Best Books of 2009: Tallying The Short Story Collections Mentioned

I said I wouldn't do this, but I couldn't help myself. Music and book blogger Largehearted Boy made it too easy to compile a list of short story collections that appeared on yearend lists by pulling together fairly comprehensive links to best books lists, and I've tallied the number of mentions various collections have received. (Note: I did not include three popular collections—Alice Munro's Too Much Happiness, The Stories of Lydia Davis, or My Father's Tears by John Updike. The latter two aren't eligible for The Story Prize, and we did not receive an entry for Munro, whose collection was probably mentioned in the most lists.)

Two short story collections showed up more times than any others by a solid margin: Wells Tower's Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned (12 votes) and Daniyal Mueenuddin's In Other Rooms, Other Wonders (9 votes). It's no surprise because these two were among the most widely reviewed. Here's the tally from most mentions to fewest:

12
Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower

9
In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin

4
That Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Love and Obstacles by Aleksander Hemon
Once the Shore by Paul Yoon

3
American Salvage by Bonnie Jo Campbell
Don't Cry by Mary Gaitskill
It's Beginning to Hurt by James Lasdun
Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It by Maile Meloy
Love in Infant Monkeys by Lydia Millet

2
A Good Fall by Ha Jin
How It Ended by Jay McInerney
Nothing Right by Antonya Nelson
Reasons for and Advanatages of Breathing by Lydia Peelle
Do Not Deny Me by Jean Thompson

1
The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards by Robert Boswell
Elegy for Easterly by Petina Gappah
In the Valley of the Kings by Terrence Holt
Spoiled by Caitlin Macy
Going Away Shoes by Jill McCorkle
Big World by Mary Miller
What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us by Laura van den Berg

As I said last year, The Story Prize doesn't choose its three finalists by critical consensus, and we probably read more short story collections than most of the booksellers, bloggers, or reviewers who put out yearend lists do, so we're choosing from a different and larger pool. We'll be announcing our finalists in the next ten days or so, and shortly after that our notable books. I can tell you right now that some of the 21 books on this list won't be among our finalists or on our list of other notable books. And it's also possible that we will honor collections that none of the 26 sources below named. There were a lot of excellent collections in 2009, and we hope to also shine the spotlight on some that haven't gotten enough attention.

Sources: About.com (Tower), Amazon.com (Tower, Meloy, Hemon, Boswell, Holt, Gaitskill), Atlantic (Lasdun), Barnes & Nobel (Tower), Chicago Tribune – Printer’s Row (Campbell, Mueenuddin), Christian Sceince Monitor (Adichie), Cleveland Plain Dealer (Campbell), Entertainment Weekly Shelf Life (Mueenduddin), Idlewild Books (Mueenuddin), Kansas City Star (Campbell, Hemon, Jin, Mueenuddin, Peele, Tower), Largehearted Boy (Lasdun, Miller, Millett, Peele, Thompson, Towers), L.A. Times (Adichie, Lasdun, Meloy, Millet, Yoon), Louisville Courier-Journal (van den Berg), Miami Herald (Thomspon), The New Republic (Adichie, Tower), New York Magazine (Tower), New York Times (Gaitskill, Hemon, Ishigiro, McInerny, Meloy, Mueenuddin, Nelson, Thompson, Tower, Yoon), NPR (Gappah, McCorkle, Mueenuddin (2), Yoon), Philadelphia Inquirer (Jin), Providence Journal (Millet), Publishers Weekly (Mueenuddin), San Francisco Chronicle (Adichie, Gaitskill, Hemon, Macy, Mueenuddin, Nelson, Tower, Yoon), Slate (Tower), St. Louis Post Dispatch (McInerny), Time (Mueenuddin, Tower), Village Voice (Tower).

Why You Should Take Yearend Best Books Lists With A Grain Of Salt

I admit it. Last year, I was somewhat obsessed with the yearend best books lists, keeping track of and tallying the short story collections mentioned by newspapers, magazines, booksellers, blogs, and Web sites as they came to my attention. Short story collections have done so well, on so many levels, in 2009 that I don't feel quite so compelled to trumpet these mentions. I expect short story collections to be well represented on these lists, given the quality and breadth of collections we've read so far this year.

