2014 favorites

2014 Favorites

It was a wonderful short story year for me. I started this blog in June, having stumbled onto a new abundance of reading time in my schedule. I’ve long wanted to do something like this, but I don’t think I could have anticipated just how much I’d enjoy it. I still have hopes of publishing my own short fiction someday. Of course reading the masters is the best way to get better in your own writing. That was the whole point at the blog’s outset. But as it turns out, I’ll be plenty happy continuing this blog into 2015 and beyond even if my writing dreams never pan out.

So, as the calendar page turns, here’s a pointlessly complete list of the stories I read in 2014 listed in order of my enjoyment. As always, I appreciate your comments and feedback. Thank you for all the support in 2014, and a sincerest Happy 2015 to you!

 

  1. ‘Hot Ice’ by Stuart Dybek
  2. ‘A Good Man Is Hard To Find’ by Flannery O’Connor
  3. ‘The Lady With The Little Dog’ by Anton Chekhov
  4. ‘Jeeves And The Impending Doom’ by P.G. Wodehouse
  5. ‘The Babysitter’ by Robert Coover
  6. ‘Everything That Rises Must Converge’ by Flannery O’Connor
  7. ‘Bright And Morning Star’ by Richard Wright
  8. ‘Symbols And Signs’ by Vladimir Nabokov
  9. ‘Chickamauga’ by Ambrose Bierce
  10. ‘Jeeves And The Yule-Tide Spirit’ by P.G. Wodehouse
  11. ‘Venus, Cupid, Folly And Time’ by Peter Taylor
  12. ‘The River’ by Flannery O’Connor
  13. ‘Blackberry Winter’ by Robert Penn Warren
  14. ‘Barn Burning’ by William Faulkner
  15. ‘Gooseberries’ by Anton Chekhov
  16. ‘A Solo Song: For Doc’ by James Alan McPherson
  17. ‘The H Street Sledding Record’ by Ron Carlson
  18. ‘A Christmas Memory’ by Truman Capote
  19. ‘A&P’ by John Updike
  20. ‘The Chrysanthemums’ by John Steinbeck
  21. ‘The Ice Palace’ by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  22. ‘My Old Man’ by Ernest Hemingway
  23. ‘I’m A Fool’ by Sherwood Anderson
  24. ‘The Life You Save May Be Your Own’ by Flannery O’Connor
  25. ‘Upon The Sweeping Flood’ by Joyce Carol Oates
  26. ‘The Man In The Case’ by Anton Chekhov
  27. ‘Free Fruit For Young Widows’ by Nathan Englander
  28. ‘May Day’ by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  29. ‘Babylon Revisited’ by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  30. ‘Good Country People’ by Flannery O’Connor
  31. ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ by Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
  32. ‘The School’ by Donald Barthelme
  33. ‘The Night The Bed Fell’ by James Thurber
  34. ‘City Boy’ by Leonard Michaels
  35. ‘Pomegranate Seed’ by Edith Wharton
  36. ‘Sonny’s Blues’ by James Baldwin
  37. ‘The Veldt’ by Ray Bradbury
  38. ‘Paul’s Case’ by Willa Cather
  39. ‘The Tall Men’ by William Faulkner
  40. ‘That Evening Sun’ by William Faulkner
  41. ‘You’re Ugly, Too’ by Lorrie Moore
  42. ‘Of This Time, Of That Place’ by Lionel Trilling
  43. ‘The Student’ by Anton Chekhov
  44. ‘The Story Of An Hour’ by Kate Chopin
  45. ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ by Edgar Allan Poe
  46. ‘Greasy Lake’ by T. Coraghessan Boyle
  47. ‘A Christmas Tree And A Wedding’ by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  48. ‘The Wood Duck’ by James Thurber
