shorts (2022)

something old something new

completed in december 2022

i’ve loved short stories as of late so in light of our third pandemic winter, i thought i might shape short stories into a project. below are 52 classic short stories i’m aiming to read/re-read this year. i’ll keep this post evergreen and link to my silly little writeups of the stories after i read them.

read

1. Herman Melville, “Bartleby, the Scrivener” (1853)

2. James Joyce, “The Dead” (1914)

3. Zora Neale Hurston, “The Gilded Six-Bits” (1933)

4. J. D. Salinger, “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” (1948)

5. Lorrie Moore, “How to Be an Other Woman” (1985)

6. Herman Melville, “Benito Cereno” (1855)

7. Zadie Smith, “Meet the President!” (2013)

8. James Baldwin, “Sonny’s Blues” (1957)

9. Jamaica Kincaid, “Girl” (1978)

10. Jhumpa Lahiri, “A Temporary Matter” (1998)

11. Joyce Carol Oates, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” (1966)

12. Denis Johnson, “Emergency” (1992)

13. Tim O’Brien, “The Things They Carried” (1990)

14. Viet Thanh Nguyen, “War Years” (2017)

15. Lorrie Moore, “What is Seized” (1985)

16. William Gay, "The Paperhanger" (2000)

17. Ted Chiang, “Story of Your Life” (1998)

18. Franz Kafka, “The Metamorphosis” (1915)

19. Toni Cade Bambara, “The Lesson” (1972)

20. Amy Tan, “Rules of the Game” (1989)

21. Donald Barthelme, “The School” (1974)

22. Amy Hempel, “In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried” (1983)

23. Mary Gaitskill, “Secretary” (1988)

24. Ray Bradbury, “There Will Come Soft Rains” (1950)

25. Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” (1973)

26. Vladimir Nabokov, “Symbols and Signs” (1948)

27. Ernest Hemingway, “The Killers” (1927)

28. Anton Chekhov, “The Lady with the Toy Dog” (1899)

29. Ambrose Bierce, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” (1890)

30. Alice Munro, “The Bear Came Over the Mountain” (2001)

31. Annie Proulx, “Brokeback Mountain” (1997)

32. Kurt Vonnegut, "Harrison Bergeron" (1961)

33. John Cheever, “The Swimmer” (1964)

34. Richard Connell, “The Most Dangerous Game” aka “The Hounds of Zaroff” (1924)

35. W. W. Jacobs, “The Monkey’s Paw” (1902)

36. Shirley Jackson, “The Lottery” (1948)

37. Hawthorne, "Young Goodman Brown" (1835)

38. Elmore Leonard, “Three-Ten to Yuma” (1953)

39. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892)

40. Kristen Roupenian, “Cat Person” (2017)

41. Philip K. Dick, “The Minority Report” (1956)

42. Edgar Allan Poe, “The Tell-Tale Heart” (1843)

43. O. Henry, “The Gift of the Magi” (1905)

44. Flannery O’Connor, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” (1953)

45. Washington Irving, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” (1820)

46. Henry James, “The Turn of the Screw” (1898)

47. Alan Sillitoe, “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner” (1959)

48. Washington Irving, “Rip Van Winkle” (1819)

49. Daphne du Maurier, “The Birds” (1952)

50. Raymond Carver, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” (1981)

51. Stephen King, “The Body” (1982)

52. Mark Twain, "The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg"