Saturday, October 15, 2016

The Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant

After experiencing disappointment and disgust with the last novel I read [An American Bigot in King Arthur's Court], I thought I might look around for a collection of short stories to cleanse my mind of Mark Twain's bigotry. While searching the Internet, I discovered Guy de Maupassant.

According to the wikipedia article covering de Maupassant, he is considered to be one of the fathers of the modern short story, influencing two of my favorites, Somerset Maugham and O. Henry.

Going to Project Gutenberg, I downloaded the Complete Original Short Stories of Guy De Maupassant in one ebook. This ebook contains 13 volumes of short stories. I've nearly finished reading the first volume which contains twelve stories - including Boule de Suif, considered by some to be his masterpiece.

As I write this, I've only one short story in volume one remaining. I haven't personally counted the number of titles making up the 13 volumes, but the wikipedia article says de Maupassant wrote 300 short stories. If that's the case, I've quite a long way to go. This being the middle of October, this collection of short stories might very well be the last book I read this year.

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