i enjoyed this, getting to take a small sample from 20 different writers. my favorites from this compilation were robert olen butler, francine prose, and john updike. gave me some ideas (old and new) of people to keep reading. ( )

More book reviews at Voracia: Goddess of Words

In the Forward to this book, Series Editor Katrina Kenison makes the following observation: "Alice Adams reveals in her introduction that reading a good story often provokes her to go and write one of her own. Perhaps we should all give thanks, then, for the inspiration writers draw from each other - one good story begets another."

There are many, many good stories in this book, some of which I found inspirational for my own writing and some in which I simply lost myself. My top three favorite reads, which I hope to go back to again and again, were the following:

1. Charles D'Ambrosio, Jr.'s "The Point." In this story a man reminisces about helping his mom's friends home after parties thrown by his mother at their house. He has memories of very interesting characters, most of them sad alcoholics, yet he seems to have turned out just fine.

2. Charles Baxter's "The Disappeared." In this story a Swedish businessman visits Detroit and meets a religious-crazed American girl who temporarily steals his heart. The main character in the story, however, is truly the city of Detroit. It's amazing how Baxter captures the pulse of a dying city, and makes dreadfully accurate predictions regarding its fate.

3. Elizabeth Graver's "The Body Shop." In this story a man looks back on his adolescent years of helping his creative and entrepreneurial mother run her mannequin design business. It is touching and very realistic.

I also enjoyed Amy Bloom's "Love is Not a Pie," Kate Braverman's "Tall Tales from the Mekong Delta," Millicent Dillon's "Oil and Water," David Jauss' "Glossolalia," Francine Prose's "Dog Stories," and Leonard Michaels' "Viva La Tropicana," a very entertaining and far-fetched yet somehow believable story about a young man who gets caught up with the escapades of his uncle, a former Cuban revolutionist-turned-gangster.

There are stories by some other usual "giants" in this collection - Joyce Carol Oates, Alice Munro, John Updike - but I didn't enjoy them as much as the others I've mentioned. I haven't read much from Munro but I usually like reading Oates and Updike. Both of their pieces in this collection, however, seemed wordy and cumbersome to me, and I couldn't pay much attention. Munro's story was the most interesting to me, and I also like parts of Updike's piece, and feel that perhaps if I read it when I had more time and patience, I would like it more. Perhaps it had something to do with it being the last story in the book!

All and all, I loved this book as well as most others in this series. I love the variety as well as the convenience of a collection of short stories. It is so easy to escape into a short story, come back out of it into reality, and then get lost in the next one when I again have time!

For book reviews, literary musings, quotes, and more, for writers and readers, please visit my blog, Voracia: Goddess of Words ( )