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The Best American Short Stories 2007 (The Best American Short Stories)

by Stephen King (Editor), Heidi Pitlor (Series Editor)

3.67 of 5 stars 3.67 · rating details · 1,496 ratings · 234 reviews

In his introduction to this volume, Stephen King writes, “Talent does more than come out; it bursts out, again and again, doing exuberant cartwheels while the band plays 'Stars and Stripes Forever' . . . Talent can’t help itself; it roars along in fair weather or foul, not sparing the fireworks. It gets emotional. It struts its stuff. In fact, that’s its job.”

Wonderfully e

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Paperback, 448 pages

Published October 10th 2007 by Mariner Books (first published 2007)

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Community Reviews

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Nov 26, 2007 Rory rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: only die-hard followers of the series

Shelves: short-stories

blech. i did wonder why the series editor kept going on and on about the "so-called death" of the american short story in her introduction. and then assured the reader that, um, it was going to get better. i didn't realize she was actually warning us that this crop was kind of crap! i DID wonder whether the anthology suffered because stephen king selected for it this year. i mean, i really like him, actually, but i don't think he's got lots of TASTE. whichever, i couldn't help but be disappointe...more

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Sep 16, 2010 Alex Telander rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-read-in-2007

THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES 2007 EDITED BY STEPHEN KING: International bestselling author Stephen King takes the stage with a different kind of performance: instead of being the creator and writer, he is the director, selected as the editor for the 2007 edition of the ever popular Best American Short Stories series. But don’t pick this book up expecting to find blood and gore, or a sense of horror and a feeling of terror that you are more used to when reading the editor’s own work; in this c...more THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES 2007 EDITED BY STEPHEN KING: International bestselling author Stephen King takes the stage with a different kind of performance: instead of being the creator and writer, he is the director, selected as the editor for the 2007 edition of the ever popular Best American Short Stories series. But don’t pick this book up expecting to find blood and gore, or a sense of horror and a feeling of terror that you are more used to when reading the editor’s own work; in this collection, King has select works he finds most fascinating, the stories that “make his blood curdle” but in an emotional and moving way, as opposed to a terrified one. Nevertheless, this collection has something to offer everyone, with twenty unique stories that were selected and deemed the best during the year 2006 by Stephen King and Best American Series ongoing editor, Heidi Pitlor.

King kicks off the collection with his own entertaining introduction, as he sets the scene for his discovering these special stories: bending down, ass in the air, going through the dusty and ignored journals shelf of a big-chain bookstore in Florida, and then making his way to the surprised cashier with this mighty pile of rarely bought materials. While it is humorous, King is making the clear point here that short stories are in some ways a dying art, for they are not being read by many, and in most cases, simply by other writers. And yet it is a crucial stepping stone for many aspiring writers. King sets out to show to the reader that while there were a lot of mediocre and not so good stories published in 2006, there were also some great ones, appearing in this collection, showing that the art of writing short stories is still alive and well.

The 2007 collection features stories by well known authors like John Barth, T. C. Boyle, Alice Munro and Richard Russo, to name a few. Here there are stories about everything, satisfying every reader’s taste in some way, whether it be “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves,” which is exactly what it sounds like; to an enchanting and memorable Lolitaesque story about an Olympic swimmer and a young girl with Polio who have a love a fair set with the backdrop of the 1918 flu epidemic in Lauren Groff’s “L DeBard and Aliette: A Love Story”; to “My Brother Eli” by Joseph Epstein featuring a famous writer who can never accept that he has done what he set out to achieve; to the wonderfully haunting “Sans Farine” by Jim Shepard, where the history and invention of the guillotine is revealed in gruesome detail while the French Revolution spirals out of control.

The beauty of a short story collection such as this is that with so much good material, if one is not immediately satisfied, one can just skip to the next story; and by the same token one can also slowly read and savor each story. Stephen King has certainly shown that he has some interesting and appreciative reading habits, proving his job as a good editor for today’s short stories. The Best American Short Stories 2007 is an ideal gift for anyone who has read all of Stephen King and wants something different, or simply loves to read books for what they are: an escape from reality into a world of the fantastic.

