Tag Archives: Goodreads

The Top Score

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Lists, rankings and ratings eliminate some of the guesswork in life. For example, instead of chancing a bad experience, I check rating websites for a restaurant, a movie or even a church. Goodreads and other online forums allow readers to post comments and ratings about novels or collections of stories. How would the general population rank Chekhov’s short stories?  The half-dozen books on my desk about Chekhov or Chekhov’s anthologies are the old way of researching. I need guidance on where to begin, what is considered the best of Chekhov and how to do all of this in the quickest amount of time.

An Editor’s Choice

Books like The Essential Tales of Chekhov edited by Richard Ford offer a method for reading the best of Checkhov. Ford, a temporary Michigan transplant from the South, attended Michigan State University and writes in his  introduction to the Chekhov anthology that Chekhov is a writer for adults. Chekhov’s most frequent themes of adultery, poverty and illness are not exactly the hero’s journey that Hollywood pumps into most movies. Chekhov’s plots pale and blur while his characters are noteworthy. My Russian dentist who inspired this literary trek says Chekhov descriptions, such as in “A Man with a Case,” have become Russian cultural references for describing personality types. After reading every Chekhov story, Richard Ford chose his favorites. He admits to adding a few stories that were not as polished and complete as Chekhov’s later works. In Ford’s opinion, “The Lady and the Dog” is one of Chekhov’s finest short stories.

Ranker.com

Since I read Ford’s number one pick, I wanted to compare other lists. ListVerse.com which compiles top ten lists of the bizarre to scientific failed in the literary realm with only three lists:

Top Ten Books of All Time (#9 The Stories of Anton Chekhov)

Top Ten Greatest Writers (#3 Pushkin with Russian runner ups of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Dostoyevsky)

Ten More Strange Moments In the History of the Novel Awards (no Russians until 1933)

My prize discovery is Ranker.com. This website allows viewers to vote for their favorites on people, entertainment, sports, culture and videos. Curious if the general public could be trusted to rank a literary giant like Chekhov, I find the ratings are generous for a guy who died in 1904. Here are the lists containing Anton Chekhov:

Best Anton Chekhov Short Stories

The Best Writers of All Time (#25 Chekhov)

Best Novelist of All time (#50 Chekhov)

Best Short Story Writers of All time (#3 Chekhov)

Dying Words Last Spoken by Famous People (#69 Chekhov)

The Greatest Playwrights in History (#2 Chekhov)

The Best Russian Authors (#3 Chekhov)

The Hottest Dead Writer (#3 Chekhov)

Every Person Who Has Been immortalized in a Google Doodle

I confess to spending more time on Ranker.com than in Chekhov’s actual writings. In regards to the primary mission of finding Chekhov’s best short stories, the survey says . . . the following stories received the most votes:

The Lady and the Dog (18 pages written 1889)

The Bet (9 pages written 1888)

Ward No. 6 (48 pages written 1892)

The Death of a Clerk (4 pages written 1883)

Misery (6 pages written 1886)

Fast Pass to Chekhov

If narrowing the reading to a handful of stories is still too much, then do what theme parks call the “fast pass.” Similar to a theme park’s shorter line, this method makes the classics very easy, fast and fun. I can listen to more stories than I have time to read.

The Duel (an independent film made in 2010 with an 81% on the Tomatometer)

“The Bet” (produced by ITV’s “The Short Story”)

The Seagull (a live performance by the Michigan Shakespeare Festival)

The Seagull  (a 1975 production with a Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score of 50%)

Both professional and school productions of Chekhov’s stories are found on YouTube.  Fans of silent movies will want to watch the short 2012 adaptation of Death of a Government Clerk by Ethan Unklesbay. Audio recordings are also on YouTube including the free online digital libraries of Librivox.org, read by volunteers. “Misery” is a good recording.

NPR produces Selected Shorts. The July 2017 program, hosted by Krista Tippett, begins with a Sherwood Anderson short story, continues to two poems by Tracy K. Smith and stories by David Whyte and Elizabeth Crane and finally ends with “An Enigmatic Nature” by Anton Chekhov. I veer off track to listen to Stephen King’s “Batman and Robin Have An Altercation.” This story is on Selected Shorts Too Hot For Radio. (I’m not counting this as a complete diversion because Stephen King’s Misery came to mind when I first saw the short story title of “Misery” by Chekhov.)

In conclusion, Chekhov’s short stories are for the reader to experience many times and in many ways. Ranker.com and Richard Ford helped begin my journey, but there are many stories remaining for me to enjoy. Each different story makes me fall a little bit more for the #3 Hottest Dead Writer.

Everything We Keep by Kerry Lonsdale

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Everything We Keep is Kerry Lonsdale’s first novel. It came out in 2016. It tells the story of Aimee Tierney who lives in a small town in California and works in her parents’ restaurant. She’s expecting to marry James, who she’s known since elementary school, and eventually have a restaurant of her own.

