Before You Die: Round #2 Updated 11/7/09

A month ago I started this project with a list of just over 200 short stories. I asked for your help adding stories to the list and you all responded with over 100 story suggestions putting this new list at more than 300.

That leaves just 700 stories to go. If you know a short story that you think everyone should read, no matter what the genre, please let me know in a comment. If you know of a link to the actual text, I'll be happy to include that as well. . If you see any mistakes or if I left out your suggestions, please let me know. I'll publish another updated list on October 4.

I'll be adding links to the stories on the list as I find them.

Here's the current list of 1001 Short Stories You Must Read Before You Die:

1. Agee, James, "A Mother's Tale"
2. Anderson, Hans Christian, "The Little Mermaid"
3. Anderson, Hans Christian, "The Little Match Seller"
4. Anderson, Sherwood, "A Death in the Woods"
5. Anderson, Sherwood, "Hands"
6. Asimov, Isaac, "Bicentennial Man"
7. Asimov, Isaac, "The Last Question"
8. Asimov, Isaac, "Nightfall"
9. Atwood, Margaret, "A Travel Piece"
10. Bacigalupi, Paolo, "The People of Sand and Slag"
11. Baldwin, James, "Sonny's Blues"
12. Barker, Clive, "Cabal"
13. Barthelme, Donald, "The Balloon"
14. Barthelme, Donald, "Me and Miss Mandible"
15. Barthelme, Donald, "The School"
16. Bausch, Richard, "Letter to the Lady of the House"
17. Beagle, Peter, "Lila the Werewolf"
18. Bear, Elizabeth, "Lucifugous"
19. Beckett, Samuel, "Dante and the Lobster"
20. Benet, Stephen Vincent, "The Devil and Daniel Webster"
21. Bierce, Ambrose, "A Bottomless Grave"
22. Bierce, Ambrose, "An Imperfect Conflagration"
23. Bierce, Ambrose, "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"
24. Bingham, Sallie, "Benjamin"
25. Blackwood, Algernon, "The Wendigo"
26. Bloom, Amy, "Love is Not a Pie"
27. Bloom, Amy, "Silver Water"
28. Borges, Jorge Luis, "The Library of Babel"
29. Borges, Jorge Luis, "Pierre Mernard, Aurthor of the Quixote"
30. Bowen, Elizabeth, "The Demon Lover"
31. Boyle, T.C. "Chicxulub"
32. Boyle, T.C. "Greasy Lake"
33. Bradbury, Ray, "The Crowd"
34. Bradbury, Ray, "All Summer in a Day"
35. Bradbury, Ray, "There Will Come Soft Rains"
36. Bradbury, Ray, "Mars is Heaven"
37. Braughtigan, Richard, "The Scarlatti Tilt"
38. Brown, Larry, "Facing the Music"
39. Butler, Octavia, "Speach Sounds"
40. Byatt, A.S. "The Story of the Eldest Princess"
41. Cable, Lydia Marie, "The Quadroons"
42. Capote, Truman, "A Christmas Memory"
43. Capote, Truman, "A Diamond Guitar"
44. Carter, Angela, "The Company of Wolves"
45. Carter, Angela, "The Tiger's Bride"
46. Carver, Raymond, "Cathedral"
47. Carver, Raymond, "Little Things"
48. Carver, Raymond, "A Small Good Thing"
49. Carver, Raymond, "What We Talk About, When We Talk About Love"
50. Cather, Willa, "Eric Harmannson's Soul"
51. Cather, Willa, "Paul's Case"
52. Cheever, John, "The Day the Pig fell into the Well"
53. Cheever, John, "The Swimmer"
54. Chekov, Anton, "The Bet"
55. Chekov, Anton, "The Duel"
56. Chekov, Anton, "The Kiss"
57. Chekov, Anton, "Steppe"
