I’m Reading 100 Short Stories in 100 Days
Over the next 100 days I’ll be reading one short story. Just for no-good-reason fun. Why short stories? I’m a big fan of the read-it-in-a-single-sitting nature of short fiction. Plus, it’s a great way to quickly get exposure to a bunch of different authors. I’ll be keeping track of progress, titles, and authors in real-time here in this post. I’ll also add links when available.
The Rules
- Stories must be fewer than 30 pages.
- 75+ stories must be new-to-me ie. stories I’ve never read.
- Stories must be fictional.
The Progress
📗📗📗📗📗📗📗📗📗📗📗📗📗📗📗📗📗📗📗📗📗📗📗📗📗📗📗📗📗📗📗📗📗📗📗📗📗📗📗📗📗📗📗📗📗📗📗📗📗📗📗📗📗 stories down…
📘📘📘📘📘📘📘📘📘📘📘📘📘📘📘📘📘📘📘📘📘📘📘📘📘📘📘📘📘📘📘📘📘📘📘📘📘📘📘📘📘📘📘📘📘📘📘 … stories to go.
The Short Story List
1. “Who Will Greet You at Home?” by Lesley Nneka Arimah | Read March 11th, 2020
“The yarn baby lasted a good month, emitting dry, cotton-soft gurgles and pooping little balls of lint, before Ogechi snagged its thigh on a nail and it unravelled as she continued walking, mistaking its little huffs for the beginnings of hunger, not the cries of an infant being undone.”
Read it here. This story can also be found in Arimah’s short story collection “What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky: Stories.”
2. “So Much Water So Closer to Home” by Raymond Carver | Read March 12th, 2020
“My husband eats with a good appetite. But I don’t think he’s really hungry. He chews, arms on the table, and stares at something across the room. He looks at me and looks away. He wipes his mouth on the napkin. He shrugs, and goes on eating.”
Read it here. This story can also be found in Carver’s short story collection “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.”
3. “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” by Ursula K. Le Guin | Read March 13th, 2020
“With a clamor of bells that set the swallows soaring, the Festival of Summer came to the city Omelas, bright-towered by the sea. The rigging of the boats in harbor sparkled with flags.”
Read it here. This story can also be found in Le Guin’s “New Dimensions 3" and “The Wind’s Twelve Quarters” story collections.
5. “Daisy” by Chang-Rae Lee | Read March 14th, 2020
“The day that Daisy died was a lot like this one, early August, with the sun seemingly stuck right at the top of the sky, casting light and heat that made all the neighborhood kids vault over each other with glee and subdued everyone else, moms and dads and older folks and even the family pets.”
5. “The Egg” by Andy Weir | Read March 15th, 2020
“You were on your way home when you died.
It was a car accident. Nothing particularly remarkable, but fatal nonetheless. You left behind a wife and two children. It was a painless death.”
6. ”Novostroïka” by Maria Reva | Read March 16th, 2020
“Daniil Ivanovich Blinov climbed the crumbling steps of the city council. The statue of Grandfather Lenin towered over the building, squinting into the smoggy distance. The winter’s first snowflakes settled on the statue’s shoulders like dandruff.”
Read it here. This story can also be found in Reva’s “Good Citizens Need Not Fear” story collection.
7. “The Trout” by Sean O’Faolain | Ready March 17th, 2020
“One of the first places Julia always ran to when they arrived in G — was The Dark Walk. It is a laurel walk, very old, almost gone wild, a lofty midnight tunnel of smooth, sinewy branches.”
8. “The Yellow Wallpaper” By Charlotte Perkins Gilman | Read March 18th, 2020
“It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer. A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house, and reach the height of romantic felicity — but that would be asking too much of fate!
Still I will proudly declare that there is something queer about it.
Else, why should it be let so cheaply? And why have stood so long untenanted?”
9. “The Pomegranate” by Kawabata Yasunari | Read March 19th, 2020
“In the high wind that night the pomegranate tree was stripped of its leaves.
The leaves lay in a circle around the base.”
10. “Diary of an Interesting Year” by Helen Simpson | Read March 20th, 2020
“February 12, 2040. My thirtieth birthday. G. gave me this little spiral-bound notebook and a Biro. It’s a good present, hardly any rust on the spiral and no water damage to the paper. I’m going to start a diary.
11. “Seven People Dancing” by Langston Hughes | Read March 21st, 2020
“November. Cold outside. It was warm inside, and the big combination played twelve wonderful records without stopping. Seven people were dancing, three couples and Marcel. Midnight.”