For more book reviews, and author interviews, go to BookBanter.(less)

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Nov 30, 2007 Rebecca rated it 1 of 5 stars

I love the idea of Stephen King editing this collection, but I had a really hard time mustering any interest in the majority of these stories. Alice Munro's story is brilliant. Besides that, there were a few that were okay, and then there were some that I was completely disappointed by.

Eileen Pollacks' story "The Bris," for example, is based on an interesting idea--a son goes to tend to his dying father, only to find out that in fact his father is not Jewish, as he had always believed, and that...more

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Sep 29, 2008 Kirsten rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: people looking for a fairly diverse collection of stories, leaning towards the morbid side

Shelves: short-stories, read-in-2008

I slogged through the first five stories in this book and was about to toss the entire collection away in disgust. Even the John Barth story was outright awful, and so I denigrated Stephen King's taste in stories and vowed to never buy this collection again.

However, round about page 85, I hit Joseph Epstein's "My Brother Eli" and things began looking up. In fact, every story after that point ranged from decent to really damn good.

The Gold Star Stories:

William Gay, "Where Will You Go When Your S...more

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Apr 23, 2008 Ryan rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: People who have to know

Shelves: chronologicalstartingjune2007

This is the first disappointment I've gotten from the Best American Short Stories Series. Stephen King proved to be a heavy-handed editor to say the least. While no story could be classified as out-right horror, they almost all contained horrific elements: a girl with her face shot off propped up in an abandoned farm house, a suicide pact, castration, biological warfare, girls raised by werewolves... even the obligatory Alice Munro story (she's been included in almost every year I've read) has m...more

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Jun 09, 2008 Nichole Rottinghaus marked it as abandoned

I'm about 1/2 way through this, but wanted to jot down some of my thoughts so far.

It's been a long time since I read a collection of short stories, so I'm not sure what I was expecting. With that said, I'm finding the stories very "academic" - meaning, I keep waiting for my 10th grade English teacher to show up at the door with a thematic test for me on these, which I fear I would fail miserably. I get the feeling there must be more meaning to these stories than I see right away, otherwise why w...more

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Apr 07, 2013 Hannah rated it 2 of 5 stars

I asked a friend if he had read anything by Karen Russell and he responded by giving me two of the Best American Short Stories anthologies, one of which is this one from 2007. Unfortunately, most of the stories in here are pretty bland. I don't know if that's due to Stephen King being a poor editor or 2007 just being a mediocre year for short stories; either way, most of the stories in this collection are not bad but not astounding, either.

The problem with this anthology is that almost all of t...more

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Mar 15, 2012 Lynne Favreau rated it 4 of 5 stars

In “Best American Short Stories” Stephen Kings laments in his introduction about the lowly stature short stories have in our society. Like poetry, they just don’t seem to capture the American public’s attention. Is this a sign of our multimedia, electronic, high-speed driven world? You’d think given the supposed shortened attention span that our youth are often accused of having that they’d readily embrace the short story as one of their own.

The first five or six were tight and descriptive which...more

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Jun 03, 2011 Bojan Tunguz rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I had been a regular reader of the "Best American Short Stories" collections for years, until I finally decided that I was reading these stories more out of a force of habit than out of real interest. The stories were well written and all, but they lacked almost any imagination or spontaneity, and was very hard to relate to either the characters or the plot lines. This has been a trend in American writing for some time, where stories are all products of the same fiction workshop mentality. Even...more I had been a regular reader of the "Best American Short Stories" collections for years, until I finally decided that I was reading these stories more out of a force of habit than out of real interest. The stories were well written and all, but they lacked almost any imagination or spontaneity, and was very hard to relate to either the characters or the plot lines. This has been a trend in American writing for some time, where stories are all products of the same fiction workshop mentality. Even though they are written by vastly different writers and deal with distinct issues, just like the cafeteria food it all starts to taste the same after a while. With that in mind I was rather hopeful that for 2007 the editor of the collection was Stephen King, someone well outside of the academic fiction mainstream. I was hoping that his predilection for weird and unusual stories would shake up the short fiction scene, and infuse some freshness and rawness to this genre. However, to my dismay, this collection ended up being more or less the same as all of the previous ones. For the most part. There were a few stories that stuck out with their innovativeness and freshness, but for the most part writing, although stylistically impeccable, was uninteresting and dry. There were an unusual number of stories that deal with death and aging, and this might be what's on King's mind a lot these days. Or it might be the general property of American short fiction these days, and one might be tempted to read a lot into it, but that would make for a very boring story. The collection even contains a story about the unhappy life of a college professor - this theme, in my humble opinion, is by far the most overrated in all of literature. Lives of American college faculty are excruciatingly boring - and I say that as one of them. Sure, we do have a fair share of troubles and tribulations, but these are so insular and irrelevant to the world at large that it's hard to imagine anyone caring very deeply about them.

