Sunday Salon on a Tuesday: Announcing Short Story September

As Vulpes Libris launch their own short story week, I have decided to dive into a Short Story September.  There are many reasons for my change of focus.

1)  Documenting the shenanigans at the Edinburgh Book Festival has left me with a backlog of outstanding reviews,

2) which I won’t write if they are going to prevent me getting through the TBR.

3) I can progress through the TBR and  write the reviews by reading short stories and novellas during September.

4) I’m in danger of letting some reading challenges beat me.  A few timeously read short stories will give me the victory.

5) Short Story September will ease me back into the true spirit of The Sunday Salon.  I realise that my EBF series talked more about the things I did and the authors I met than the books I read.  But hopefully you enjoyed it all as much as I. Alexander McCall Smith has summarised the whole experience on his celebration postcard.   

As of next Sunday, I promise I’ll get back to talking about my reading material,  particularly as the title is irresistible: TSS on TSS (The Short Story on The Sunday Salon). 

Oh, why wait till Sunday!  Let’s start as I mean to go on. 

With one hour to spare last Sunday evening, I read two short stories with numbers in the title, thus completing the Numbers Challenge by the skin of my teeth.  The stories were extracted from an anthology of American Short Stories published by The Folio Society.

The £1,000,000 Bank Note by Mark Twain tells of a destitute man who is loaned said note for a period of one month.  One benefactor wagers it will be the making of him, the other the ruin.  The adventure that follows is amusing, wry and particularly pertinent in these days of the credit crunch.

In The Other Two by Edith Wharton, a newly-married man contemplates his future happiness.  This is his first, his bride’s third marriage.  Not that any blame is attached to her, as she divorced the other two.   However the past has a way of casting its shadows on the present and gradually the her ex-husbands become a part of their daily lives, despite the best efforts of husband #3 to keep them at a distance.  In just 20 pages the assumptions of the poor man are turned completely on their head.  The best laid plans of mice and man and all that.    The story is told in Wharton’s engaging prose that pulls me right into the middle of the action within just a couple of paragraphs.    

I’m a fan and I’ve yet to read her masterpieces, The Age of  Innocence and The House of Mirth.  I’ve taken a note to add them to the pile of Novels for November.