The truth is, readers should take yearend lists with a grain of salt for several reasons:

1. Newspapers and magazines only choose from among the books they review. And as far as short story collections go, they don't necessarily review very many of them.
   
2. Certain books get more attention than others, and those books tend to make the lists. So a tally of short story collections (and all books) on yearend lists is as much a tally of buzz as of excellence.
3. Good books get overlooked. For instance, I didn't see one of last year's finalists, Joe Meno's Demons in the Spring, on any 2008 list. Also, books published early in the year can be forgotten. I haven't seen any mention of Louise Erdrich's collected stories, The Red Convertible, which came out in January.
   
4. It's a matter of taste. This may seem obvious, but some people give a lot of weight to the selections of, say, The New York Times. If you're a discerning reader, you're in as good a position to judge as any reviewer.
   

Of course the lists that matter most to me are the books we choose as finalists for The Story Prize in early January and the list of other notable books we cite (which we post shortly after we announce our finalists). We will have chosen those books out of 78 entered for The Story Prize, which is probably about two-thirds to three-quarters of the short story collections published in the U.S. in 2009. To a certain extent, that addresses points 1 and 2 above. But points 3 and 4 are still in play--any such choices come down to personal preference, and good books are often overlooked in any process.

Best Books: Adding It All Up (But Not Making Book)

If British bookmakers were to take notice of The Story Prize and lay odds on our finalists (as they do for the Booker prize), I'm sure the three short story collections that most frequently appear on 2008 best books lists would have the best odds. Going by the final tally of several lists, those would be: Jhumpa Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth, Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge, and Nam Le's The Boat.

The Story Prize, however, doesn't choose its top three books by critical consensus. Rather, we read every one of the 73 books entered for The Story Prize and choose based on our own reading of those books. I get the sense that a lot of commentators, columnists, writers, and reviewers didn't read all that many story collections. And I'm sure some excellent collections probably didn't get a very wide reading.

In any event, we won't even know which three short story collections we're picking as Story Prize finalists until Julie and I meet to hash it out in early January. Soon after that, we'll also announce our list of other notable collections. So hold your bets.

For the tally below, I consulted 18 sources that named a total of 22 books. I counted inclusion in both the New York Times Sunday Book Review 100 notable books list and their five best books list because those appeared in separate issues. And I stopped counting as of Dec. 14. No doubt there will be more best of 2008 lists, but this isn't exactly scientific anyway; it just gives a sense of the critical consensus based on this sampling. The numbers on the left below represent how many mentions each book received. Here's the complete tally:

12 - Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
10 - Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
9 - The Boat by Nam Le
4 - Say You’re One of Them by Uwem Akpan
4 - Dictation by Cynthia Ozick
3 - Ms. Hempel Chronicles by Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum
3 - Dangerous Laughter by Steven Millhauser
3 - Knockemstiff by Donald Ray Pollock
3 - Fine Just the Way It Is by Annie Proulx
3 - Our Story Begins by Tobias Wolff
2 - Yesterday's Weather by Anne Enright
2 - Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link
1 - A Better Angel by Chris Adrian
1 - The View from the Seventh Layer by Kevin Brockmeier
1 - Lost in Uttar Pradesh by Evan Connell
1 - The Deportees by Roddy Doyle
1 - The People on Privilege Hill by Jane Gardam
1 - I See You Everywhere By Julia Glass
1 - Foreigners by Caryl Phillips
1 - The Size of the World by Joan Silber
1 - Broccoli and Other Tales of Food and Love by Lara Vapnyar
1 - Farewell Navigator by Leni Zumas

Sources (with links to the original TSP posts): Amazon.com, The Atlantic, Barnes & Noble Review, Bloomsbury Review, The Christian Science Monitor, Library Journal, The Los Angeles Times, The Millions (and here), New York magazine, The New York Times Sunday Book Review (100 notable books and top ten books), NPR, Publishers Weekly, Salon, Shelf Awareness, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Time magazine, the Village Voice, and The Washington Post.