  49. ‘The Flats Road’ by Alice Munro
  50. ‘My First Goose’ by Isaac Babel
  51. ‘The Fireman’s Wife’ by Richard Bausch
  52. ‘The View From The Balcony’ by Wallace Stegner
  53. ‘The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty’ by James Thurber
  54. ‘The Killers’ by Ernest Hemingway
  55. ‘Train’ by Joy Williams
  56. ‘Testimony Of Pilot’ by Barry Hannah
  57. ‘Liars In Love’ by Richard Yates
  58. ‘Nilda’ by Junot Diaz
  59. ‘Double Birthday’ by Willa Cather
  60. ‘About Love’ by Anton Chekhov
  61. ‘The Magic Barrel’ by Bernard Malamud
  62. ‘A Bear Hunt’ by William Faulkner
  63. ‘The Diamond As Big As The Ritz’ by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  64. ‘The Adventure Of The Blue Carbuncle’ by Arthur Conan Doyle
  65. ‘Christmas Eve’ by Maeve Brennan
  66. ‘The Lady’s Maid’s Bell’ by Edith Wharton
  67. ‘Luella Miller’ by Mary Wilkins Freeman
  68. ‘Only The Dead Know Brooklyn’ by Thomas Wolfe
  69. ‘The Joy Luck Club’ by Amy Tan
  70. ‘His Father’s Son’ by Edith Wharton
  71. ‘The Jelly-Bean’ by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  72. ‘Hand Upon The Waters’ by William Faulkner
  73. ‘Christmas In Red Butte’ by Lucy Maud Montgomery
  74. ‘One Christmas Eve’ by Langston Hughes
  75. ‘The Nose’ by Nikolai Gogol
  76. ‘The Gift Of The Magi’ by O. Henry
  77. ‘In The Penal Colony’ by Franz Kafka
  78. ‘He’ by Katherine Anne Porter
  79. ‘The Rich Brother’ by Tobias Wolff
  80. ‘Powder’ by Tobias Wolff
  81. ‘A White Heron’ by Sarah Orne Jewett
  82. ‘The Ledge’ by Lawrence Sargent Hall
  83. ‘A Circle In The Fire’ by Flannery O’Connor
  84. ‘No Place For You, My Love’ by Eudora Welty
  85. ‘The Schreuderspitze’ by Mark Helprin
  86. ‘The Sutton Place Story’ by John Cheever
  87. ‘The Hartleys’ by John Cheever
  88. ‘O City Of Broken Dreams’ by John Cheever
  89. ‘The Lottery’ by Shirley Jackson
  90. ‘A Day In The Open’ by Jane Bowles
  91. ‘How Beautiful With Shoes’ by Wilbur Daniel Steele
  92. ‘In The Zoo’ by Jean Stafford
  93. ‘Young Goodman Brown’ by Nathaniel Hawthorne
  94. ‘The Outcasts Of Poker Flat’ by Bret Harte
  95. ‘The Lost Phoebe’ by Theodore Dreiser
  96. ‘Lovers Of The Lake’ by Sean O’Faolain
  97. ‘The Other Two’ by Edith Wharton
  98. ‘Welcome To The Monkey House’ by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
  99. ‘The Little Wife’ by William March
  100. ‘A Distant Episode’ by Paul Bowles
  101. ‘How To Date A Brown Girl (A Black Girl, A White Girl, Or Halfie)’ by Junot Diaz
  102. ‘A Poetics For Bullies” by Stanley Elkin
  103. ‘Greenwich Time’ by Ann Beattie
  104. ‘Pretty Ice’ by Mary Robison
  105. ‘Lechery’ by Jayne Ann Phillips
  106. ‘Here Come The Maples’ by John Updike
  107. ‘Territory’ by David Leavitt
  108. ‘Bridging’ by Max Apple
  109. ‘Premium Harmony’ by Stephen King
  110. ‘The Faithful Wife’ by Morley Callaghan
  111. ‘First Love’ by Vladimir Nabokov
  112. ‘The Mysterious Kor’ by Elizabeth Bowen
  113. ‘Two Thanksgiving Gentlemen’ by O. Henry
  114. ‘Dawn Of Remembered Spring’ by Jesse Stuart
  115. ‘The Middle Years’ by Henry James
  116. ‘Thirst’ by Ivo Andric
  117. ‘In Another Country’ by Ernest Hemingway
  118. ‘A Cap For Steve’ by Morley Callaghan
  119. ‘Winter Dreams’ by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  120. ‘The Iron City’ by Lovell Thompson