12. “All Summer in a Day” by Ray Bradbury | Read March 22nd, 2020
“It had been raining for seven years; thousands upon thousands of days compounded and filled from one end to the other with rain, with the drum and gush of water, with the sweet crystal fall of showers and the concussion of storms so heavy they were tidal waves come over the islands.”
13. “Girls, At Play” by Celeste Ng | Read March 23rd, 2020
“This is how we play the game: pink means kissing; red means tongue. Green means up your shirt; blue means down his pants. Purple means in your mouth. Black means all the way.”
14. “Two Men Arrive in a Village” by Zadie Smith | Read March 24th, 2020
“Sometimes on horseback, sometimes by foot, in a car or astride motorbikes, occasionally in a tank — having strayed far from the main phalanx — and every now and then from above, in helicopters.”
15. “I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness” by Claire Vaye Watkins | Read March 25th, 2020
“I spent the morning on myspace looking at pictures of my dead ex-boyfriend. The phrase my dead ex-boyfriend is syntactically ambiguous you can’t tell from it whether this boyfriend and I were together when he died. We were not. We’d been broken up for about two years. We were together for three then apart for two then he died. He died in a car crash that’s how he died.”
16. “Wants” by Grace Paley | Read March 26th, 2020
“I saw my ex-husband in the street. I was sitting on the steps of the new library. Hello, my life, I said. We had once been married for twenty-seven years, so I felt justified.”
17. “A Hunger Artist” by Franz Kafka | Read March 27th, 2020
“In the last decades interest in hunger artists has declined considerably. Whereas in earlier days there was good money to be earned putting on major productions of this sort under one’s own management, nowadays that is totally impossible.”
18. “Shh . . . Shh . . .” by Stratis Haviaras | Read March 28th, 2020
“It could be any day of the month in any rank of the middle tier of the night and any time in the hourglass and the weather ankle-deep in a freeze.”
19. “Without Inspection” by Edwidge Danticat | Read March 29th, 2020
“It took Arnold six and a half seconds to fall five hundred feet. During that time, an image of his son, Paris, flashed before his eyes: Paris, dressed in his red school-uniform shirt and khakis the day of his kindergarten graduation.”
20. “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez | Read March 30th, 2020
“On the third day of rain they had killed so many crabs inside the house that Pelayo had to cross his drenched courtyard and throw them into the sea, because the newborn child had a temperature all night and they thought it was due to the stench. The world had been sad since Tuesday.”
21. “Haunting Olivia” by Karen Russell | Read March 31st, 2020
“My brother Wallow has been kicking around Gannon’s Boat Graveyard for more than an hour, too embarrassed to admit that he doesn’t see any ghosts. Instead, he slaps at the ocean with jilted fury.”
22. “The Man in the Woods” by Shirley Jackson | Read April 1st, 2020
“Wearily, moving his feet because he had nothing else to do, Christopher went on down the road, hating the trees that moved slowly against his progress, hating the dust beneath his feet, hating the sky, hating this road, all roads, everywhere.”
23. “Reading Comprehension — Text №1” by Alejandro Zambra | Read April 2nd, 2020
“After so many study guides, so many practice tests and proficiency and achievement tests, it would have been impossible for us not to learn something, but we forgot everything almost right away and, I’m afraid, for good.”
24. “Sweetheart Sorrow” by David Hoon Kim | Read April 3rd, 2020
“Fumiko had locked herself in her room. No amount of pleading or bargaining seemed to sway her resolve not to come out. We hadn’t argued.”
25. “Gooseberries” by Anton Chekov | Read April 4th, 2020
“From early morning the sky had been overcast with clouds; the day was still, cool, and wearisome, as usual on grey, dull days when the clouds hang low over the fields and it looks like rain, which never comes. Ivan Ivanich, the veterinary surgeon, and Bourkin, the schoolmaster, were tired of walking and the fields seemed endless to them.”
26. “The Boundary” by Jhumpa Lahiri | Read April 5th, 2020
“Every Saturday, a new family comes to stay. Some arrive early in the morning, from afar, ready to begin their vacation. Others don’t turn up until sunset, in bad moods, maybe having lost their way.”
27. “The Life You Save May Be Your Own” by Flannery O’Connor | Ready April 6th, 2020
“The Old Woman and her daughter were sitting on their porch when Mr. Shiftlet came up their road for the first time. The old woman slid to the edge of her chair and leaned forward, shading her eyes from the piercing sunset with her hand.”
28. “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates | Read April 7th, 2020
“‘Where’re we going?’
He looked at her. He took off the sunglasses and she saw how pale the skin around his eyes was, like holes that were not in shadow but instead in light. His eyes were like chips of broken glass that catch the light in an amiable way. He smiled. It was as if the idea of going for a ride somewhere, to someplace, was a new idea to him.
