The Short Story Collection Oprah Winfrey Can't Put Down

Oprah's Book Club has chosen a summer reading list: "25 Books You Can't Put Down." As I've previously observed, Oprah Winfrey has never chosen a short story collection for her book club. So it's great to see that one of the 25 books on the summer list is a book of short stories. (You go, girl!) At number 19 (I'm not sure what the order signifies) is Robert Boswell's The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards, published by Graywolf Press. We haven't received this collection as an entry for The Story Prize yet (ahem)*, but it's definitely on our radar and looks like an excellent choice.

Boswell is not exactly an unknown, but there are other new short story collections I would have been a little less surprised to see on Oprah's list. One, would be Nothing Right by Antonya Nelson, who is Boswell's wife. Another would be Jean Thompson's Do Not Deny Me (we're still waiting for an entry for this, too), which I've seen on other summer reading lists. I also think The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (ditto) would appeal to Oprah's audience. But perhaps my view of Oprah's, her staff's, and her audience's tastes are too narrow.

In any event, Oprah sells books like no one else. And having a short story on the list is all good. How about several next year?

* I feel duty bound to note that The Story Prize deadline for books published from Jan. through June is July 15.

Addendum: O.: The Oprah Magazine also has a list of 20 beach reads, which includes Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout and Phillip Lopate's Two Marriages. Given the lists, I'm not sure what the distinction between a book you can't put down and a beach read is, but at least Oprah is pushing reading.

Updike at the Beach: Short Story Collections on Summer Reading Lists

We're happy to see that several short story collections have made summer reading lists. The Wall Street Journal Web site lists three: John Updike's posthumous collection, My Father's Tears, Jean Thomspon's Do Not Deny Me, and James Lasdun's It's Beginning to Hurt. I haven't read any of these yet but have high hopes for the Thompson and Lasdun books because I've admired their previous collections. (We won't be reading Updike's collection for The Story Prize because only books by living writers are eligible, sad as it is to say this.)

As a side note, The Journal calls all ten of it's fiction picks "novels" and mistakenly states that this is Lasdun's debut collection. In fact, his first was Delerium Eclipse in 1987 (published, I believe, as The Silver Age in the U.K. in 1985). Despite these errors, however, it's the thought that counts, and short story collections on The Journal's list are sure to come to the attention of more readers.

Elsewhere, NPR critic Alan Cheuse, includes Daniyal Mueunuddin's In Other Rooms, Other Wonders among his seven summer picks. This, I have read, and can highly recommend. It definitely lives up to the excellent reviews it has received.

So this summer, grab a short story collection to take along to the beach or the mountains (or, in my case, the NJ Transit's Montclair-Boonton line).