Great selection, essays, editing. Didnt read everything in this of course. ( )

hundreds of short stories ( )

This is a good anthology of some of the better known short stories by some of the better known short story writers. I'd say that most students of literature have read at least two or three of these short stories at some point in their education, and they have most likely heard of the rest of the stories or else are familiar with the authors. If not, this book is a good way to gain that familiarity, since these short stories are often assumed to be a common background for people discussing literature.

One of the features of this book, compared to other anthologies I own or have read, is the diversity of the authors featured. There are many different ethnicities and time periods included, though there is a bias towards American writers. Presumably, the bias is because the publisher is an American company and the anthology is most likely intended for American students.

I'm not really interested in writing short stories myself or in the process of writing, but I did find the "perspectives" (short essays by the authors about writing) and the section about critical approaches to short stories to be quite interesting.

I picked this book up by chance, because it was left behind in the theatre of the museum where I work, but I am quite happy that I did. Some of the stories, such as "The Yellow Wallpaper" or "The Metamorphosis", I'd never read, but had been aware of for a very long time. I'd been intending to get around to reading them eventually but never felt like reading online versions and they weren't included in the few anthologies I had picked up. Others like Camus's "The Guest", Joyce's "The Dead", or Hemingway's "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" were stories I had read a decade ago in high school and remembered enjoying, but had never had a version on my shelves, even though I recall them often.

Hopefully the owner of the book doesn't come to claim it in the next ten days so that I can take it home to keep instead of just reading it during slow periods at my desk.

I don't know if I want to get this specific book or just keep it in mind as a list of important short stories to get to. Many of these are from such important authors that I might prefer an anthology from each of them. (And I've read a ton of them already.)

Here's the table of contents.

And don't forget to read James Baldwin.