{"id":38014,"date":"2026-09-07T05:00:28","date_gmt":"2026-09-07T09:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/?p=38014"},"modified":"2026-09-06T22:18:16","modified_gmt":"2026-09-07T02:18:16","slug":"21-great-stories-a-book-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2026\/09\/07\/21-great-stories-a-book-review\/","title":{"rendered":"21 Great Stories \u2013 A Book Review"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When I was a kid in high school back in Brooklyn in the early 1970s every school either public or private had an English class that used this book as a source of classic short stories.\u00a0 Now at the time it never occurred to me to look at the bio on the editors who selected these \u201cgreat\u201d stories.\u00a0 Many years later I did and discovered that these two editors were actually educators who worked at two local high schools (Abraham Lincoln H.S. and Sheepshead Bay H.S.) that were both within a mile of my home.\u00a0 In fact, Camera Girl went to one of these schools (although as I learned, she wasn\u2019t really putting in the effort she should have and it took all my help to get her over the finish line her senior year).\u00a0 So, there is my link to this revered literary treasury.\u00a0 And back then I really wasn\u2019t particularly interested in the kind of stories represented.\u00a0 There was one Ray Bradbury story but it wasn\u2019t really science fiction so it wouldn\u2019t have been on my radar.<\/p>\n<p>But many years later I saw the familiar cover of the paperback on the shelf of a discount book store while we were on vacation in Old Orchard Beach, Maine and since I hadn\u2019t packed enough reading material, I bought the book for (I think) two dollars.<\/p>\n<p>And over the course of the week we were there, I read the whole thing for the first time in my life.\u00a0 And damned if most of the stories weren\u2019t excellent in their own separate ways.\u00a0 Sure, I liked some of them much better than others but I had to admit that almost without exception they were well-crafted stories that could stand the test of time and quite a few of them could be re-read over the years without becoming tiresome.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s the table of contents:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>War by Luigi Pirandello<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Eve in Darkness by Kaatje Hurlbut<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Tobermory by Saki<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>The Two Bottles of Relish by Lord Dunsany<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Footfalls by Wilbur Daniel Steele<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Hook by Walter Van Tilburg Clark<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Wine on the Desert by Max Brand<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>The Lady or the Tiger? by Frank Stockton<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>So Much Unfairness of Things by C. D. B. Bryan<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>The Adventure of the Speckled Band by Arthur Conan Doyle<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>To Build a Fire by Jack London<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Leiningen Versus the Ants by Carl Stephenson<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Eveline by James Joyce<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>The Secret Life of Walter Mitty by James Thurber<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>What Stumped the Bluejays by Mark Twain<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>The Pearl by John Steinbeck<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If you asked me which was my favorite once a year it\u2019s likely that I\u2019d give you a different answer every time.\u00a0 It seems to change based on what mood I\u2019m in that day.\u00a0 If I\u2019m in a light mood it might be \u201cThe Secret Life of Walter Mitty.\u201d\u00a0 If I\u2019m feeling cynical, I might enjoy \u201cThe Cask of Amontillado\u201d or \u201cTo Build a Fire.\u201d\u00a0 But I can usually find a story to reread if I\u2019m waiting for an oil change or a dental appointment.<\/p>\n<p>Now, let me be clear.\u00a0 These are not all the short stories I like.\u00a0 In fact, these are not even my favorite short stories.\u00a0 I can find funnier sections in P.G. Wodehouse and I can find more engaging science fiction short stories by several other authors.\u00a0 Specifically, \u201cThere Will Come Soft Rains\u201d isn\u2019t even in my top twenty Ray Bradbury short stories.\u00a0 But this is a good book for tasting a cross section of classic short story styles.\u00a0 Not a bad book to own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I was a kid in high school back in Brooklyn in the early 1970s every school either public or private had an English class<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[241,237],"tags":[68,1014,5289,940,1403,2164,1392,38,1355,1037,1039],"class_list":["post-38014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-reviews","tag-book-review","tag-edgar-allan-poe","tag-guy-de-maupassant","tag-jack-london","tag-james-joyce","tag-james-thurber","tag-ray-bradbury","tag-review","tag-reviews","tag-sherlock-holmes","tag-sir-arthur-conan-doyle"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.4 - 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