10 Favorite Short Stories

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Nova listed her 10 favorite short stories, which I think is a fantastic idea–short stories get short shrift, even though they are brilliant literary nuggets. People don’t read enough of them, people underestimate them, and publishing houses scowl at them (it really is harder to publish a collection of short stories than a novel–mostly because said people don’t buy short story collections).

In fact, I don’t even count short stories on their own on my “book list”, even though I am reading short stories all the time, in various litmags or copied out of collections for my enjoyment. Especially these days, when a novel is too daunting to read for multiple reasons.

Hrm. Maybe I ought to make a short story side-list.

Anyway. Here’s to short stories!

Here are my “10″current favorite short stories:

• Toni Cade Bambara–”The Johnson Girls”
• James Baldwin–”Sonny’s Blues”
• Aimee Bender–”Debbieland”
• Michael Chabon–”Along the Frontage Road”
• Roald Dahl–”Lamb to the Slaughter”
• Peter Ho Davies–”The Ugliest House in the World”
• Junot Diaz–”Nilda”
• Jhumpa Lahiri–”A Temporary Matter”
• Yiyun Li–”Extra”
• Haruki Murakami–”Honey Pie”
• Tobias Wolff–”Bullet in the Brain”

And there you have it.

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