For the Love of Short Stories

Last year, I got this Short Story Advent Calendar from Hingston + Olsen. (Writing this now, I realize I didn’t get it again this year, though I wish I had. Mental note: treat yourself to one again next year!) Every day throughout December, I read a short story… and what a joy!

Every day (more or less) in December, I read the next story in the advent calendar, and then tweet about it.

The year ended, but I’d enjoyed my daily story so much, that I set out to keep it going for 2024. I’ve never been that big on resolutions, or giving myself specific projects or even goals, probably mostly for fear of falling short and then feeling guilty. And so I didn’t call it a “resolution,” I didn’t even really call it a project or a goal or anything at all. But that’s semantics. The idea though: a short story, every day.

So, all this year, almost ever day, I’d wake up and read a short story first thing in the morning with my coffee. Some days I wouldn’t have time in the morning (or, I would have time, but I’d get distracted with whatever else life can distract us with) and I’d read it later in the day — in my office before class, or between classes, or at home after class, or last thing in bed before falling asleep. And then some days I’d miss. NBD! I didn’t make myself make it up the next day by reading two or anything (though sometimes I would, for fun, if I had some extra time). Rest days are important too!

Like with the advent calendar stories, I’d try, every day, to tweet about the story I’d read. A pic of the first page of the story and the book cover, a little sentence or two about my thoughts. Sometimes it would spark a little conversation about the story; at least a few times someone told me they read a story or picked up a book because of my note. And that was awesome, I love recommending and talking about stories! But it was mostly for me. To keep a little log, but also to hold myself accountable. You gotta tweet about the story you read! I’d think and remind myself surprisingly often.

Much has been made about AI and I don’t want to get too distracted by that digression, but it has had me thinking maybe more than ever about writing as act of thinking itself. I preach this in the classroom all the time, and have been thinking about it even more around these complaints about generative AI, but also, in this Year of Reading, writing even a sentence or two about every story I read has made me more curious and thoughtful about my own reactions, about each story I read, about stories in general. It’s made me a smarter reader.

And on top of all that, I’ve always admired people who keep lists. I love Soderbergh’s annual list of all the media he consumed. Matt Bell’s reading log. Aarik Danielsen’s weekly “Friday Five.” Sean Fennessey used to keep a blog (a tumblr?) ranking every movie he saw all year; he either doesn’t do it anymore, or I just can’t find it, or he does a version on Letterboxd now). Probably at least a couple others I’m forgetting.

Which is all to say… I’m gonna try to do this as a Substack. We’ll see how it goes. It would be fun if people check it out, have some conversations in the comments, maybe get inspired to read something I’m reading. Or something else! But my primary goal is to do it for myself. And, of course, I might drop the ball after a few weeks and find it either not worth doing or just taking more time than it feels worth.

To start, I’m gonna follow Aarik’s lead and try and make these posts a Friday thing.

We’ll see!

Here’s what I read this last week:

Dec. 14: “Between the Shadows and the Soul” by Lauren Groff

Basically what I have in mind when I think of a “New Yorker story.” By which I mean I spend the first ~1/2 finding it technically amazing but not really connecting with it… but then by the end it totally won me over & knocked me out.

There’s a moment late in the story that just felt so powerful and raw and is going to stick with me.

Bet said, It is always like this. But nothing happened. It’s a big nothing. I flirted, yes, but I flirt with everyone. I flirt with Mikey, I flirt with Linda, who’s maybe eighty. But she is so timid, your Eliza, I waited, and she flirted back, but she made no move. And, even if something did happen, what’s it to you? You don’t own her.

We’ve been together forever, Willie said. We’re married.

There was a long pause, and Bet’s voice changed. O.K., she said. You are suffering. I am not cruel. So I say now that I am not interested in Eliza. These old wives, they’re fun for a month, then they get clingy and crazy. I promise . . .

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Dec. 15: “Tell the Women We’re Going” by Raymond Carver

I’ve (of course?) read Carver here and there, but not in forever, and never really dug in. I read through Cathedral last year and it knocked me out even more than I’d expected to. Basic take, but try. I’ve been picking my way through What We Talk About When We Talk About Love the last month or two and it is… not knocking me out. There’s some great moments and lines here and there, but these stories largely aren’t doing that much for me. This one kinda felt like what I imagine when I imagine a bad, cliche attempt at a “Carver story.”

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Dec. 16: “Dorchester” by Steven Duong

One of my goals (?) for reading a story every day was to keep up with my New Yorker’s (yesterday’s story) and also read through the annual Best American Short Stories.

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Dec. 17: “Digging” by Nick Rees Gardner

Really loving this collection. I read the first few stories, then read all of Michael Deagler’s Early Sobrieties, then returned to Gardner’s Delinquents and Other Stories with this one and it was a bit of whiplash, reading 200 pages of the first year of Deagler’s narrator’s sobriety, and then jumping right back into a story filled with alcohol and drugs.

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Dec. 18: “All Stories” by Kevin Wilson

Kevin’s one of my fave writers, I’m totally in the bag for basically everything he writes, but still. Wow. What a knockout of a story. Another Kevin Wilson gem.

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Dec. 19: “How to Eat Your Own Heart” by Gina Chung

I didn’t love this one. Which, as is often the case, says as much about me as a reader as it does the story. I’m a little worn out on “How To” shorts, it turns out. I wrote a bunch of my own years ago (many collected into a kind of novella-in-short-shorts, How to Predict the Weather), have read and published across journals a number of others, and published Kirsten Reneau’s “How to Properly Kill a Fly” fours years ago, and often teach it, and teaching it has made me love the story more and more with every group of students continuing to bring something new to it, but I feel like it has also made me love the “form” less and less.

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Dec. 20: “Doctor Visit” by Amy Stuber

This is probably my favorite story I’ve read in a while. It does all the things I most love when a short story does — it surprised me, it made me think about craft, it made me forget about craft, it felt both familiar and excitingly new, it made me want to stop and just think about it, it made me want to write…

I guess it works kind of like a triptych (or I guess maybe a quadriptych (??)), but it reads more like a story with this evolving chorus (which is maybe semantics and maybe that’s just what a polyptych is, or at least can be) of who the narrator “should mention (they’re) fucking” (the ophthalmologist, the the dermatologist, the radiologist), which each of those leading into a “This is something I think about…”

It ultimately feels kinda like a magic trick, which is one of my highest compliments for a short story. I can’t think of anything I’ve read quite like it.

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I think that’s it for a first post. Thanks.

-Aaron

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