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The Best American Short Stories 2008 | 
| Creators: Heidi Pitlor, Salman Rushdie
Publisher: Mariner Books
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
Buy New: $10.74
You Save: $3.26 (23%)
Rating:  5 reviews
Sales Rank: 950
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 384
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.4 x 1
ISBN: 0618788778
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.010806
EAN: 9780618788774
Publication Date: October 8, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
This brilliant collection, edited by the award-winning and perennially
provocative Salman Rushdie, boasts a “magnificent array” (Library
Journal) of voices both new and recognized.With Rushdie at the helm,
the 2008 edition “reflects the variety of substance and style and the consistent quality that readers have come to expect” (Publishers Weekly).
“We all live in and with and by stories, every day, whoever and wherever we are. The freedom to tell each other the stories of ourselves, to retell the stories of our culture and beliefs, is profoundly connected to the larger subject of freedom itself.”—Salman Rushdie, editor
The Best American Short Stories 2008 includes
KEVIN BROCKMEIER • ALLEGRA GOODMAN • A. M. HOMES • NICOLE KRAUSS • JONATHAN LETHEM • STEVEN MILLHAUSER • DANIYAL MUEENUDDIN • ALICE MUNRO • GEORGE SAUNDERS • TOBIAS WOLFF • and others
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| Customer Reviews:
Recommended October 31, 2008
16 out of 16 found this review helpful
I look forward to this series every year, so it was with high hopes that I opened up this year's editon and began to read. The format is the same as it has been for years, with Ms. Pitlor cherry picking stories and handing over a hundred or so vetted stories to the guest editor. I don't get too caught up in who the guest editor is in any given year - I think Ms. Pitlor does a good job in gathering a pool of quality stories, but this year I thought the overall effort was slightly below the average.
Four of the stories in the collection come from Harper's Magazine, and while I was glad to see the series move away from being so New Yorker oriented, I subscribe to Harper's, so those stories weren't new to me. To of them deserved rereading anyway - the masterful Alice Munro with "Child's Play", and Nicole Krauss, "From the Desk of Daniel Varsky."
Two of the three stories from the New Yorker were also quite well done - "Puppy", by George Saunders, and "Nawabdin Electrician" by Daniyal Mueenuddin. Others that I felt really rose above were "Buying Lenin" by Miroslav Penkov, "Man and Wife," by Katie Chase, and "Straightaway," by Mark Wisniewski.
Four of the stories in this collection would fall under what I would loosely consider 'Fabulist' stories, and those are not really my thing, although I still enjoyed "Man and Wife." Perhaps that is a trend, because I don't remember as much of that in years past.
One of the things I've always enjoyed about this series is that it collects stories I'm sure I'd never get to see otherwise, and that always makes it worth it to me. This year, I would just have to say that not all of it was as interesting to me as other years. I would still definetly recommend it to anyone who enjoys short stories.
Good Read, Not as Amazing as Previous Years October 28, 2008
5 out of 7 found this review helpful
I love this series, have been reading it for years. Definitely more stylistically trendy stories chosen for 2008, many by popular young writers.
good variety of short stories November 24, 2008
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
Bought at the airport for a Denver-Seattle trip, I found these stories ranged from fair to excellent, with plenty of very good ones. These tend toward moderately serious, with definite purpose and action, and minimal preaching, and are 20-30 pages apiece.
What else should a short-story review report to avoid any more "not useful" feedback? I like short stories, and have not come across such a good collection in my lackadaisical eclectic sampling for quite a few years. Several, including the ones about the guy on the motorcycle, the swimming girls, and the puppy adoption, remain on my mind still.
The brief biographies and authors' comments about their stories was a welcome addendum.
 And Miroslav Penkov is not even American November 25, 2008
1 out of 5 found this review helpful
Last night I read the first paragraph of every short story in THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES 2008 to determine if any first paragraph made me want to read the second paragraph. Only one did: "Buying Lenin" by Miroslav Penkov.
Mr. Penkov is from Bulgaria. I found the story exceptionally well written. It's a given that I'll be buying any publication that Mr. Penkov writes in the future. I am not a professional reviewer, but I know a great author when I read one. Entertaining as well was the biography in the back of the book on this new author.
Of course I'll probably read the others stories that were written by the likes of Jonathan Lethem and Alice Munro.
 Not so good December 29, 2008
There were only 2 or 3 stories in this whole book that I felt were really well done and not boring. The A.M. Homes story was one of them.
Not a very good "best" collection.
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