When compiling Recommended Reading’s most popular stories of the year, we noticed a trend. You like to read about sex—though not good sex, necessarily. The sex might be awkward or misguided, as in our most-read story by Michelle Lyn King, about a high-schooler preoccupied with the expectations of others.
Or it might be really misguided, as in A.M. Homes’s iconic story from 1986 about a sexually obsessive teenage boy who masturbates all over his sister’s Barbie doll.
Another top read by Elisa Faison actually does contain good sex—until it gets emotionally complicated, as foursomes are wont to do. Or, if you’re interested in a (sexless) take on non-monogamous relationships, consider Marne Litfin’s story about a deteriorating throuple, aka a “murder.”
I would say that sex sells, except Recommended Reading is free. We published 52 issues this year—including our 600th—on topics as wide-ranging as repressed memories, existential dread, class privilege, stalkers, lost friendships, influencers, first loves, and acid trips. Our contributors included Paul Yoon, Ann Beattie, Alexanda Chang, Yiyun Lee, Azareen van der Vliet Oloomi, and Rebecca Makkai; and our recommenders included Deesha Philyaw, Elizabeth McKracken, Fransciso Goldman, and Lauren Groff.
All. For. Free.
You can find all 606 issues of Recommended Reading on our website, representing the largest free resource for literary short fiction outside of a library system. But publishing Recommended Reading isn’t free. Please consider making a donation to our year-end fundraising campaign. We need your support as we embark on Recommended Reading’s 2024 season, its 13th year of publication.
– Halimah Marcus
Editor, Recommended Reading
Here are our 10 most popular stories of the year, starting with the most read.
“One-Hundred Percent Humidity” by Michelle Lyn King, recommended by Wynter K. Miller
Michelle Lyn King’s “One-Hundred Percent Humidity” follows a teenage girl, Faith, who is trying her best to be “the kind of person who says yes to things.” Faith’s mother has recently died of breast cancer, her father is dating someone new, and her friend Callie dictates the terms of their entire friendship. She is also beginning to understand that whether people think you did something matters more than whether you actually did. King’s writing is candid and emotionally unflinching. As Wynter K. Miller writes in her introduction, “She understands that markers of maturity, like sexual experience, matter—and she is aware that the noteworthiness of her virginity depends on the behavior of others. If she hasn’t had sex yet, it matters; if she’s the only one who hasn’t had sex, it matters more.”
“A Real Doll” by A.M. Homes, recommended and revisited by A.M. Homes
In 1986, A.M. Homes wrote “A Real Doll,” a story about a teenage boy who develops an intense psychosexual relationship with his sister’s Barbie. Homes remembers when she workshopped the story at NYU, her classmates thought it was “‘psychotic’ and that it was impossible to date Barbie ‘because she didn’t have a vagina.’” The story was eventually published in Christopher Street magazine along with two other stories from her collection The Safety of Objects, and it also spawned the anthology Mondo Barbie. In honor of the release of the Barbie movie, Homes revisits her iconic short story thirty-five years later.
“Group Sex” by Elisa Faison, recommended by Wynter K. Miller
“Group Sex” opens five years into Frances and Ben’s happy marriage as they contemplate opening it up for the first time. Their entanglement with another couple, Adam and Celeste, raises unforeseen questions about queerness, nonmonogamy, and the institution of marriage. Articulating the rich interiority of its characters, “Group Sex” gives voice to the messy joys of a foursome. Rather than just sex, as Wynter K. Miller writes, this story shines a light on “loyalty and betrayal, desire and grief, obsession and love. The story asks important questions about marriage and monogamy, and somehow, it makes the asking fun.”
