O. Henry - The Gift of the Magi

O. Henry has always been one of my favorite short story writers. His stories always have a twist at the end. This one is a classic and is often raised as a Christmas story. I'm not religious, but this story does get across what the spirit of Christmas is all about.

I will post on a few more from O. Henry.

Poe - The Angel of the Odd

This one took me by surprise. I found it online in a public domain book of humorous short stories. Like most folks, I hadn't really considered Poe as a humor writer, so was interested to see how he did. It was good. It was a little tough reading because he uses phonetic spelling to give the title character an accent, however once I got a handle on that, it was good.

Read it. Learn a side of Poe you haven't known. (I will scare up - pun intended - some other stories of Poe at a later point.)

Twain - The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calevaras County

Mark Twain. What can I say? Obviously, one of the most well known writers of his time. Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, and many others. I had to dig up a short story from Twain to read. This short story is really quite a classic in its own right. Twain has such a way of capturing a sense of the "Americana" of his era. As usual, he has a unique way of interjecting humor into most of his works.
Read this story if you have some time and enjoy.

Irving - The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Well, it had been a long time since I had the pleasure of reading this story. Another American classic based in the Hudson Valley where I grew up. This story has been made into movies and animated cartoons.

Really, really good and worth the read. A must have for any short list of American short stories.