Every year, the Washington Post Magazine has an issue with a few short stories in it.  If I have the chance, I enjoy reading them.

For the past hour, I've sat on the couch that my aunt gave me when she found out that my wife-to-be and I were expecting and read the 2009 issue.  Each story was unique, but they all kind of run together in my head.  A continuum of others, if you will.

As a schoolboy, I read more than all my peers.  In some cases, more than them all combined, probably.  Around high school, my pleasure reading started its precipitous decline.  And here I sit, nearly 15 years later, enjoying my yearly foray into fiction.

I'm not sure if this is a new thing or not, but it appears that the Post had the authors read their stories this year.  Although in this digital era, a telephone-quality recording leaves a bit of a bad taste in one's ears.  Here are the direct links to each story:

• English Lesson by Elizabeth Strout
• Becoming Water by Ursula Hegi
• From May through September by Aimee Bender
• The View from Lake Como by Ken Kalfus

As the cumulative affect of an expecting wife, house search, being a full-time dad, memorization for a children's program, work projects in which I'm behind, laundry to be done, and half a container of mint-chocolate chip ice cream consumed earlier this evening race through my brain, I question whether I have time to spend reading the stories, and then cogitating on them here.  Fortunately, in my mind at least, all those reasons only make it more pressing that I did read and that I do write.

For my own sake, I'll remind myself yet again: fiction burdens us with truth.