The Best American Short Stories 2006 (The Best American Series)

by Ann Patchett (Editor)

Other authorsKatrina Kenison (Editor)

Paperback, 2006

Status

Available

Call number

813.0108

Series

Best American (2006)

The Best American Short Stories (2006)

Genres

All Topics

Fiction

Publication

Mariner Books (2006), Edition: 1st, 416 pages

Description

Since 1915 the Best American series is the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction and nonfiction. Each volume's series editor selects notable works from hundreds of periodicals. A special guest editor, a leading writer in the field, then chooses the best twenty or so pieces to publish. This unique system has made the Best American series the most respected, and most popular, of its kind.

User reviews

LibraryThing member chadmarsh

Favorite Stories, i.e., stories I might read again (listed in order of preference) - "Tattooizm" by Kevin Moffett; "The View from Castle Rock" by Alice Munro

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LibraryThing member sealford

Had to buy this book for one of my literature classes, and I enjoyed reading through it. It had a few stories in it that I would not have read otherwise, and a few that I was already familiar with. The stories are not horribly long, so it's relatively easy to breeze through them.

LibraryThing member CarrieWuj

Had higher hopes for this collection, due to Ann Patchett being the editor for this edition, but despite her explanation of choosing carefully and consciously, many of the stories failed to captivate. Few standouts: "Dominion" a backwardly humorous look at aging; "Self-Reliance" -- another

completely different story on the same topic; "The Casual Carpool" about a group of strangers encountering a traffic accident and how the experience unites them but also highlights their differences.

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LibraryThing member eas7788

What a mix of good and bad and blah. Really did not like the Slouka, Beattie, Gaitskill, Bell, and Livings. Loved the Li, Munro, Percy, Pearlman, and Hemon, and the Yoon, Swan, and Bezmogis were also excellent. The Gaitskill in particular had a weird tic of repeating odd words with a page or two

and overdescribing, as well as a nothing/cliche of a plot and characterization. The Beattie was baffling and tedious. But the Percy and Hemon are two of my favorite short stories, ones I remembered for the 15 years since I first read this collection. Every Best Of has teh bad, the great, and the blah, but this one more so ...

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LibraryThing member jonbrammer

My favorite stories: Tattooizm and Refresh, Refresh. I got back to the States a couple of months ago after two years in Eastern Europe and its this kind of stuff that I was craving to read, observational stories about the state of modern America.

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