As I said, the writing in these stories is impeccable and of rather high quality - indeed, probably the best that English language has to offer. If that is all you care about, then the stories in this collection are well worth the effort and time invested in reading them. I myself will probably go back to getting the subsequent editions of the "Best American Short Stories." However, if you want interesting stories that will keep you glued to the printed page and fascinated with their content, then you will have to look around on your own. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any reliable guide to direct you in that pursuit. (less)

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Feb 18, 2011 Anthony rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: short-story-collections

In her foreword, Heidi Pitlor talks about what her first year as Series Editor was like (replacing the almost irreplacable Katrina Kennison), reading literally thousands of short stories published in American magazines in 2006 and whittling those thousands down the the hundred or so she passed on to Guest Editor Stephen King. It sounds like she was up to the task, but there's not a terrible amount of insight into the process (and perhaps, after all these years, there's not much a new Series Edit...more In her foreword, Heidi Pitlor talks about what her first year as Series Editor was like (replacing the almost irreplacable Katrina Kennison), reading literally thousands of short stories published in American magazines in 2006 and whittling those thousands down the the hundred or so she passed on to Guest Editor Stephen King. It sounds like she was up to the task, but there's not a terrible amount of insight into the process (and perhaps, after all these years, there's not much a new Series Editor can say that doesn't parrot her predecessors). King's Introduction is fast and lively, bemoaning the state of the market for short stories (he gives a great description of where most magazines that cater to the short story enthusiast are found: on the bottom shelf of the magazine section of large bookstore chains, usually under the "lifestyles" magazines). His introduction has been reprinted this month at least once that I know of (I think it was a backpage of The New York Times Book Review, but it might have been his column for Entertainment Weekly).

Then, on to the stories. There are twenty, arranged in alphabetical order by author's last name. That fact intrigues me only because the last two stories in the volume were the two I enjoyed the least. I forced myself through Jim Shepard's "Sans Farine" (it's about the inner life of the Chief Executioner during the French Revolution, a subject I thought would interest me but which didn't); I took Kate Walbert's "Do Something" more as a battle-cry against the secrecy surrounding the War In Iraq than as a treatise on loss, despite an interesting main character who describes her son's death from cancer as "my own 9-11. We all have our very own. Don't you agree?"

So which stories did I like? Pretty all of the rest, although I will pick out a few by name. (Interestingly enough, as I flip back through Uncle Stevie's Introduction for the first time in two months, I see that he picked these same stories out by name.)

John Barth's "Toga Party," part of a cycle he's writing on life in an over-55 community, packs a great sucker-punch ending that you kind of see coming and still can't pull your eyes from; Alice Munro's "Dimension" (which I remember reading in The New Yorker) similarly has a moment where you realize what it is the main character (and the narrator) are leaving unsaid, and you hope you're wrong about it, until the reveal which slaps you in the face with the raw lack of emotion that comes from shock; Randy DeVita's "Riding The Doghouse" is the closest this collection gets to a horror story, all full of dread and fear; and Karen Russell's "St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves" is the closest the collection comes to fantasy / fairy tale, using the offspring of werewolves being acclimated to human society as an analogy for the unique culture minorities lose when melded into one another. There is also one quasi-science fiction story, "The Boy in Zaquitos" by Bruce McAllister, just to give us a three-in-twenty "genre" representation, which is probably more than most previous years.

It's an anthology well worth reading, although like me you'll probably want to spread the stories out over a fair amount of time and not try to devour them all in a sitting or two.(less)

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Aug 03, 2009 Harley rated it 3 of 5 stars

Hmmmm, not enjoying the stories in this one nearly as much. We'll see. I've only read 7 out of 20 stories. I don't think it's my mood. Perhaps just a difference of opinion between me and Stephen King.

