(12/24/12) I’ve spent some fun time this morning coming up with a roster of 52 short stories to read next year.
(See bottom of this post for the order the stories were drawn from the deck and, for those I’ve written about, links to the related post.)
I have several sources for the stories this year, recently fortified by a gift from one my colleagues, Richard, in the discussion group of the Nora Library chapter of The Great Books Foundation. That anthology was edited by John Updike and titled “The Best Short Stories of the Century.” Glancing through the table of contents, I was dismayed to see that I was only familiar with a handful of them. My 2013 version of “Project: Deal me in!” will improve that situation a bit.
As in prior years, I have assigned the stories to the cards in a standard deck of playing cards. Each suit (loosely) represents a category. This year’s categories are:
Hearts – Stories by women authors
Spades – Stories of a ‘dark’ nature
Diamonds – Stories by authors I’ve never read
Clubs – Stories by “The Masters”
Each Saturday in 2013 I will draw a card from the deck and thus randomly decide which story to read that week. This will be the third year in a row that I’ve done this project. This year I’ve brought back the ‘deuces wild’ idea. For the weeks I draw a two of any suit, I can read whatever story I want – but preferably stay within the theme of the suit. If others participate, I’ll try to pick a story from their list as my wildcard & hope they feel free to loot my list for stories as well. It’s always a lot of fun, and I encourage others to come up with their deck of cards and play along!
Well, what do you think of my selections? Will you be playing along with your own Project: Deal Me In! this year?
Stories read so far:
Week 1: “The Veldt” by Ray Bradbury
Week 2: “Tour and Duty” by Rebecca Emin
Week 3: “Greenleaf” by Flannery O’Connor
Week 4: “Gesturing” by John Updike
Week 5: “The Devil in the Belfry” by Edgar Allan Poe (wild card selection – spades)
Week 6: “Theft” by Katherine Anne Porter
Week 7: “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” by Ernest Hemingway
Week 8: “Dog Bites” by Ricardo Nuila
Week 9: “The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant
Week 10: “Phantoms” by Steven Milhauser
Week 11: “The Man and the Snake” by Ambrose Bierce
Week 12: “The Town of Cats” by Sakutaro Hagiwara
Week 13: “The District Doctor” by Ivan Turgenev
Week 14: “The Mysterious Mansion” by Honore de Balzac
Week 15: “Foster” by Claire Keegan
Week 16: “Hills Like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway
Week 17: “All Gold Canyon” by Jack London
Week 18: “True Relation of the Apparation of one Mrs. Veal” by Daniel Defoe
Week 19: “Property” by Elizabeth McCracken
Week 20: “The Visitor” by Ray Bradbury
Week 21: “Against Specificity” by Douglas Watson (wild card selection – diamonds)
Week 22: “You’re Ugly, Too” by Lorrie Moore
Week 23: “The Laughing Man” by J.D. Salinger (wild card selection – clubs)
Week 24: “Memnon the Philosopher” by Voltaire
Week 25: “ID” by Joyce Carol Oates
Week 26: “The Willows” by Algernon Blackwood
Week 27: “The Aleph” by Jorge Luis Borges
Week 28: “Out of Body” by Jennifer Egan
Week 29: “The Lighthouse Keeper of Aspinwall” by Henryk Sienkiewicz
Week 30: “Escape from Spiderhead” by George Saunders
Week 31: “Double Birthday” by Willa Cather
Week 32: “My Old Man” by Ernest Hemigway
Week 33: “A Death in the Desert” by Willa Cather (wild card selection – hearts)
Week 34: “Crazy Sunday” by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Week 35: “A Relic of the Pliocene” by Jack London
Week 36: “The Way We Live Now” by Susan Sontag
Week 37: “The Long Rain” by Ray Bradbury
Week 38: “The Hitchhikers” by Eudora Welty
Week 39:: “The Outcasts of Poker Flat” by Bret Harte
Week 40: “Negore the Coward” by Jack London
Week 41: “The Howling Man” by Hugh Beaumont
Week 42: “The Other Woman” by Sherwood Anderson
Week 43: “The Queer Client” by Charles Dickens
Week 44: “The Shepherdess and the Sweep” by Hans Christian Andersen
Week 45: “The Sleep” by Caitlin Horrocks
Week 46: “The Dungeon Master” by Sam Lipsyte
Week 47: “La Vita Nuova” by Allegra Goodman
Week 48: “The Snowstorm” by Alexander Pushkin
Week 49: “The Last Night of the World” by Ray Bradbury
Week 50: “Roses, Rhododendron” by Alice Adams
Week 51: “Gurov in Manhattan” by Ehud Havazelet
Week 52: “One Autumn Night” by Maxim Gorky
Bibliophilopolis 
Dale said,
November 20, 2012 at 10:03 am
Great list, Jay! You have one story that is on my list and a few of the same authors. I think that my wild cards will be picking a story from your list.
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Looking ahead to 2013 | Mirror w/ Clouds said,
November 25, 2012 at 9:27 am
[…] so much that I plan to keep it up during 2013, with a twist. For the last few years, Jay, over at Bibliophilopolis, has participated in a short story project called “Deal Me In”. He chooses 52 […]
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