  121. ‘Dusky Ruth’ by A.E. Coppard
  122. ‘The Net’ by Robert M. Coates
  123. ‘The Christmas Wreck’ by Frank Stockton
  124. ‘At Christmas Time’ by Anton Chekhov
  125. ‘Christmas Day In The Morning’ by Pearl S. Buck
  126. ‘Are These Actual Miles?’ by Raymond Carver
  127. ‘The Little Match Girl’ by Hans Christian Andersen
  128. ‘Three Players Of A Summer Game’ by Tennessee Williams
  129. ‘A Child’s Christmas In Wales’ by Dylan Thomas
  130. ‘Paper Losses’ by Lorrie Moore
  131. ‘This Morning, This Evening, So Soon’ by James Baldwin
  132. ‘The Circling Hand’ by Jamaica Kincaid
  133. ‘A Stroke Of Good Fortune’ by Flannery O’Connor
  134. ‘The Body Snatcher’ by Robert Louis Stevenson
  135. ‘The Adventure Of The Christmas Pudding’ by Agatha Christie
  136. ‘The Catbird Seat’ by James Thurber
  137. ‘April Showers’ by Edith Wharton
  138. ‘The Odour Of Chrysanthemums’ by D.H. Lawrence
  139. ‘The Door’ by E.B. White
  140. ‘The Camberwell Beauty’ by V.S. Pritchett
  141. ‘The Fly’ by Katherine Mansfield
  142. ‘Christ In Concrete’ by Pietro di Donato
  143. ‘Going For A Beer’ by Robert Coover
  144. ‘The Other Wife’ by Colette
  145. ‘A.V. Laider’ by Max Beerbohm
  146. ‘Markheim’ by Robert Louis Stevenson
  147. ‘Christmas Is A Sad Season For The Poor’ by John Cheever
  148. ‘The Golden Honeymoon’ by Ring Lardner
  149. ‘The Fullness Of Life’ by Edith Wharton
  150. ‘Awake’ by Tobias Wolff
  151. ‘In Greenwich, There Are Many Gravelled Walks’ by Hortense Calisher
  152. ‘White Rat’ by Gayl Jones
  153. ‘Search Through The Streets Of The City’ by Irwin Shaw
  154. ‘The Dead Man’ by Horacio Quiroga
  155. ‘American Express’ by James Salter
  156. ‘The Piano’ by Anibal Monteiro Machado
  157. ‘Resurrection Of A Life’ by William Saroyan
  158. ‘The State Of Grace’ by Harold Brodkey
  159. ‘The Burglar’s Christmas’ by Willa Cather
  160. ‘The Greatest Man In The World’ by James Thurber
  161. ‘The Wonderful Tar-Baby Story’ by Joel Chandler Harris
  162. ‘The Peach Stone’ by Paul Horgan
  163. ‘Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius’ by Jorge Luis Borges
  164. ‘A Telephone Call’ by Dorothy Parker
  165. ‘The Survivors’ by Elsie Singmaster
  166. ‘An Old Fashioned Thanksgiving’ by Louisa May Alcott
  167. ‘Who Lived And Died Believing’ by Nancy Hale
  168. ‘Papa Panov’s Special Christmas’ by Leo Tolstoy
  169. ‘The Beggar Boy At Christ’s Christmas Tree’ by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  170. ‘The Devil And Tom Walker’ by Washington Irving
  171. ‘A Life In The Day Of A Writer’ by Tess Slesinger
  172. ‘The Facts Concerning The Recent Carnival Of Crime In Connecticut’ by Mark Twain
  173. ‘A Dark Brown Dog’ by Stephen Crane
  174. ‘Men’ by Kay Boyle
  175. ‘A Couple Of Hamburgers’ by James Thurber
  176. ‘In The Heart Of The Heart Of The Country’ by William Gass
  177. ‘A New Year’s Gift’ by Guy de Maupassant
  178. ‘The Christmas Banquet’ by Nathaniel Hawthorne
  179. ‘The Indian Uprising’ by Donald Barthelme
  180. ‘The Facts Of Life’ by Somerset Maugham
  181. ‘Nothing Ever Breaks Except The Heart’ by Kay Boyle
  182. ‘The Best Christmas Ever’ by James Patrick Kelly
  183. ‘Christmas Eve’ by Guy de Maupassant
by Categories: Favorites Leave a comment

Leave a comment