August 3

I've finished the volume and can say that it was a more wintry selection than usual, and I wasn't enamoured of the book as a whole. Too many disgruntled characters, and maybe authors. Lots of death theme, although some of that was wonderful. Maybe it was the year, two years into Bush's seco...more

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Jan 23, 2009 Taylor rated it 3 of 5 stars

I love the Best American series; however, I was not especially impressed with this volume. Lately, people seem to be re-examining Stephen King as a literary writer, which might explain the puzzling choice of him as editor, but, I'm sorry, literary he ain't. I found his introduction totally obnoxious, and his choices for this collection, with a few notable exceptions, were less than inspired. As a writer, King goes for plot, and as a reader, he seems to do the same. Not that I have anything again...more

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Mar 13, 2013 Monica Madaus rated it 3 of 5 stars

I once had an argument about whether "somebody died" is the worst possible plot for a short story. To give the "other side" credit, they had a point when they argued that it was always true.

At the same time, that's why I think it's a pretty lazy approach.

I'm not sure if it summarizes more of the stories in this collection than those compiled by other editors.

Interestingly, I liked several that meet that description, more than I generally do.

I thought "The Bris" was especially funny, and I'm not...more

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Jun 15, 2008 Susan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

I started loving this book from the very first story by Louis Auchincloss (who I had never heard of) entitled 'Pa's Darling'. What a great title. Four of the first six stories made me say 'Wowww' out loud when I finished them. If I saw Stephen King I'd kiss his feet to thank him for selecting these great stories.

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Apr 02, 2013 Sharri rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, short-stories

My main complaint about this book is that the editors stuck the stories in alphabetical order by last name instead of giving the book. As a result, the stories in the first half of the book are too similar in that they fit my biggest complaint about prize-winning short stories -- why do editors prefer somber, doom-and-gloom, non-stories that portray depressing lives and situations? Why? Why? They all blur in my mind.

And then the second half contained all the most innovative and clever works. I L...more

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Aug 02, 2012 Brian Kennedy rated it 4 of 5 stars

This really didn't click for me until about the sixth story, My Brother Eli by Joseph Epstein, but after that they were pretty great with two exceptions. Where Will You Go When Your Skin Cannot Contain You by William Gay which I really wanted to like for the title alone and Sans Farine by Jim Shepard, a more boring story about the rise of the guillotine I cant imagine.
Lauren Groff's L. Debard and Aliette: A Love Story and Stellar Kim's Findings and Impressions pack more punch into 25 pages or le...more

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Feb 07, 2009 Dan rated it 4 of 5 stars

When I was a kid, even before I wanted to be a musician, I wanted to be a short story writer. Not an author or the more generic title of "writer," but specifically a short story writer. As an adolescent, I would sit in my room and read the short stories of O. Henry, Mark Twain, Ray Bradbury, Edgar Allen Poe and pretty much anyone else I could get my hands on. I certainly read lots of novels and probably more nonfiction than someone my age would usually read but, it was the short stories that mad...more When I was a kid, even before I wanted to be a musician, I wanted to be a short story writer. Not an author or the more generic title of "writer," but specifically a short story writer. As an adolescent, I would sit in my room and read the short stories of O. Henry, Mark Twain, Ray Bradbury, Edgar Allen Poe and pretty much anyone else I could get my hands on. I certainly read lots of novels and probably more nonfiction than someone my age would usually read but, it was the short stories that made me dream of one day becoming a writer.

I guess I still carry this dream around or at least the love for great short fiction. While cruising the Amazon Kindle Store trying to choose a new book to read on my beloved Kindle reading device (if you don't know what that is and you're even a semi serious reader, you owe it to yourself to visit the Kindle page at Amazon) I ran across a new collection of short stories by Stephen King. I've always loved his short fiction so, I clicked the link to read the descriptions and reviews of the book. In the description it mentioned that King had rekindled (that's probably an unfortunate pun, since I was reading about this on my Kindle) his interest in writing short fiction while editing the 2007 edition of the popular "Best American Short Stories" series.

While I still plan to read King's new collection, my interest immediately shifted to this anthology. One of the great things about Stephen King is that he is not only a gifted writer, no matter what the literary snobs sometimes think, but he is also one of the world's foremost fans of fiction and his selections for this yearly collection did not disappoint.

