I know, I know, it’s been months since I posted in the Sunday Salon. How are you all? What have you been up to? Me? I’ve been busy, but not with as much reading as I’d like. This week I have been thinking about short stories.

Every so often Tim has to go to America for work, usually at the last minute. One of the few advantages of this (besides getting complete control of the TV while he’s away) is that he brings me back the New Yorker, which I really love but can’t quite justify paying the international subscription price when what I’m really after is the weekly short story. They get the greatest writers in the world. Every week.

On the back of my recent treat of not one but two New Yorkers, I was browsing the website and spotted the fiction podcast. Oh man, this is the most amazing discovery. Once a month a writer picks a short story from the New Yorker archives, reads it aloud and discusses it a little. It’s an amazing resource. This week I have listened to “Symbols and signs” by Vladimir Nabokov, “The lottery” by Shirley Jackson and “Playing with dynamite” by John Updike.

I am not normally great at listening to audio books but a 20-minute story fits nicely into my commute and it’s a really good way to try some of the many authors I have heard praised but not read myself yet.

Do you read short stories outside of book compilations of them? Where do you read them? Do you subscribe to any fiction magazines?