A New Feature

My good friend Tim, who blogs at A New Career in a New Town, recently wrote to me with an idea. I’ll let him explain:

We will take turns picking a short story or other short selection of writing from our respective libraries. The story/selection will be picked totally at random; we will grab a book and point to a page. It will be a story we either a) have never read, or b) have not read in quite a while. It will not be a story with which we are on intimate terms. It will not be a favorite. Just a random viewing.

Then each of us will read the selection. (If we don't have the selection, we'll go to the library.) Each week, we will post about the new selection on our blog, and cross link to the other's. We will try to post simultaneously; the idea, in other words, is not to have a dialogue, but complementary views of the same object.

This sounded like a worthwhile idea, partly on its own merits and partly because it gives me an excuse to communicate more with Tim, who lives on the other side of the country. The fun will start this afternoon with my next post. For the first round, Tim chose “The Chain,” a short story by Tobias Wolff. He also made the good suggestion that we post what the next week’s reading will be, in case anyone wants to play along at home. So I'll be including that as well...