Rating: 
Summary: great stories indeed, however...
Review: title a book "the best XXX of the century," and that's what you should give your readers. the best. not the most underappreciated, the hidden gems, the other stories by the best writers, or whatever. i wanted a compendium of what i was promised by the very title: the best american short stories of the century. i didn't get it. this book is very solid in what it presents, but what it presents is not what it claims.i won't continue to dredge up the jacksons and salingers that aren't present. look below for many comprehensive lists of exactly what aren't here. to be fair to prospective buyers, this selection would be better called, "american short fiction of the 20th century: a decade by decade look at some noteworthy pieces." when the editor even goes so far as to express the fact that he preferred to avoid the hackneyed stories, you should know you're not going to be getting what the title promises. sadly, unless you pick it up in a bookstore, you can't see that caveat till after it arrives in your mailbox. ah, well. a lesson learned. never again shall i purchase an updike-edited anthology.
Rating:
Summary: great stories indeed, however...
Review: title a book "the best XXX of the century," and that's what you should give your readers. the best. not the most underappreciated, the hidden gems, the other stories by the best writers, or whatever. i wanted a compendium of what i was promised by the very title: the best american short stories of the century. i didn't get it. this book is very solid in what it presents, but what it presents is not what it claims. i won't continue to dredge up the jacksons and salingers that aren't present. look below for many comprehensive lists of exactly what aren't here. to be fair to prospective buyers, this selection would be better called, "american short fiction of the 20th century: a decade by decade look at some noteworthy pieces." when the editor even goes so far as to express the fact that he preferred to avoid the hackneyed stories, you should know you're not going to be getting what the title promises. sadly, unless you pick it up in a bookstore, you can't see that caveat till after it arrives in your mailbox. ah, well. a lesson learned. never again shall i purchase an updike-edited anthology.
Rating: 
Summary: Full of pleasant surprises
Review: When I bought this book, I first checked to see if my favorite contemporary authors were represented: the impossibly great Alice Munro, Thom Jones, Lorrie Moore ... and they indeed are in there. I'm intrigued by Updike's choices for those authors, because they weren't the choices I would have made. I enjoyed thinking about why he made those choices; I wish I could join Updike for lunch and debate him. What I most enjoy about this collection is the surprises. I had always thought Hemingway was overrated, but his tale here, "The Killers," is a hair-raising gem. And I had never heard of J.F. Powers, who has a wonderful shaggy-dog story in this collection that made me laugh out loud. You can see that Joyce Carol Oates was writing about the same subject matter in 1962 that she writes about now, but the telling is fresh in her 37-year-old story, "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?". Yes, I quibble with the exclusion of Shirley Jackson and J.D. Salinger, but not too much. "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" and "The Lottery" would have been predictable and boring selections (actually, I like "Seymour: An Introduction" better). This is not a boring collection.
Rating: 
Summary: Without "The Lottery," this is a sham.
Review: Yes, a sham. Any book puporting to contain the greatest short stories of this century which does not contain Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" simply does not cut it. To the Remainder bin with this book.
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