58. Chekov, Anton, "Ward 69"
59. Chekov, Anton, "The Woman With the Little Dog"
60. Chopin, Kate, "Desiree's Baby"
61. Cisneros, Sandra, "Eyes of Zapata"
62. Cisneros, Sandra, "Woman Hollering Creek"
63. Chopin, Kate, "The Story of an Hour"
64. Clarke, Arthur C., "Childhood's End"
65. Clarke, Arthur C., "The Sentinel"
66. Clarke, Arthur C., "The Star"
67. Coetzee, J.M., "A House in Spain"
68. Collins, Wilke, "A Terribly Strange Bed"
69. Connell, Richard, "The Most Dangerous Game"
70. Conrad, Joseph, "The Secret Sharer"
71. Coover, Robert, "The Babysitter"
72. Cortazar, Julio, "Letter to a Young Lady in Paris"
73. Cortazar, Julio, "The Night Face Up
74. Coward, Noel, "Me and the Girls"
75. Crane, Stephen, "The Open Boat"
76. Dahl, Roald, "Lamb to the Slaughter"
77. Diaz, Junot, "Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" (New Yorker Short Story)
78. de Lint, Charles, "The Moon is Drowning While I Sleep"
79. De Maupassant, Guy, "Boule de Sulf"
80. De Maupassant, Guy, "The Necklace"
81. De Maupassant, Guy, "The Parisian Affair"
82. Derleth, August, "The Lonesome Place"
83. Dick, Phillip K., "We Can Remember if for You Wholesale"
84. Dickens, Charles, "The Child's Story"
85. Dinesen, Isak, "The Sailor-Boy's Tale"
86. Dinesen, Isak, "Sorrow-Acre"
87. Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan, "The Adventures of the Devil's Foot"
88. Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan, "The Speckled Band"
89. Dreiser, Theodore, "The Lost Phoebe"
90. du Maurier, Daphne, "The Blue Lenses"
91. du Maurier, Daphne, "The Birds"
92. du Maurier, Daphne, "Don't Look Now"
93. Ellison, Harlan, "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream"
94. Ellison, Ralph, "Battle Royal"
95. Enright, Elizabeth, "I Pine for Thee"
96. Farmer, Philip Jose, "Riders of the Purple Wage"
97. Farris, John, "The Ransome Women"
98. Faulkner, William, "Barn Burning"
99. Faulkner, William, That Evening Sun"
100. Faulkner, William, "A Rose for Emily"
101. Firbank, Ronald, "A Tragedy in Green"
102. Fitzgerald, F. Scott, "Bernice Bobs Her Hair"
103. Fitzgerald, F. Scott, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"
104. Fitzgerald, F. Scott, "A Diamond as Big as the Ritz"
105. Fitzgerald, F. Scott, "The Last of the Belles"
106. Fitzgerald, F. Scott, "May Day"
107. Flaubert, Gustav, "A Simple Soul"
108. Foer, Jonathan Safran, "A Primer for the Punctuation of Heart Disease"
109. Ford, Jeffrey, "At Reparata"
110. Forster, E.M. "The Road to Colonus"
111. Gaiman, Neil, "The Problem of Susan"
112. Gaiman, Neil, "Snow, Glass, Apples"
113. Gaiman, Neil, "A Study in Emerald"
114. Gaiman, Neil, "Troll Bridge"
115. Gaiman, Neil, "The Wedding Present"
116. Gaines, Ernest J., "The Sky is Gray"
117. Garcia Marquez, Gabriel, "Eyes of a Blue Dog"
118. Garcia Marquez, Gabriel, "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings"
119. Glaspell, Susan, "A Jury of Her Peers"
120. Goethe, "The New Melusina"
121. Gogol, Nicoli, "The Nose"
122. Gogol, Nicoli, "Old World Landowners"
123. Gogol, Nicoli, "The Overcoat"
124. Gogol, Nicoli, "The Squabble"
125. Gordimer, Nadine, "Six Feet of the Country"