‘Just for a ride, Connie sweetheart.’”
29. “Wildwood” by Junot Díaz | Read April 8th, 2020
“It was like the stupidest thing I ever did. I was miserable. And so bored. But of course I wouldn’t admit it. I had run away, so I was happy! Happy!”
30. “A Death” by Stephen King | Read April 9th, 2020
“Jim Trusdale had a shack on the west side of his father’s gone-to-seed ranch, and that was where he was when Sheriff Barclay and half a dozen deputized townsmen found him, sitting in the one chair by the cold stove, wearing a dirty barn coat and reading an old issue of the Black Hills Pioneer by lantern light. Looking at it, anyway.”
31. “An Honest Woman” by Ottessa Moshfegh | Read April 10th, 2020
“In the early afternoon, Jeb was in the back yard, dragging a rusted lawn chair across the dirt. He sat in a spot from which he could see the girl doing dishes through her open kitchen door.
‘Beware the storm!’ he yelled when she finally walked out to the porch and sat on the warped wooden back steps. ‘I love this time, the calm before.’
She looked at Jeb through the chain-link fence. He was just sitting there, facing her yard as if it were a TV set.”
32. “I Stand Here Ironing” by Tillie Olsen | Read April 11th, 2020
“I stand here ironing, and what you asked me moves tormented back and forth with the iron. ‘I wish you would manage the time to come in and talk with me about your daughter. I’m sure you can help me understand her. She’s a youngster who needs help and whom I’m deeply interested in helping.’
‘Who needs help.’ — Even if I came, what good would it do? You think because I am her mother I have a key, or that in some way you could use me as a key? She has lived for nineteen years. There is all that life that has happened outside of me, beyond me.”
33. “Fable” by Charles Yu | Read April 12th, 2020
“Once upon a time, there was a man whose therapist thought it would be a good idea for the man to work through some stuff by telling a story about that stuff.
The man lived in a one-bedroom efficiency cottage all by himself, in a sort of dicey part of town. One day, the man woke up and realized that this was pretty much it for him. It wasn’t terrible. But it wasn’t great, either. And not likely to improve. The man was smart enough to realize this, yet not quite smart enough to do anything about it. He lived out the rest of his days and eventually died. The end. Happy now?
The man could see that his therapist was not amused.”
34. “The Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allen Poe | Read April 13th, 2020
“It was a voluptuous scene, that masquerade. But first let me tell of the rooms in which it was held. There were seven — an imperial suite, In many palaces, however, such suites form a long and straight vista, while the folding doors slide back nearly to the walls on either hand, so that the view of the whole extant is scarcely impeded. Here the case was very different; as might have been expected from the duke’s love of the ‘bizarre.’”
35. “On This Side” by Yuko Sakata | Read April 14th, 2020
“Toru found a girl sitting on the stairs in the midsummer heat when he came home from an early shift. Even from half a block away, she stood out against his decrepit apartment building. She sat hugging her bare knees in white cotton shorts, her long dark hair draped forward over both shoulders.”
36. “Everything is Far From Here” by Cristina Henríquez | Read April 15th, 2020
“On the first day, there’s a sense of relief. There are other feelings, too, but relief is among them. She has arrived, at least. After three weeks. After a broken sandal strap, sunburn on her cheeks, mud in her ears, bugs in her hair, blisters around her ankles, bruises on her hips, boiled eggs, bottled water, sour berries, pickup trucks and train cars and footsteps through the dirt, sunrises and sunsets, nagging doubt and crackling hope — she has arrived.”
37. “Love Lessons Mondays, 9 A.M.” by Lara Vapnyar | Read April 16th, 2020
“During my last months at home, everything about my mother had irritated me: her questions, her suggestions — even the sound of her voice. I couldn’t wait to begin my new life. I hadn’t even bothered to kiss her goodbye at the train station. But now I wished that I had somebody, anybody, to talk to.”
38. “The Erlking” Sarah Shun-lien Bynumg | Read April 17th, 2020
“Her child is named Ondine but answers only to Ruthie. Ruthie’s hand rests damply in hers, and together they watch two scrappy fairies race by, the swifter one waving a long string of raffle tickets. “Don’t you want to wear your wings?” Kate asked that morning, but Ruthie wasn’t in the mood. Sometimes they are in cahoots, sometimes not.”
39. “The Art of Losing” by Yoon Choi | April 18th, 2020
“Watch the boy, she had said.
Or had she? Some things he knew for sure. His name was Han Mo-Sae. His wife was Han Young-Ja. They had been married forty years, possibly fifty. The wife would know. They had two children: Timothy and Christina. They would always be his children but they were no longer kids. He had to keep remembering that.”