“Connie” by Catherine Lacey, recommended by Lauren Groff
This excerpt from Catherine Lacey’s Biography of X forms part of a biographical detective story in which X’s widow C. M. Lucca, a former journalist, attempts to uncover the true story of her wife’s life. Lauren Groff describes X as the shifty and elusive “magnetic center” of the novel: “X is a writer of fiction, a visual artist, a filmmaker, and a songwriter and producer for David Bowie; in short, a Zelig of high art.” Lucca discovers that X employed different names, identities and personalities in a dizzying spiral of deception; despite her desperate attempts to discover X’s true identity, Lucca never quite comes close, and her search only illuminates the depths of her absence.
“Live Today Always” by Jade Jones, recommended by Halimah Marcus
In “Live Today Always,” Lee is a copywriter for a PR firm that represents a problematic social media influencer. The only Black person at her company, Lee is tasked with writing the influencer’s apology for saying a racial slur, forcing her to contend with the fact that she has been compromising her own values. Fluent in the language of the Internet, Jones’s voice is at once compelling and natural. As Halimah Marcus writes in her introduction, “Life online is at once ephemeral and permanent: there’s a record of what you said, but it can also be deleted.”
“Julia” by Ada Zhang, recommended by Sarah Thankam Mathews
In “Julia,” a story from Ada Zhang’s debut collection The Sorrows of Others, a thirty-two-year-old woman named Esther prepares to leave New York after ten years. She is reminded of the intense, transformative friendship she once had with a woman named Julia as well as its eventual rupture. Sarah Thankam Matthews describes Zhang’s writing as “careful, faceted, gleaming in its insight and meticulous observation, its beautiful sentences. But it is also radiant, softly glowing as if lit from within.” The Sorrows of Others is a “pristine and lovingly carved jewel box of a collection,” filled with wisdom, insight and profundity.
“Wedding Party” by Christine Sneed, recommended by Elizabeth McKenzie
Sneed’s panoramic story “Wedding Party” explores the psyches of the disparate members of a wedding: “the scars of the wife-to-be, the secret yearnings of the groom, the screw-ups of the uncle, the fury of the groom’s brother, and the gnawing voids in the lives of those attending, including a kleptomaniac sister,” as Elizabeth McKenzie writes in her introduction. “Everyone is hungry, everyone is wounded, and, as custom demands, everyone must be merry nonetheless.” Sneed’s elegant, lucid and virtuosic prose expertly navigates individual consciousness in a masterful examination of the short story form.
“Communicable” by Daphne Kalotay, recommended by Rebecca Makkai
In “Communicable,” a short story from her collection The Archivists, Daphne Kalotay uses the backdrop of the pandemic and the technology of Zoom to navigate the minefield of human relationships. She accomplishes what Rebecca Makkai describes as a remarkable feat: She uses the pandemic as an organic plot device, writing a story that could only happen in lockdown—COVID is at the very center of the story—and yet it’s all simply scaffolding to the real story, which is about people who are both pushed together and falling apart.” Like the rest of the collection, “Communicable” is witty, transcendent, uncanny and unfailingly prescient.
“The Catholics” by Chaitali Sen, recommended by Danielle Evans
In the aftermath of the 2016 election, Laurie and Sharmila feel betrayed by their country and react by making uncharitable assumptions about their new neighbors. In doing so, they push back against a culture that insists they don’t belong, but risk compromising their own values in the process. This story from A New Race of Men From Heaven is atmospheric and unnerving, capturing what Danielle Evans describes as “Sen’s gift for being forthright—for finding the precise language to capture even a fleeting feeling” as well as “her gift for restraint, her willingness to leave silence on the page, to let language be the best tool we have for forging connection or understanding and still, frequently, not enough.”
“Daisies” by Marne Litfin, recommended by Halimah Marcus
On a bright sunny summer day, the narrator and their friend Miller is on a road trip from upstate New York to Philly to visit the beach. On their drive, the two friends have both heartfelt and light-hearted discussions about their gender identity, changing bodies, and failing romantic situationships. In her introduction, Halimah Marcus describes reading the story as being “invited inside that friendship, and reminded that the greatest gift in any relationship, romantic or otherwise, is the freedom of being loved while also being yourself.”
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