126. Gould, Steven, "Peaches for Mad Molly"
127. Greene, Graham, "The Destructors"
128. Grimm, Brothers, "Brother Gaily"
129. Gustafsson, Lars, "Greatness Strikes Where it Pleases"
130. Harte, Bret, "Colonel Starbottle for the Plaintiff"
131. Hawthorn, Nathaniel, "The Ministers Black Veil"
132. Hawthorn, Nathaniel, "Rappaccini's Daughter"
133. Hawthorn, Nathaniel, "Young Goodman Brown"
134. Heinlein, Robert, "All You Zombies"
135. Heinlein, Robert, "In His Bootstraps"
136. Hemingway, Ernest, "Big Two-Hearted River, Part I"
137. Hemingway, Ernest, "Big Two-Hearted River, Part II"
138. Hemingway, Ernest, "A Clean Well-Lighted Place"
139. Hemingway, Ernest, "Hills Like White Elephants"
140. Hemingway, Ernest, "Indian Camp"
141. Hemingway, Ernest, "Soldier's Home"
142. Henry, O., "The Gift of the Magi"
143. Henry, O., "The Last Leaf"
144. Henry, O., "The Ransom of Red Chief"
145. Henry, O., "The Skylight Room"
146. Highsmith, Patricia, "The Snail-Watcher"
147. Highsmith, Patricia, "The Terrapin"
148. Homes, A.M., "A Real Doll"
149. Hurston, Nora Zeale, "The Gilded Six-Bits"
150. Hurst, James, "The Scarlett Ibis"
151. Hurston, Nora Zeale, "Sweat"
152. Irving, Washington, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"
153. Irving, Washington, "Rip Van Winkle"
154. Jacobs, W.W., "The Monkey's Paw"
155. Jackson, Shirley, "The Lottery"
156. Jackson, Shirley, "One Ordinary Day with Peanuts"
157. James, Henry, "The Beast in the Jungle"
158. James, Henry, "The Jolly Corner"
159. James, M.R., "The Mezzotint"
160. James, M.R., "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad"
161. Johnson, Kij, "The evolution of Trickster Stories Among the Dogs of North Park After the Change.
162. Jones, Thom, "I Want to Live"
163. Joyce, James, "Araby"
164. Joyce, James, "Clay"
165. Joyce, James, "The Dead"
166. Joyce, James, "Eveline"
167. July, Miranda, "The Swim Team"
168. Kafka, Franz, "The Hunger Artist"
169. Kafka, Franz, "Outside the Law"
170. Kafka, Franz, "In the Penal Colony"
171. Kafka, Franz, "The Metamorphosis"
172. Keeble, Helen, "In Ashes"
173. Keyes, Daniel, "Flowers for Algernon"
174. Kincaid, Jamaica, "Girl"
175. King, Stephen, "Graveyard Shift"
176. King, Stephen, "The Body"
177. Kingston, Maxine Hong, "The Woman Warrior"
178. Krzhizhanovsky, Sigizmund, "In the Pupil"
179. Krzhizhanovsky, Sigizmund, "Quadraturn"
180. Krzhizhanovsky, Sigizmund, "The Runaway Fingers"
181. Lahiri, Jhumpa, "Interpreter of Maladies"
182. Lahiri, Jhumpa, "The Third and Final Continent"
183. Lahiri, Jhumpa, "This Blessed House"
184. Lahiri, Jhumpa, "Sexy"
185. Lahiri, Jhumpa, "A Temporary Matter"
186. Laudner, Ring, "The Golden Honeymoon"
187. Laudner, Ring, "Haircut"
188. Lawrence, D.H., "The Rocking Horse Winner"
189. Le Fanu, Joseph Sheridan, "Carmilla"
190. Le Fanu, Joseph Sheridan, "In a Glass Darkly"
191. Le Guin, Ursula K., "April in Paris"
192. Le Guin, Ursula K., "Buffalo Gals Won't You Come Out Tonight"
193. Le Guin, Ursula K., "Darkness Box"
194. Le Guin, Ursula K., "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas"
195. Lee, Tanith, "Rapunzel"
