Status Updates From The Best American Short Sto...

Read “Escape from Spiderhead,” a magnificent story by George Saunders. It’s the second story of his that I’ve read, and both were fantastic.

Read Jess Row’s “The Call of Blood.” The story of a nurse and his relationship with his Alzheimer’s patient and her daughter, it’s quite moving. Very intimately told, complex, featuring keen, clear-eyed depictions of wonderfully human characters.

Read “To the Measures Fall” by Richard Powers. This was my first encounter with Powers’ work, and it won’t be my last. His story here is inventive, urgent, crisply and wittily crafted, and packed with ideas. I understand why he’s so acclaimed.

Read Joyce Carol Oates’ “ID,” a harrowing, sad portrait of a neglected, emotionally scarred and stunted 13-year-old girl.

Read Ricardo Nuila’s “Dog Bites,” a fascinating portrait of an eccentric doctor and his eccentric son.

Read “Phantoms” by Steven Millhauser, an intriguing piece with an inventive form and style. Quite different in all those respects from anything else in the anthology.

Read Elizabeth McCracken’s “Property.” She’s such an inventive, energetic writer, whose approach here gives unfiltered, messy life to the chaos of grief.

Read Rebecca Makkai’s heart achingly piercing “Peter Torelli, Falling Apart.”

Read the vivid, grim “The Dungeon Master” by Sam Lipsyte.

Read Claire Keegan’s “Foster,” about an Irish girl being handed off to another couple’s home for a summer. Its subtlety and grace and emotional depths knocked me out.

Read 3 less-than-satisfying stories: Ehud Havezelet’s “Gurov in Manhattan,” which had affecting moments but was also a bit too fussy; and Caitlin Horrocks’ “The Sleep” and Bret Anthony Johnston’s “Soldier of Fortune,” both of which sank under the weight of their irritating pretensions.