40. “Original Beauty” by Heather Clay | Read April 19th, 2020
“There aren’t any bathrooms near the pool, and Mitz has to go. As a kid, she felt blessed with an unspoken permission to pee underwater and did so without shame, relishing, even, the warm brush of urine against her thighs as she treaded. Now she knows better.”
41. “The Fun They Had” by Isaac Asimov | Read April 20th, 2020
“Margie even wrote about it that night in her diary. On the page headed May 17, 2155, she wrote, “Today Tommy found a real book!”
42. “The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains” by Neil Gaiman | April 21st, 2020
“You ask me if I can forgive myself? I can forgive myself for many things. For where I left him. For what I did. But I will not forgive myself for the year that I hated my daughter, when I believed her to have run away, perhaps to the city.”
43. “The Colour of Space” by HP Lovecraft | April 22nd, 2020
“West of Arkham the hills rise wild, and there are valleys with deep woods that no axe has ever cut. There are dark narrow glens where the trees slope fantastically, and where thin brooklets trickle without ever having caught the glint of sunlight.”
44. “The Pinch” by Dina Nayeri | Read April 23rd, 2020
“Parvin and Suraya rented a small but comfortable Niagara Falls cottage kissing the American border, just as their older sister Goli had instructed. Their father, Baba Ardeshir, had managed only a Canadian visa, so he wouldn’t be able to cross over to see their homes in Pompano Beach and rural Georgia.”
45. “Lulu” by Te-Ping Chen | Read April 24th, 2020
“The hour of our birth had been carefully forecast, a winter’s day Cesarean timed to coincide with Dr. Feng’s lunch break. The doctor pulled me out first, indignant and squalling, like a hotel guest roused and tossed before checkout.”
46. “Champion Beasts” by Aimee Cryer | Read April 25th, 2020
“Gunie Gunn went home early from school because her armpits smelled bad. She called her mom and told her that she felt like maybe she would throw up and her mom said, ‘ok.’”
47. “Pineapple Crush” by Etgar Keret | Read April 26th, 2020
“The first hit is the one that colors your world. Save it for the evening — and any piece of trash flickering across your TV screen will be riveting.”
48. “A Beautiful Wife Is Suddenly Dead” by Margaret Meehan | April 27th, 2020
“Karen Roberts is going to fall out the window. She likes to perch her ass on the sill and lean against the cool glass pane, slid open halfway, the breeze lashing at the sliver of skin between the hem of her shirt and the waistband of her jeans.”
49. “The Great Silence” by Ted Chiang | ReadApril 28th, 2020
“The humans use Arecibo to look for extraterrestrial intelligence. Their desire to make a connection is so strong that they’ve created an ear capable of hearing across the universe.”
50. “The Other One” by Tessa Hadley | Read April 29th, 2020
“When Heloise was twelve, in 1986, her father was killed in a car crash. But it was a bit more complicated than that.”
51. “The Migration of the Stork” | Read April 30th, 2020
“Walking on Pisha Street one gray afternoon — the sort of afternoon from which only dreary things can be expected — I happened upon R.P. standing on the curb opposite me.”
52. “The Migration of the Stork” | Read April 30th, 2020
“One of my earliest memories starts with me sobbing. I refused to be soothed no matter what Mom and Dad tried.
Dad gave up and left the bedroom, but Mom took me into the kitchen and sat me down at the breakfast table.”
53. “Slingshot” by Souvankham Thammavongsa | Read May 2nd, 2020
“I was seventy when I met Richard. He was thirty-two. He told me he was a young man, and I didn’t respond to that because I really didn’t know what that was, to be a young man, if that was a good thing to be or a bad one.”
54. Next story coming… May 2nd, 2020
Short Story Hubs (Adding to This List as I Go)
- Narrative Magazine
- The New Yorker Fiction Section
- Harvard Review Digital Archives
- Lit Hub — Short Stories Tag
Good Resources to Explore While Self-Isolating
- Quarantine Book Club. Recurring virtual sessions and Q&As with authors.
- The Moral Alignment Code. While I may be the only person who didn’t know about the moral alignment code, I’m having a lot of fun letting it simmer in my brain. And also now seeing people reference it everywhere. Lots of fun creative potential here.
- Generate a Character Name & History. If you’re stuck for character names or just want to give a nameless character a bit more structure check out this name and history generator. It’ll give you a name, a date of birth & death, and a cause of death for your character.
- Tiny Spells. Really lovely newsletter that shares daily self-care activities and thought exercises.
- Alamo at Home. Support Alamo Drafthouse by purchasing tickets and watching their film line-ups from home. They even include a quirky pre-screen show to watch before the film, just like they do in theaters.
- Query Shark