More Best Books, No More Best Books

The best of 2008 lists keep coming. Among the Villiage Voice's picks for best books of 2008 is reviewer Lenora Todaro's choice of Jhumpa Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth.

The Library Journal site lists three story collections--Say You're One of Them by Uwem Akpan, The Boat by Nam Le, and Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout--among its 37 picks, fic and non.

Shelf Awareness asked five people (so far) for their top 10 books and one of them, Harvey Freedenberg, named Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth.

In the Readerville forum discussing yearend best books lists, Richard posts that Bloomsbury Review contributing editor Jeff Biggers has named Annie Proulx’s Fine Just the Way It Is as an honorable mention for his book of the year choice.

In The Millions, fiction writer Brian Evenson lists Kelly Link's Pretty Monsters among his choices.

The Barnes & Noble Review (which I confess I didn't know existed) lists Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout as a best book choice of contributor and reviewer David Abrams.

There may be more to come, but that's it for me. I'm all best booked out. I'll post a tally soon of short story collections that appeared on these lists, and we'll see which short story collections got the most mentions.

A Few Among the Millions

Culture blog The Millions is running a month-long series of posts by writers who select their 2008 reading highlights, which don't necessarily have to be books published during the year.

Las Vegas novelist Charles Bock cites 2007 finalist for The Story Prize Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures by Vincent Lam and this year's Farewell Navigator by Leni Zumas. Math professor and novelist Manil Suri mentions a highly touted 2009 short story collection (due out in February) that he received an advanced copy of (for blurbing purposes), Daniyal Mueenuddin's In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, as well as Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridege. And story writer Charles D'Ambrosio names Nam Le's The Boat.

More to come.

Short Story Collections Build Strong Bones

Salon asked a dozen writers to name their favorite books of 2008 and two have chosen short story collections. Curtis Sittenfeld has picked Sarah Shun-lien Bynum's Ms. Hempel Chronicles and Meg Wolitzer has selected Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge (which is moving up along the outside post as a dark horse contender in my overall tally of yearend best mentions).

In the case of both of these books, by the way, the publishers are rather cagey, identifying them on the cover as neither novels nor short story collections--which is what they are in my estimation. But this is nothing new. In the first year of The Story Prize, all three of our finalists (The Dew Breaker by Edwidge Danticat, The Circus in Winter by Cathy Day, and Ideas of Heaven by Joan Silber) fell into the category of connected stories or novels in stories and only one (Silber's) had the word stories on the cover. Why fudge it? Because novels supposedly sell better than story collections. It's kind of like those vitamins for kids--if they think it's a gummy bear, maybe they'll eat it.

The Atlantic's Best Books List Sets Sail

The Atlantic has posted it's list of books of the year, which includes two short story collections out of six books:

Nadine Gordimer's Beethoven Was One-Sixteenth Black (which was actually published late last year and didn't make our short list)
Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge

The only other fiction title on the list was Joseph O'Neill's Netherland. I'm sure Senior Editor C. Michael Curtis, who has long edited fiction at The Atlantic and is a member of The Story Prize Advisory Board, had a significant hand in these choices.

(Thanks again to the good folks at Readerville, which seems to be as abuzz with excitement about yearend best books lists as I am.)

The Twenty-Seventh City Weighs in

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch lists 32 notable 2008 works of fiction including a mere three short story collections:

Kevin Brockmeier's The View from the Seventh Layer (I knew this would make some of the lists)
Jhumpa Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth (again)
Cynthia Ozick'z Dictation

And St. Louis area booksellers that the Post-Dispatch polled list one collection:

Kelly Link's Pretty Monsters (which Subterranean Books chose)

Salon lists zero short story collections among it's five fiction choices.

New York magazine lists Nam Le's The Boat as its Best Debut book of the year, but story collections are a no show in it's top five fiction books.

(Thanks to Publishers Lunch for the links.)

Addendum (with a nod to Readerville): Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth is No. 5 on Time's top ten fiction list.

Story Collections Keep Popping Up On 2008 Best Books Lists

It's been a good year for short story collections, which continue to appear on year-end lists of best books. So say hello to some little bests.