196. Leong, Russel Charles, "Geography One"
197. Leong, Russel Charles, "Phoenix Eyes"
198. Leong, Russel Charles, "Runaways"
199. Letham, Jonathan, "This Shape We're In"
200. Link, Kelly, "Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose"
201. London, Jack, "To Build a Fire"
202. Louie, David Wong, "Pangs of Love"
203. Lovecraft, H.P., "Call of Cthulhu"
204. MacDonald, George, "The Golden Key"
205. Machen, Arthur, "The Great God Pan"
206. Machen, Arthur, "The White People"
207. Malamud, Bernard, "Angel Levine"
208. Malamud, Bernard, "The First Seven Years"
209. Malamud, Bernard, "The Magic Barrel"
210. Mansfield, Katherine, "The Garden Party"
211. Mansfield, Katherine, "How Pearl Was Kidnapped"
212. Mansfield, Katherine, "Prelude"
213. Marakami, Haruki, "After The Quake"
214. Matheson, Richard, "Legion of Plotters"
215. Matheson, Richard, "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet"
216. Maughm, Somerset W., "Rain"
217. Melville, Herman, "Bartleby the Scrivener"
218. Melville, Herman, "Benito Cereno"
219. Millahuser, Stephen, 'Eisenhiem the Illusionist"
220. Millhauser, Stephen, "A Game of Clue"
221. Mitchell, David, "Judith Castle"
222. Monterroso, Augusto, "The Dinosaur"
223. Moore, Alan, "A Hypothetical Lizard"
224. Moore, Laurie, "How to Talk to Your Mother"
225. Moore, Laurie, "Two Boys"
226. Munro, Alice, "The Bear Came Over the Mountain"
227. Munro, Alice, "Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage"
228. Murakami, Haruki, "On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning"
229. Nabokov, Vladimir, "Spring in Fialta"
230. Oates, Joyce Carol, "The Girl with the Blackened Eye"
231. Oates, Joyce Carol, 'Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been"
232. O'Brien, Tim, The Sweetheart of a Song Bra Bong"
233. O'Brien, Tim, "The Things They Carried"
234. O'Connor, Flannery, "A Good Man is Hard to Find"
235. O'Connor, Flannery, "Everything that Rises Must Converge"
236. O'Connor, Flannery, "Good Country People"
237. O'Connor, Flannery, "The Misfit"
238. O'Connor, Flannery, "Revelation"
239. O'Connor, Flannery, "The Life You Save May Be Your Own"
240. Olsen, Tillie, "I Stand Here Ironing"
241. Orwell, George, "A Hanging"
242. Ozick, Cynthia, "The Shawl"
243. Paley, Grace, "A Woman, Young and Old"
244. Palwick, Susan, "Getsella"
245. Parker, Dorothy, "Big Blonde"
246. Parker, Dorothy, "A Telephone Call"
247. Parker, Dorothy, "The Waltz"
248. Parker, Dorothy, "Here We Are"
249. Perkins Gilman, Charlotte, "The Yellow Wallpaper"
250. Pinera, Virgilio, "The Face"
251. Plath, Sylvia, "Above the Oxbow"
252. Plath, Sylvia, "Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams"
253. Plath, Sylvia, "That Widow Mangada"
254. Poe, Edgar Allen, "The Black Cat"
255. Poe, Edgar Allen, "The Cask of Amantillado"
256. Poe, Edgar Allen, "The Gold Bug"
257. Poe, Edgar Allen, "The Fall of the House of Usher"
258. Poe, Edgar Allen, "The Mask of the Red Death"
259. Poe, Edgar Allen, "The Pit and the Pendulum"
260. Poe, Edgar Allen, "The Purloined Letter"
261. Poe, Edgar Allen, "The Tell-Tale Heart"
262. Pratt, Tim, "Little Gods"
