Published by Symphony Space in October of 2010 One last note, there are some sexual references in some of these stories, so it's not suitable for family road trips with young children. I'm going to keep this and will probably listen to it again at some point in the future.

Laughter is contagious, and I imagine the actors feed off the response. The stories are read to a live audience, and with humor the audience adds to the experience like a live audience in a sitcom. The ones that stood out for me, besides Saki's, were Jonathan Lethem's unusual and imaginative 'The Spray' read by Robert Sean Leonard, Miranda July's 'The Swim Team' read by Parker Posey who is the perfect narrator, and the humorously teodious 'Country Cooking from Central France: Roast Boned Rolled Stuffed Shoulder of Lanb (Farce Double)' by Harry Matthews, read by Isaiah Sheffer. I enjoyed all of these stories, and I wish this was longer. The only other author I was familiar with is Philip Roth. I was only familiar with one of the stories, Saki's 'The Schartz-Metterklume Method' which is already a favorite of mine from other audio short story collections, as are all of Saki's stories. The narrations in this collection were all excellent, and narrators included Stephen Colbert, Robert Sean Leonard, Parker Posey, Christine Baranski and Alec Baldwin. They have a podcast, and have released several collections. Selected Shorts is a series of short stories narrated by famous actors. Isaiah Sheffer hysterically delivers an epic once-in-a-lifetime recipe to challenge the bravest cook in Harry Mathews’ “Country Cooking from Central France: Roast Boned Rolled Stuffed Shoulder of Lamb (Farce Double).” Tony Award–winner Christine Baranski recreates Thomas Meehan’s wacky whimsy about a cocktail party guest list composed of two syllable celebrity names in “Yma Dream”-the most popular comic tale in the history of the series. Boyle’s “The Lie,” relating the yarn of a man who is drawn deeper and deeper into a tangled web of deceit-and hilarity. “Queen of the Indies” Parker Posey deliciously explains how to teach a group of daffy seniors to swim without a pool in Miranda July’s “The Swim Team.” Emmy Award–winning comedian Stephen Colbert performs T. Featuring some of the biggest names in Hollywood as performers, this collection finds Emmy Award–winning actor Alec Baldwin enacting Julia Slavin’s “Covered,” a far-out funny story of an unraveling thread and its grip on the protagonist.

From silly chuckles and rueful ironic glee to deep cosmic laughter, this new volume of humorous tales samples the best of recent seasons of the popular public radio series, Selected Shorts.

Symphony space selected shorts