New Yorker Stories

I discovered a literary blog called The Millions the other day and found a great post from earlier this month. It’s a review of every story the The New Yorker published in 2008. Each story is synopsized briefly with a bit of the old thumbs up or down. Also, and this may be the best part, there are links to each story posted on the New Yorker website.

It’s interesting to see which authors showed up (lots of familiar names), and which ones had more than one story featured in that 12 month period. A few had more than one story, including T. Coraghessan Boyle, John Updike, Roddy Doyle, and Janet Frame. Alice Munro ended up with four. Neat trick. Good for her, but admittedly a little disheartening to see how the magazine keeps falling back to the same few dozen authors year after year. There are thousands of other writers of short fiction who would kill to have just one little story in the New Yorker. But hey, who am I to complain? I’m just happy any magazine, especially a weekly, especially one with such a pedigree, deems to continue featuring great literature on printed pages.

At the end of the article, the author gives his or her summation of the best stories of the year. I have to admit: I haven’t read many of these stories, but I will. After I get through the dozens of novels sitting in wait on my home shelving units.