Check out these two new books to celebrate The New Yorker's 100th birthday.

There is nothing I love more than a huge, century-spanning, best-of compilation of short stories. 

Some highlights from the first 50 years:

• The Weeds, Mary McCarthy (1944) - a woman trying to escape her husband
• Symbols and Signs, Vladimir Nabokov (1948) - visiting a son who is "incurably deranged in his mind"
• The Ladder, V.S. Pritchett (1949) - a stepmother, stranded
• The Happiest I've Been, John Updike (1959) - especially that ending

Then came what I thought of as the "Greatest Hits" portion of the book, which were all re-reads and some of my favorite stories of all time:

• Where I'm Calling From, Raymond Carver (1982)
• The Way We Live Now, Susan Sontag (1986)
• Bullet in the Brain, Tobias Wolff (1995) - they is, they is, they is
• Brokeback Mountain, Annie Proulx (1997)

And then some standouts from the last 25 years:

• Drinking Coffee Elsewhere, ZZ Packer (2000) - seemed ahead of its time
• The Other Place, Mary Gaitskill (2011) - I liked this one against my will. It had a very Joyce Carol Oates vibe (and then I noticed that there's no JCO in this collection!).
• What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, Nathan Englander (2011) - I had forgotten this one, with its sledgehammer ending
• An Abduction, Tessa Hadley (2012)
• Cold Little Bird, Ben Marcus (2015)
• Cat Person, Kristen Roupenian (2017) - I thought this held up
• Café Loup, Ben Lerner (2021) - strong debt to Bullet in the Brain!

This biography of celebrated editor Katharine S. White was exceptionally well done. Two of the most interesting parts were 1) that Katharine started her adult life in a brief 20-year period in the early twentieth century when women were encouraged (and allowed) to thrive in their careers as easily as men did, and 2) that she was a pioneer of working from home, doing much of her editing work from her farm in Maine. I also love seeing biographers use the voluminous correspondence of yesteryear to create a portrait, and Amy Reading did that beautifully.

This was extra fun to read after reading A Century of Fiction in the New Yorker, which of course included many of her authors.