An Online Haul

 This post is the last of the posts in the 16^th or 17^th year of this blog, I am not clear. I began the blog on the 31^stof 2007.  Next week this blog turns 18?

 

I have a thing for short stories. I haven’t read as many as I should have though I have plenty of collections of short stories by many famous names in Indian as well as those in other places. It is as if I am hoarding these short story collections to read some time in the future. I think I began my reading life with short stories and over the years have get to know some really good writers who have written the kind of stories you never forget. I have almost all the titles by Alice Munro, a couple of titles by Lorrie Moore, but I am yet to find anything by Grace Paley save for a short story or two by her that I chanced upon in anthologies. Somewhere I read about ‘I Stand Here Ironing’ by Tille Olsen but haven’t been able to find it anywhere until last week when I got lucky and bagged a copy of ‘Tell Me a Riddle’ by Tille Olsen in a sale on WhatsApp. 

 

I knew that Tille Olsen wrote some really good stories but I did not expect to find ‘I Stand Here Ironing’ in ‘Tell Me a Riddle’ that I received the other day. I was delighted to find this famous and much quoted story in this collection along with three other stories including the title story. The other stories in this slim collection include: Hey Sailor, What Ship?; and O Yes. 

Later when I opened the book to take a better look I was pleasantly surprised it was a New Year gift to a friend in 2000 from someone called Thrity. It set off my imagination and I wondered who Thrity was and who it was she gifted the book to and how it ended with the bookseller from whom I bought it.