Good Books, Mostly Literary Fiction - Page 24

My method was to list one work per author in each Best American Short Stories from 1968 to the most recent one (2021). So in the case of someone like John Updike, he has a lot of works on this list because he was in B.A.S.S. many times. There are around 75 authors from B.A.S.S. 1968 through 2021 who haven't published anything that made sense to go on this list. Most of these books are either short story collections or novels, with a fair number of memoirs and essay collections mixed in. I only included poetry when there wasn't any prose, because although I love poetry, I doubt many people would have read them. I also tried to go for lesser known works, if possible, because I think most of us get sick of seeing the same books over and over. But sometimes I had no choice; for example, Donna Tartt has barely published anything, so I went with The Secret History. I hope to do a second list with the authors from Best American Short Stories 1914 through 1967. I bet that will be much harder.