Now, I wonder: How many of my Canadian to-read books are short story collections? I just read about The Short Story Reading Challenge run by Kate of Kate’s Book Blog and, being a lover of the genre, figure that I might as well add another challenge to my existing one! To help make the challenge accessible for all, Kate’s provided potential participants with a range of different options on how to complete the challenge, and I’m planning on going with options 3 & 4:

Options 3 & 4: If you’ve got a bit more time to devote to this endeavour, you can commit to reading between five and ten short story collections over the course of 2010. Again, if you’re a short story novice, the world is your oyster as far as selection is concerned. But if you’re a seasoned short story reader, you’ll want to choose collections by writers whose short stories you have not yet encountered.

As of yet, I’m not 100% certain of what collections I’ll be reading, but I can guarantee that they’ll all be Canadian! And I can also guarantee that I will be sure to include Emily Schultz’s Black Coffee Night, Anik See’s Postcard and Other Stories, Rhonda Waterfall’s The Only Thing I Have, and Rebecca Rosenblum’s Once. Anyone have any other suggestions of must-read Canadian short stories? Some of my favourite Canadian collections include John Gould’s Kilter 55, Pasha Malla’s The Withdrawal Method, Vincent Lam’s Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures, and Annabel Lyon’s Oxygen.

Interested in joining The Short Story Reading Challenge? Comment on Kate’s post to let her know. And be sure to stick around here for my short story reviews throughout the year! Also, I’m almost finished up with my first book of 2009, so expect a review of Cordelia Strube’s Lemon sometime this week.