Starts tonight at midnight!

** 28 Short Stories in 28 Days ** Day 22: “Hearts and Hands” by O. Henry (1902) At the Denver train station, two young men sit down across from her… A delightful tale with a classic O. Henry twist at the end. I had to read it again—just to see how this short story was put together. #booksky

** 28 Short Stories in 28 Days ** Day 23: “The Letter” by Anton Chekhov (1887) (translated from Russian by Avrahm Yarmolinsky) #booksky A story of fathers and sons; forgiveness and blame.

** 28 Short Stories in 28 Days ** Day 24: “The African Magician” by Nadine Gordimer (1965) #booksky A story set on a riverboat & an evening of mysterious entertainment.

** 28 Short Stories in 28 Days ** Day 16: “Yesterday” by Haruki Murakami (2014) (translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel) A man looks back to his 20s at a friendship—which lasted lasted only a few months—that he's still thinking about decades later. #booksky

** 28 Short Stories in 28 Days ** Day 17: “Naturally” by Maria Luisa Puga (1978) (translated from the Spanish by Leland H Chambers) #booksky A woman wonders how she got conscribed within this cordial and constricting family circle.

** 28 Short Stories in 28 Days ** Day 18: “Why I Transformed Myself into a Nightingale” by Wolfgang Hildesheimer (1983) (translated from the German by Susan Perry Alexander) #booksky A selfish man has an unusual superpower.

** 28 Short Stories in 28 Days ** Day 19: “Hair Jewelry” by Margaret Atwood (1977) #booksky A sad tale of unrequited love, snowballs pitched into the Charles River, and some ill-fitting garments held together with safety pins.

** 28 Short Stories in 28 Days ** Day 20: “Nineteen Fifty-Five” by Alice Walker (1971) #booksky A very different look at the downside of celebrity culture—and one talented woman who smartly sidestepped the whole circus.

** 28 Short Stories in 28 Days ** Day 21: “Chuka” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2025) #booksky Set during the 2020 lockdown, an emersive story about a perfect relationship that wasn’t quite enough.

** 28 Short Stories in 28 Days ** I picked two favorite stories from Weeks 2 & 3: “The Conscience of the Court” by Zora Neale Hurston and “The Red Inn” by Honoré de Balzac

** 28 Short Stories in 28 Days ** Day 13: “Ming” by Han Ong (2025) (illustration art for ‘Ming’ is by Haley Jiang, The New Yorker, Jan 20, 2025) A surprise inheritance shakes up a lonely man’s life.

** 28 Short Stories in 28 Days ** Day 14: “The Red Inn” by Honoré de Balzac (1831) translated from the French by Linda Asher A story within a story, a dinner party, a murder, a rich heiress, and a moral conundrum. #booksky

** 28 Short Stories in 28 Days ** Day 15: “The Conscience of the Court” by Zora Neale Hurston (1950) *Any story* we read is a consensus between the author’s message & the publisher’s goals. An African-American woman publishing in a major white—in 1950, no less—can not be just *any story.*

** 28 Short Stories in 28 Days ** Day 8: “The Other Two” by Edith Wharton (1904) From the queen of divorce stories! Here, Wharton has some fun at the expense of her main character—whose lovely new bride was married twice before. In the end, he comes to admit he’s the better man for it. #booksky

** 28 Short Stories in 28 Days ** Day 9: “The Wardrobe, the Old Man, and Death” by Julio Ramón Ribeyro (1976) A good story for me to read on Super Bowl Sunday! It’s about a man, his sons, and fate arriving by soccer ball… #booksky

** 28 Short Stories in 28 Days ** Day 10: “The Gilded Six-Bits” by Zora Neale Hurston (1933) A story about a young couple having fun together—until some gold coins & a rich man comes along. The ending in genuinely surprising. #booksky

** 28 Short Stories in 28 Days ** Day 11: “The Last Grownup” by Allegra Goodman (2023) A woman who worries, plans, and tends to ‘fast-forward’ life is stuck in a story where time unfolds exclusively in present tense. #booksky

** 28 Short Stories in 28 Days ** Day 12: “The Autopsy” by Lyudmila Ulitskaya (2023) (translated from the Russian by Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky) An unusual story about a young man with ‘not a pennyworth of evil in him.’ #booksky

First Week Wrap-Up:

** 28 Short Stories in 28 Days ** Day 7: “The Pearls” by Isak Dinesen (1942) Isak Dinsen spins a rich, intriguing yarn about a young woman confronting her new and bewildering life.

** 28 Short Stories in 28 Days ** Day 6: “The Burglar’s Christmas” by Willa Cather (1896) A desperate young man, pushed into theft by hunger, meets with a surprising coincidence. Not a great story, but very readable.

** 28 Short Stories in 28 Days ** Day 5: “The Flight of Betsy Lane” by Sarah Orne Jewett (1893) A delightful, surprising, quirky story: 3 eldery women at the Byfleet Poor-house shell beans and direct the social tone.

* 28 Short Stories in 28 Days * Day 4: “Speech Sounds” by Octavia E. Butler (1983) Here’s Octavia Butler in this story’s Afterword: “I began the story feeling little hope or liking for the human species, but by the time I reached the end of it, my hope had come back. It always seems to do that.”

28 Short Stories in 28 Days Day 3: “The Turkey Season” by Alice Munro (1982) Another story looking back at childhood— Somehow, even as the narrator stuck firmly to what a child would see and understand, the story still makes clear what the adults could see and understand… (And I love the ending!)

* 28 Short Stories in 28 Days * Day 2: “The Last Word is Love” by William Saroyan (1944?) A scatter-shot of childhood memories in a style that seems random—but really is beautifully crafted to give such a full picture of this family is so few pages.

28 Short Stories in 28 Days Day 1: “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle” by Arthur Conan Doyle (1892) With a blue diamond & a Christmas goose: The surprise ending comes not from whether or not Sherlock Holmes can find the right clues; but what he does after the clues are found, for right or wrong…

It's that time again! This is my 3rd year of a February reading challenge: Reading one short story a day for each day of February!