Best Short Story Collections for 2008

This has not been a good year for newspaper book reviews. The Los Angeles Times, which I read regularly, has lost its book review insert on Sundays and now must make do with a few pages in the Calendar Entertainment section. Oscar Villon, book review editor of The San Francisco Chronicle took a buyout, and I doubt if they will have room for free lancers like myself anymore. Geeta Sharma Jensen, book review editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, for which I review fairly regularly, has had to cut back the number and length of her reviews. But Geeta is one of the strongest supporters of the short story among newspaper book review editors. I hope to continue to write reviews of short story collections for her, at least for a time.

In spite of these cutbacks, several large newspapers still publish their lists of "Best Books of the Year" at this time, and the short story has not done too badly this year.

Of the 41 books of fiction listed as "Best Books" by The New York Times, 8 are short story collections. Twenty percent is not too bad, given the fact that the ratio of novels to short story collections published is probably more than 100 to 1 (That's a guess. I would appreciate more exact figures if anyone has them).

The collections listed as "Best Books" by The New York Times are:

A Better Angel by Chris Adrian
The Boat by Nam Le
Dangerous Laughter by Steven Millhauser
Dictation by Cynthia Ozick
Fine Just the Way It Is by Annie Proulx
Our Story Begins by Tobias Wolff
Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
Yesterday's Weather by Anne Enright

The Los Angeles Times listed 23 books of fiction as their "Favorite Books," of which 6 were short story collections. Twenty-five percent is pretty darned impressive. Their choices were:

The Boat by Nam Le
Dictation by Cynthia Ozick
Knockemstiff by Donnald Ray Pollock
Ms. Hempel Chronicles by Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum
Our Story Begins by Tobias Wolff
Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri

The Washington Post listed 40 books of general fiction, of which 9 were short story collections. Twenty percent is still pretty decent. They are:

Dangerous Laughter by Steven Millhauser
Dictation by Cynthia Ozick
Our Story Begins by Tobias Wolff
Foreigners by Caryl Phillips
Poe's Children ed. by Peter Straub
Say You're One of Them by Uwem Akpan
The Size of the World by Joan Silber
Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
Yesterday's Weather by Anne Enright

Of the above, I have reviewed the following: Dangerous Laughter, Dictation, Our Story Begins, Unaccustomed Earth, Fine Just the Way It Is, Ms. Hempel Chronicles. I will make some comments on these in future blog entries.

I still plan to read The Boat, Yesterday's Weather, The Size of the World, and Knockemstiff.

As a side note, the collections Ms Hempel Chronicles and The Size of the World have been identified and/or reviewed as novels. I will also comment on this in a later blog.