We’re coming up on the time of year where Houghton Mifflin’s “Best American…” series start coming out. Every year I look forward to picking up the newest edition of The Best American Mystery Stories—the stories really are great and they are by no means traditional detective stories. Some of the best stories I’ve read in the past few years have been from these collections. The one that sticks out most in my mind, that I would recommend to anyone, is “Ina Grove,” by R.T. Smith (found in the 2006 volume and originally published in the Virginia Quarterly Review, available in full online here).
The “Best American Nonrequired Reading” series, edited by Dave Eggers, is also fun, and the plain old “Best American Short Stories” is a good anthology to pick up too. There are lots of others that I’ve never read that don’t fall into my areas of interest, like sports writing and spiritual writing. Part of me dislikes the idea of anthologies, because I feel like I should just be reading all this material in its original source. But I have to be realistic; there is no way I would find everything that the editors do unless it were a full-time job.
I am a big fan of Best American Crime Reporting series, and naturally, the Best Food Writing series, but both are unattached to the Houghton Mifflin Best Americans. Besides the Unrequired Reading, the other HM title that always tempts me is the Best American Comics group…