The titles and authors of the powerful stories in this book are too numerous to mention here so I'll just say that there wasn't a week story in the bunch and there were several which had me thumbing to the author notes at the back of the book to find out what else they had written. I hadn't read one of the annual best of books for several years and I had forgotten how strongly they reaffirm my belief that short fiction is not dead and, like blues or jazz in clubs all over the world, is still being practiced and honed to a fine art in dozens of literary magazines just outside the window of mainstream fiction.

The question is, did this collection make me want to be a short story writer again? I would say yes but that particular dream has never completely died.(less)

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Feb 06, 2009 Emily rated it 5 of 5 stars

I loved this book!! My favorite stories were
"Balto" by T.C. Boyle,
"Where Will You Go When Your Skin Cannot Contain You" by William Gay, "Wake" by Beverly Jensen (I especially loved that one),
"Findings and Impressions" by Stellar Kim,
"The Boy in Zaquitos" by Bruce McAllister
"Dimension" by Alice Munro
"The Bris" by Eileen Pollack

What I particularly liked is that the selections were not all grim and disturbing, as if contemporary fiction has to bother you in order to be good. All of these storie...more

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Apr 01, 2009 Judah rated it 4 of 5 stars

I love this collection of short stories. Picked it up to keep me occupied on a long plane ride and it was perfect. Stephen King and a co-editor chose the stories. I've never read a King novel, but I've picked up from his column in Entertainment Weekly that he has a great eye for talent under and on top of the radar. Beautiful, touching and odd stories abound in this book...from relationships to girls being raised by wolves. One of my favorite experiences with the book has been reading about the...more

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Dec 16, 2007 Ann rated it 5 of 5 stars

Lots of good stories here. Steve took most of my recommendations, I was pleased. This one DeVita guy snuck in though. Oh well, he's got chops, as we say in the biz.

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Jan 01, 2009 Casey rated it 2 of 5 stars

Read this collection a while ago, and the only story that stood out then and still stands out is the very first one. "Pa's Darling" by Louis Auchincloss is a daughter's account of the shadow her father has cast over her life. This is particularly true of her two husbands, whom she feels were both stolen away, figuratively, by her father's sheer force of personality. The character's voice is pitch perfect; she is educated and opinionated and far more observant than her father ever gives her credi...more

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Jun 17, 2011 ~ Cheryl ~ rated it 4 of 5 stars

I picked this book up off a bargain table at my local bookstore, and only because Stephen King was editor. Good move on my part!

I figured that if I enjoy so much of King's fiction, I could trust him to assemble a collection of short stories that will appeal to me on some level. I was right. In his introduction, King decries the sort of short story which is guarded and self-conscious rather than gloriously open. Self-important rather than interesting. Thankfully, in the selection process, he enco...more

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Mar 08, 2011 Alison rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2010, 2011, american, fiction, literature

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I've been boycotting short stories for the last couple of years. It's hard to explain why. I actually prefer semi-ambiguous endings, and I prefer the literary and lyrical over the straight-up entertainment type of reading. But I began to feel that every short story I read was "too writer-ly," that the author was being weird just to be weird, or that the ambiguity of the larger meaning of the story was dissatisfying rather than stirring or thought-provoking. Oh,...more As I mentioned in an earlier post, I've been boycotting short stories for the last couple of years. It's hard to explain why. I actually prefer semi-ambiguous endings, and I prefer the literary and lyrical over the straight-up entertainment type of reading. But I began to feel that every short story I read was "too writer-ly," that the author was being weird just to be weird, or that the ambiguity of the larger meaning of the story was dissatisfying rather than stirring or thought-provoking. Oh, and not to mention, too many of them were dark and depressing--and again, I *like* the darker fair most of the time.

So it was probably good timing that, when I found this series entry on a clearance table, I picked up the 2007 year, with Stephen King as edition editor. Not only were all of the stories in this edition accessible and straightforward, but also, King's intro essay actually addresses the "too writerly" trend (my words, not his. Read his essay to see what he's really trying to say. I'm doing a quick and dirty stab at this here.) Anyway, it's hard to explain how this edition is different, but I've been reading this Best Of series on and off since the mid 90s, and this book definitely had a different feel than all the others I've read--and yet the stories are still literary, and still feature some of the biggest names in contemporary literature, like Alice Munro, T.C. Boyle and Richard Russo.

