Celebrating the Short Story: General Thoughts

I don't have a short story or book of short stories to review today, but I am working on several of them.  I find that I am really enjoying focusing on one aspect of reading and celebrating it.  The particular challenge that this feature of my blog was inspired by, to read a short story for every week of the year, was introduced by Laurie Upson, one of the moderators of the GR101 group that I belong to on Goodreads.  I started reading short stories for the challenge and found I was enjoying them so much, that I decided to celebrate the short story for the rest of 2013.

Now that I am almost 6 months into my love affair with the short story, it occurred to me that almost every story that I had read so far was in the mystery genre.  Either a paranormal mystery, mystery/thriller, or cozy mystery.  While the mystery genre is definitely one of my favorite genres, I began to feel that just reading and discussing mystery stories and novellas was not doing justice to the whole genre of  "short stories".  With that in mind, I did some research at my local library to see what types of books I could get to help me branch out.  The following books are ones that I have on tap to read and discuss in future weeks.









Women of Mystery - Stories from today's top women mystery authors
The Short Stories of Jack London: The Authorized One Volume Edition - What it says it is
Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman - Scifi-fantasy and horror from one of the best
The Doll: The Lost Stories by Daphne du Maurier - One of my favorite authors and a definite "find"
Mrs. Darcy and the Blue Eyed Stranger by Lee Smith - Shooting in the dark on this one, but it looks intriguing
Thereby Hangs a Tale by Jeffrey Archer - I have always wanted to read this author, so what better way to start than with short stories.  Besides, who can pass up that title.