Then life intervenes. On what would have been her wedding day, she buries her fiancé who died on what was supposed to be a business trip. Aimee’s waiting to leave after the church service and funeral when a woman approaches her. She says, “I’m here about James… I have information about his accident… James is alive.”

 

Aimee doesn’t believe her. And the story takes off from here. She meets Ian, a photographer in town, opens a restaurant, travels to Mexico and meets Carlos. Then, one day, Carlos wakes up and reads the letter that concludes, “I am you.”

This story has a lot of secrets that Aimee learns about along the way: who Phil Donato really is; whose family the business actually belonged to; why James really went to Mexico; who paid Aimee’s lease while she was fixing up the restaurant and before she could open; why Imelda, who owns the hotel in Mexico, sent Lacy to find Aimee and why Thomas, James’ brother, did what he did.

There are a lot of themes in this book. You’ll have to read it to see which one resonates the most with you—letting go, healing, forgiveness and love.

Everything We Keep was a top Amazon bestseller of 2016, a Wall Street Journal bestseller and Barnes & Noble begins their review by saying “A luminous debut with unexpected twists…” Goodreads says 62,592 people rated “Everything We Keep” and 3,319 people wrote reviews. That’s a lot of readers!

This was a very nice reception for a debut novel!

Do You (Still) Read Books?

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When is the last time you read a book?

My answer to that question is: late February.  But my real answer should be: I don’t read enough.  And that’s a sad thing for a writer.

I talk a lot about the way we wrote as kids, just for the fun of it, no expectations, just playing with words.  I should also be dancing with books, traveling through other worlds to experience the words of others.  I should be reading not necessarily to learn from or to study with an eye towards technique, but really, just to pass the time.

“Should” is an evil, passive excuse of a word.  Anything that “should” be done “needs” to be done.  That is so much easier to say than do because there is so much more in the world to do.

Welcome to the world of social media.  We pass our time with heads buried in our phones or tablets, getting neck cramps from looking down too much, missing the scenery we ride by and not hearing the people around us.  Given that, who wants to carry a book when you’ve got hundreds downloaded onto your Kindle or Nook app?  Further frustration:  who wants to open those apps when you can have the three-star-rush of Angry Birds or discovering five new Pinterest recipes for banana nut bread?

The world of electronic gadgets and the bright shiny oooooooh of it all do suck me in.  I don’t spend my time reading books.  That makes me sad, but I don’t see myself changing my routine.

The most recent book I finished was a memoir recommended to me.  I bought it—a physical copy—because that person said, it sounded like the type of memoir I was writing.  I bought it to study and learn from it, the story being a secondary aspect.  It turns out that the approach worked for me; the story was not a great one and I didn’t connect with the character, but there were lines of brilliant emotion that struck my heart.  I wonder: would I have bought that book just off a bookshelf, physical store or otherwise, if I didn’t have that writing connection to it?

I’m writing this in a Starbucks, and what a twist of coincidence just now.  I overhear a conversation between two women where one says, “Have you read the latest James Patterson novel?”  I’m pausing to listen.  The music’s loud enough and the women are far enough away that I’m only hearing snippets.  “He has a team of writers.”  “He’s always on top of it.”  “It’s always a mystery story.”  “Reading Wall Street Journal,” at which point I think the discussion has moved on to other topics.

I am thrilled to hear this conversation.  Angled towards each other, these women are still a community of two.  What are they doing?  I have to get a closer look.  I’m a terrible judge of age, but they look the age of people who still prefer reading paperbacks.  Do they have a roughed-up paperback between them?  That’d be so cool.  I tell myself I need to sweeten my coffee more, so I shuffle by and peer over their shoulders.  They’re both looking down at large smartphones or small tablets.  I am actually disappointed.  I tell myself that regardless where or how they read it, they read it.  Together.

They’re doing more than I am.

Months ago, I made reading a priority and set goals for the year.  I contributed my part to my writers group’s list of our New Year’s Writing Non-Resolutions.  You can read everyone’s lists here. One of my non-resolutions is what I think is an achievable reading goal for me.

As a writer, I feel a need to be more involved on Goodreads, so I updated my pathetically outdated account.  I enrolled in the 2015 Reading Challenge.  The number of books that I think is achievable for me is…well, check it out here and form your own opinion.

My list of books “currently reading” or “want to read” include two that people want me to review and/or critique.  Now I’m a reviewer.  Now I’m reading with a purpose, an obligation.  It’s more like a job.

When was the last time I wandered a bookstore with the intention of finding a book to read for selfish pleasure?  I don’t know.  I really don’t know.  There’s a lack of bookstores in my part of southeast Michigan.  There are two Barnes and Noble bookstores located a short drive from me.  There is one nice local independent store of new and used books, and then there’s one junky, cluttered used bookstore.  There’s a fabulous large used bookstore on the edge of Detroit, but it’s just far enough away for me to think of it as out of the way.  Nice excuses soothing my guilty conscience.

I guess I should stop making excuses for not reading.