That said, I didn't find many of them to be as memorable or as moving as I have with "Best Of" stories in the past. With one exception:

The story "Findings & Impressions" by Stellar Kim almost literally took my breath away. I found myself sobbing at the end, which is not something that happens often. (I might tear up fairly frequently at movies, but short stores? No.) Perhaps this one just caused me to "project" too much, since the main character is stricken with terminal cancer at my exact current age. It was so stirring I felt compelled to keep reading and yet had to stop and set it down every few minutes-- I wanted to savor it and yet was "afraid" (not in the typical sense associated with Stephen King) to know what was going to happen.(less)

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Aug 07, 2010 Peachy rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-i-own, story-collections, 2010

I read a story or two from here everytime I start another novel. A way to cleanse, one might say. One question, though: If this collection is the best OF ALL AMERICA, why do I feel as if I am not the intended audience? I am seventeen years old, and I get the impression these stories would make more sense and be more moving if I was say, 50 years old or more.

EDIT: 04/09/10
Finally finished. I don't think I'll bother reading this again, for the simple fact that for the author's stories I liked, I b...more

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Jan 17, 2009 Ben rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: if you're near me, and you know me, ask and I'll lend you this book

Three stars for the best stories... not for the average quality of the book as a whole!

At first, I thought I'd figured out what a Best American edited by Stephen King was going to look like: straightforward told tales, with a point of drama or literary shock that would catch your attention, and hopefully cover over for other awkwardnesses in the writing. That was my impression for the first half of the book. By the end though, it was yet another year (now 2 past!) of Best American Short Stories....more

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Oct 31, 2008 Tiny Pants rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, series, short-stories

I'm a Best American Short Stories fanatic, and had high hopes for a Stephen King edited-edition -- he read more widely than most guest editors, might bring in more unique voices, etc, etc. And yes -- there were more authors I hadn't heard of than normal, and way less of the New Yorker and way more of other venues for short fiction. In spite of this, however, the collection was more uniform than any in recent memory, and at least for this reader, that meant for the most part uniformly unappealing...more

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Jun 08, 2008 Lena rated it 3 of 5 stars

I've always been put off by books that were all about the doom and gloom. I can understand that not everything is sunshine and daisies, but I read for the escapism and I want to leave the harshness of real life at the door, so to speak.

I actually had to read this book for class, and despite the fact that I didn't personally like it very much, I must admit that I would have never tried it if I hadn't had to read it.

The story I had to read was John Barth's "Toga Party", which deals with one couple...more I've always been put off by books that were all about the doom and gloom. I can understand that not everything is sunshine and daisies, but I read for the escapism and I want to leave the harshness of real life at the door, so to speak.

I actually had to read this book for class, and despite the fact that I didn't personally like it very much, I must admit that I would have never tried it if I hadn't had to read it.

The story I had to read was John Barth's "Toga Party", which deals with one couple's very, very depressing view of growing old and their impending death. I was put off by it, because the level of depression is completely unbelievable to me (Maybe not to some people, but I would have never thought about aging and death in that manner, and honestly, I wouldn't want to), and I almost put the book down, vowing to only touch it again when I needed to do another reading assignment, and then sell it off when I got through the class.

As a lot of people have mentioned in earlier reviews, the guest editor for this book was Stephen King. I guess I probably shouldn't have been surprised by the level of despair that's present in this book, understanding Mr. King's mastery of dark fiction (Even though I also think he's really funny, but I'll stay on topic).

Eventually, though, in a fit of boredom, I was looking around for something to read, and I came upon this book again. Being desperate, I decided to look at the other stories inside.

I have to say that the book was an easy read. The stories had me sympathizing with the characters, but that's just it-- just sympathy, I couldn't read about the events in their lives and say "Oh, man, I know what that's like and that really bites", because I can't say I've ever had my children suffocated by a deranged spouse (God forbid), or watched one of my friends attempt to commit hara kiri at a costume party.

... Long story short, most of the characters do not really strive to overcome their less-than-satisfactory circumstances. They simply give in to the bad; go down without a fight, and that's not really enough to keep me reading.

