Great Short Short Stories
Reading a compendium of short stories was a great way to shake things up. Extending the length of something like a movie, book, or song is almost always seen as adding to it, but sometimes addition by subtraction can also work. Movies have deleted scenes, sometimes to keep runtimes practical, and other times to keep the story from meandering too far from the point it's trying to make. Books aren't as public about their cuts, but they still exist - editors can be ruthless in paring down an author's work for the purposes of cost, marketability, or flow 1.
Short stories, I think, are a great format for storytelling because you'd be hard-pressed to make cuts without altering the message somewhat. They're an aggressively efficient vehicle for the message being communicated to the reader, and there's something beautiful in that 2.
With that being said, here are the stories I liked the most out of the group, in rough order:
The Cask of Amontillado
The Three Hermits
A Malefactor
Nobody's Story
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
The Furnished Room
The Open Window
The Remarkable Case of Davidson's Eyes
A Country Doctor
- Read it here
- I liked this story because it's kind of hard to grok (if there is anything to understand about it in the first place)
The Enchanted Bluff
The Luck of Roaring Camp
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Stephen King is one of the rare instances of an author that has managed to have a book re-released after reaching popularity, complete with all of the deleted scenes. The Stand is available in it's full glory. In truth, I think his editors were doing him a favor, but diehard fans will buy anything that expands the story sometimes, even if it makes it harder to digest for newcomers. ↩
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See also: old non-software-controlled rice cookers and gas pump shutoff valves. Minimal engineering done right. ↩