The Los Angeles Times list includes six story collections out of 25 fiction and poetry books (only two of which are the latter). They are:

Ms. Hempel Chronicles by Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum
Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Boat by Nam Le
Dictation by Cynthia Ozick
Knockemstiff by Donald Ray Pollock
Our Story Begins by Tobias Wolff

None of The Washington Post's top five fiction books are short story collections, but to their credit, the longer best books list includes a short story category with nine seclections:

Say You’re One of Them by Uwem Akpan
Yesterday's Weather by Anne Enright
Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
Dangerous Laughter by Steven Millhauser
Foreigners by Caryl Phillips
Dictation by Cynthia Ozick
The Size of the World by Joan Silber
Poe's Children an anthology edited by Peter Straub
Our Story Begins by Tobias Wolff
plus: Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (which they wrongly list as a novel)

The Christian Science Monitor (now Web only) also has a Best Short Stories of 2008 list, bless their hearts:

The Deportees by Roddy Doyle
Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
Dictation by Cynthia Ozick
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
The Boat by Nam Le
Say You’re One of Them by Uwem Akpan
The People on Privilege Hill by Jane Gardam
Broccoli and Other Tales of Food and Love by Lara Vapnyar
(They also list another book that could be read as a story collection:
I See You Everywhere By Julia Glass)

One story collection makes Alan Cheuse's idiosyncratic list of the six best fiction books on the NPR Web site:
Lost in Uttar Pradesh by Evan Connell

Some of my favorites aren't on any of these lists. Sometime soon, I'll do a tally and ranking of all the short story collections that made end of year lists. Could that possibly predict the finalists for The Story Prize? Stay tuned, we'll be announcing those three books in early January, along with several other collections we liked.

In the meantime, feel free to e-mail me with any lists I may have missed at ldark@thestoryprize.org.

Unaccustomed Laughter

The New York Times Sunday Book Review has announced it's top ten books of 2008, culled from it's larger list of 100 books, as previously mentioned here. Five of the books are nonfiction and five fiction, including two short story collections: Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri and Dangerous Laughter by Steven Millhauser. Represent!

The Book Review Has Spoken

The Sunday Book Review has published its list of 100 notable books for 2008. Among the 48 fiction and poetry titles (six altogether), eight were short story collections:

A BETTER ANGEL: Stories by Chris Adrian
YESTERDAY’S WEATHER by Anne Enright
UNACCUSTOMED EARTH by Jhumpa Lahiri
THE BOAT by Nam Le
DANGEROUS LAUGHTER: Thirteen Stories by Steven Millhauser
DICTATION: A Quartet by Cynthia Ozick
FINE JUST THE WAY IT IS: Wyoming Stories 3 by Annie Proulx
OUR STORY BEGINS: New and Selected Stories by By Tobias Wolff

In the Times' book blog, Paper Cuts, the editors explain the process: They started with a larger list of books reviewed during the course of the year (actually Dec. 2, 2007 through Nov. 30, 2008) and narrowed it down to 100. Duh!

In any event, as far as story collections go, these are very good ones--albeit obvious, mainstream choices. Lahiri's and Le's books also appeared on the Publishers Weekly and Amazon.com lists.

Let the End of Year Listmaking Begin

It's early November and already a couple of lists of the year's best books are out.

Publishers Weekly has a fiction list of 25 books including three short story collections: Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri, The Boat by Nam Le, and Knockemstiff by Donald Ray Pollock.

Amazon has several numbered lists to scroll through. Their editors' list of the top 100 books--of all types--includes five short story collections. Knockemstiff is the highest ranked, at #21. The Boat is at #29. And Unaccustomed Earth is ranked #39. The other two books in the top 100 are Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (#53) and Ms. Hempel Chronicles by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum (#95). Lahiri's book is ranked 18th on the readers' top 100 and #2 on the readers' Literature & Fiction list. Pollock's collection is #10 on the editors' Literature & Fiction list.

These are all good books. But I can think of several excellent collections that didn't make the cut. The list of winners and finalists that we announce in early January, will include our choices. In the meantime, I'll keep my eye out for other yearend best ofs.