As I was pondering making my annual short story reading project a “public” challenge next year, I realized some might not want to participate because they don’t want to have to BUY a bunch of short story anthologies or author’s collections. Never fear! There are ways around that, as many great, classic short stories are available in the public domain and may be found free in the internet. We can also take another step for those who don’t want to have to go searching for a story via Google or a search engine. With this in mind, I thought I’d share a couple resources.
One is a smart phone app “Short Stories eReader.” I’ve had this on my iPhone and iPad for over a year now, and often will utilize it when I’m trapped in line or can steal a few reading minutes here or there. The selection has grown quite a bit in that time too. You can search for stories by author or genre, and can build a decent library very quickly.
Another resource is The Library of America’s “short story of the week” website. It serves up a new story each week, but you can also review stories that have been the selections for previous weeks. Browsing through their archive, I only noticed about ten stories that I’d already read. Humbling, as I read a LOT of short stories.
Happy perusing! (and let me know if you’d be interested in a short story reading challenge for 2013)
Bibliophilopolis 
Dale said,
September 25, 2012 at 4:17 pm
I’m ready!
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Jay said,
September 26, 2012 at 7:02 am
Great! I’m counting on it! 🙂
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Dale said,
September 26, 2012 at 6:47 pm
I’m leaving my 2’s wild.
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nzumel said,
September 25, 2012 at 9:07 pm
I LOVE Story of the Week! Will have to check out the short story app, too. Thanks for the tip!
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Jay said,
September 26, 2012 at 7:07 am
I bet you really liked this week’s story. Right up your supernatural/ghost story alley! :-). I am gearing up for some serious ghost story reading in October myself.
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nzumel said,
September 26, 2012 at 1:18 pm
Loved it! One of the cool things about Story of the Week is that I find authors I’d never read. I’ve found a couple of female supernatural authors there already!
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Risa said,
September 25, 2012 at 11:45 pm
Oh! Thanks for this tid-bit! That app sounds very useful. I’m off to check out…
And am looking forward to seeing what you have planned for short stories next year. 🙂
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Jay said,
September 26, 2012 at 7:08 am
Hi Risa,
You’ll love the short stories app. It’s led me to quite a few hitherto unknown (to me, anyway) gems…
-Jay
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Risa said,
September 27, 2012 at 10:07 am
I do!…love it, that is.:) thank you for telling us about it…I’ve already read four shorts on the app!
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Jay said,
September 27, 2012 at 3:22 pm
So happy to hear this! 🙂
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I’ve been reading some Saki. « Breadcrumb Reads said,
September 27, 2012 at 9:52 am
[…] and I finally had the inclination to read a handful of short stories. Thanks mostly, I think, to Jay for his pointing out a rather handy short story ereader app. I was going through it and coming […]
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Nan said,
September 27, 2012 at 11:02 am
I would. It seems that I only read them if I’m part of some internet community of other short story readers.
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Jay said,
September 27, 2012 at 3:25 pm
Hi Nan,
Great! I’m working on creating a dedicated page for “Project: Deal Me In!” I’m thinking of three options: build your own deck, build a deck from on-line resources, or use an already created (by me) deck of public domain stories, with links included. Stay tuned, 🙂
-Jay
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Nan said,
September 28, 2012 at 2:44 pm
My choice would be a ‘build your own’ since I have a lot in the house I’d like to read.
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Nancy said,
September 30, 2012 at 1:52 am
Thanks for this tip, Jay! I went over and subscribed to Story of the Week and downloaded the app. I also refer to classicreader.com when using my laptop. I’m interested about this “public” challenge because I don’t have a “deck” of stories I want to read. I randomly read short stories, so I think this challenge will really put more focus, direction, and purpose on my short story reading. 🙂
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