My Christmas Wish List: Books!

I'd like to acquire the 2007 edition of this series, the one edited by Stephen King. Reportedly, the stories in this one were pretty good.

I'm an on and off fan of short stories; I subscribe to The New Yorker and sometimes I hate the stories in there and sometimes not. As far as periodicals go, Tin House has my vote as far as getting great stories. I discovered Anthony Doerr in Tin House. Doerr wrote a fabulous short story entitled "Village 113" which might be been the best story I ever read. Oh, I know, that's superlative, but it was a great story. In it, Doerr reimagines China's Three Gorges Dam project, in which villages were flooded and millions of residents displaced, through the eyes of his narrator, known simply as "the seed keeper." Doerr writes beautifully about the natural world and the imagery in this story blew me away. I went out and bought his collection of stories called The Shell Collector and loved it. Then I got his novel About Grace which is on my reading table. I haven't gotten to it yet. He has another book out: Four Seasons in Rome, which I'm dying to pick up.

So, on my Christmas wish list, BOOKS! And gift cards for books! My greatest luxury is to take my annual stack of Barnes and Noble gift cards, after the stress of Christmas, and go browse the store for hours. After Christmas I have some time before the next semester starts and I hunker down and read. I love having a stack of crisp, unread books at hand!