My 2019 Reading Challenge - Short Stories

I love reading but if left to it I'd just read trashy detective novels all day long. Instead I prefer to shake up my reading with a bit of variety. Like last year when I read only non-fiction books.

This year I wanted to try read 5 books of short story collections. I've loved short stories since being read one in my English class in high school. The Vertical Ladder by Michael Sansom is a great example of how a short story can build the tension quickly and leave you wanting more. Short story collections are great to pick up and read when you don't have much time.


So here's what I've been reading:

Apparently Stephen King is afraid of flying so wanted to inflict the same fear in everyone else. It's a great collection of stories. One of my favourites was a story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, written in the early days of flight. It holds up well and is frightening even now. It didn't give me a fear of flying but I wouldn't recommend it if you're a nervous flyer with an upcoming trip!

Annie Proulx is great at short stories. They loosely have a theme of the Wild West but are all very different. My favourite one is of a childless couple adopting a cactus that looks vaguely child like. It becomes carnivorous which is a genius story idea right there!

This book blew me away with it's heartbreaking stories about women and the relationships in their lives. The characters are so real and relatable to me. There is a recurring character in 3 of the stories and honestly I could've read about her all day. Such mastery of the short story in this collection.

This book was a delight to read. Authors were invited to submit their own Sherlock Holmes stories and what was achieved was varied and joyous. Some of the stories were crazy, some were focused on Watson or Mrs Hudson but they were all entertaining. I would recommend for any Sherlock fan.

I decided to finish big with this anthology of 100 short stories. It has some really great stories in there from The Hare and the Tortoise to The Red Shoes to The Nose - a story about a man who finds a nose in a loaf of bread his wife bakes him for his breakfast. The stories in this book are really short mostly only a few pages each so they really are a glimpse.


I've enjoyed reading more short stories this year and I find it totally different from reading novels. Short stories have less time to wow you but they invariably do!


Any suggestions for future reading challenges are welcome! :)