The strongest points of the book were definitely the stories with a more fantastic flavor to them. "St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves" and "Where Will You Go When Your Skin Cannot Contain You?" were definitely up my alley; I really want to read more of William Gay's material.
Because I would like to keep those two stories around, I decided to hold onto the book after my class is over. But if they hadn't been included, I'd be running to Half.com the second I got out of the class.(less)

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May 29, 2008 Jack rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: short story lovers with quick trigger fingers

Shelves: ho-hum

Stephen King, this year's guest editor and a living "God" of bestsellers, writes in his Introduction that he tried to avoid "stories that felt show-offy rather than entertaining, self-important rather than interesting, guarded and self-conscious rather than gloriously open, and - worst of all - written for editors and teachers rather than for readers."

He should have tried harder.

Literary taste is a very subjective and individual thing. But to this reader's taste, a full handfull of the twenty fa...more

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Nov 22, 2008 Atman rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, short-stories, to-re-read

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I'm not sure what I was expecting when I started reading this. With Stephen King as the editor, maybe I was expecting some really lurid creepy stories. Well I wasn't too surprised to discover that few of the short stories here were of that type.

I'm not very good at expressing how I feel about things I read, but some standouts for me:

In "Toga Party", John Barth gives two different takes on dying and getting old. Both takes seem shocking, but one of them also has an endearing quality.

In "Balto", b...more

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Dec 09, 2012 Peter rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

After more than four years, I look back and try to remember the stories from this collection. Usually, if I do remember a story, it's because I loved it or I loathed it. Here are the results from this collection I read back for Spring workshop:

Loved-
"Toga Party" by John Barth. It's a bit straightforward and mundane at first, but this is one that sat inside me long after I read it and kept me thinking, never satisfied that I had figured it out.

"Riding the Doghouse" by Randy DeVita. A clear "Steph...more

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About Stephen King

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Stephen Edwin King was born in Portland, Maine in 1947, the second son of Donald and Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King. After his parents separated when Stephen was a toddler, he and his older brother, David, were raised by his mother. Parts of his childhood were spent in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where his father's family...more Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Stephen Edwin King was born in Portland, Maine in 1947, the second son of Donald and Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King. After his parents separated when Stephen was a toddler, he and his older brother, David, were raised by his mother. Parts of his childhood were spent in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where his father's family was at the time, and in Stratford, Connecticut. When Stephen was eleven, his mother brought her children back to Durham, Maine, for good. Her parents, Guy and Nellie Pillsbury, had become incapacitated with old age, and Ruth King was persuaded by her sisters to take over the physical care of the elderly couple. Other family members provided a small house in Durham and financial support. After Stephen's grandparents passed away, Mrs. King found work in the kitchens of Pineland, a nearby residential facility for the mentally challenged.

Stephen attended the grammar school in Durham and then Lisbon Falls High School, graduating in 1966. From his sophomore year at the University of Maine at Orono, he wrote a weekly column for the school newspaper, THE MAINE CAMPUS. He was also active in student politics, serving as a member of the Student Senate. He came to support the anti-war movement on the Orono campus, arriving at his stance from a conservative view that the war in Vietnam was unconstitutional. He graduated from the University of Maine at Orono in 1970, with a B.A. in English and qualified to teach on the high school level. A draft board examination immediately post-graduation found him 4-F on grounds of high blood pressure, limited vision, flat feet, and punctured eardrums.

He and Tabitha Spruce married in January of 1971. He met Tabitha in the stacks of the Fogler Library at the University of Maine at Orono, where they both worked as students. As Stephen was unable to find placement as a teacher immediately, the Kings lived on his earnings as a laborer at an industrial laundry, and her student loan and savings, with an occasional boost from a short story sale to men's magazines.

Stephen made his first professional short story sale ("The Glass Floor") to Startling Mystery Stories in 1967. Throughout the early years of his marriage, he continued to sell stories to men's magazines. Many of these were later gathered into the Night Shift collection or appeared in other anthologies.

In the fall of 1971, Stephen began teaching high school English classes at Hampden Academy, the public high school in Hampden, Maine. Writing in the evenings and on the weekends, he continued to produce short stories and to work on novels.(less)

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