263. Proulx, Annie, "Brokeback Mountain"
264. Puskin, Alexander, "The Queen of Spades"
265. Purdy, James, "Kitty Blue"
266. Quiroga, Horacio, "The Dead Man"
267. Rose-Innes, Henrietta, "Poison"
268. Rulfo, Juan, "Talpa"
269. Russell, Karen, "Ava Wrestles the Aligator"
270. Saki, "The Seven Cream Jugs"
271. Saki, "Srendi Vashtar"
272. Salinger, J.D., "For Esme - With Love and Squalor"
273. Salinger, J.D., "A Perfect Day for Bananafish"
274. Salinger, J.D., "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters"
275. Sansom, William, "Difficulty with a Bouquet"
276. Sansom, William, "The Long Sheet"
277. Sansom, William, "Various Temptations"
278. Sansom, William, "A Woman Seldom Found"
279. Sartre, Jean-Paul, "The Wall"
280. Saunders, George, "Pastoralia"
281. Saunders, George, "Sea Oak"
282. Sayers, Dorothy, "Suspicion"
283. Schanoes, Veronica, "How to Bring Someone Back from the Dead"
284. Self, Will, "Understanding the Ur-Bororo"
285. Sherman, Rob, "Tiny Deaths"
286. Singer, Isaac Beshivis, "Gimpel the Fool"
287. Smith, Ali, "The Theme is Power"
288. Steinbeck, John, "Chrystanthamums"
289. Stevenson, Robert Louis, "The Bottle Imp"
290. Stockton, Frank, "The Lady or the Tiger"
291. Stoker, Bram, "Dracula's Guest"
292. Taylor, Elizabeth, "The Ambush"
293. Thurber, James, "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty"
294. Tolkien, JRR, "Leaf by Niggle"
295. Tolstoy, Leo, "The Death of Ivan Ilyich"
296. Tolstoy, Leo, "How Much Land Does a Man Need"
297. Tolstoy, Leo, "The Kreutzer Sonata"
298. Tolstoy, Leo, "Master and Man"
299. Toole, F.X., "Million Dollar Baby"
300. Tower, Wells, "Down Through the Valley"
301. Turgenev, "Bezhin Prairie"
302. Twain, Mark, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County
303. Twain, Mark, "War Prayer"
304. Updike, John, "A & P"
305. Updike, John, "Pigeon Feathers"
306. Updike, John, "Separating"
307. Vonnegut, Kurt, "Harrison Bergeron"
308. Wade Wellman, Mary, "Where Angels Fear"
309. Walker, Alice, "Everyday Use"
310. Welty, Eudora, "Petrified Man"
311. Welty, Eudora, "Why I Live at the P.O."
312. Westerfield, Scott, "Ass-Hat Magic Spider"
313. Wharton, Edith, "Roman Fever"
314. White, T.H., "The Troll"
315. Wilce, Ysabeau S., "The Lineaments of Gratified Desire"
316. Wilde, Oscar, "The Birthday of the Infanta"
317. Wilde, Oscar, "The Nightingale and the Rose"
318. Williams, William Carlos, "The Use of Force"
319. Willis, Connie, "Fire Watch"
320. Wodehouse, P.G., "The Metropolitan Touch"
321. Wolfe, Gene, "The Island of Doctor Death"
322. Wolfe, Thomas, "Only the Dead Know Brooklyn"
323. Wolff, Tobias, "Bullet in the Brain"
324. Wolff, Tobias, "Hunters in the Snow"
325. Wolfe, Gene, "Westwind"
326. Woolf, Virginia, "The Mark on the Wall"
327. Woolrich, Cornell, "Rear Window (It Had to be Murder)"
328. Wright, Richard, "Big Boy Leaves Home"
329. Wright, Richard, "Fire and Cloud"
330. Yamamoto, Hisaya, "Seventeen Syllables"
331. Yates, Richard, "Dr. Jack-o'-Lantern"
332. Yates, Richard, "I'm So Tired"
333. Yeats, W.B. "The Adoration of the Magi"

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