Web Selections
The chief reading focus of Chapter One will always be the official monthly book selections, a complete history of which can be viewed here.
However, some group members also enjoy reading and discussing other great works in the form of short stories and poetry. To this end, such works have periodically been featured on this website. In the group’s early years, 30 classic short stories and 30 classic poems were documented online for discussion purposes. This feature later returned for further collections of works to be discussed, with a new short story and poem spotlighted each month. These works often complimented the official monthly reading selection of Chapter One.
This feature is currently on hiatus once gain. However, the complete archive of all such works can be viewed below.
Featured Short Stories
VOLUME ONE
03/08 Three Questions by Leo Tolstoy
04/08 A Clean, Well-Lighted Place by Ernest Hemingway
05/08 The Story of Audunn and the Bear by Anonymous
06/08 To Build a Fire by Jack London
07/08 Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne
08/08 The Last Leaf by O. Henry
09/08 Hills Like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway
10/08 The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe
11/08 A Horseman in the Sky by Ambrose Bierce
12/08 Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving
01/09 The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F. Scott Fitzgerald
02/09 The Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allan Poe
03/09 An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce
04/09 The Music of Erich Zann by H.P. Lovecraft
05/09 The Adventure of the Speckled Band by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
06/09 Markheim by Robert Louis Stevenson
07/09 Earth's Holocaust by Nathaniel Hawthorne
08/09 The Country of the Blind by H.G. Wells
09/09 The Rocking-Horse Winner by D.H. Lawrence
10/09 The Monkey's Paw by W.W. Jacobs
11/09 A Telephone Call by Dorothy Parker
12/09 The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
01/10 The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
02/10 The Gospel According to Mark by Jorge Luis Borges
03/10 The Door in the Wall by H.G. Wells
04/10 The Box of Robbers by L. Frank Baum
05/10 The Grave by Guy de Maupassant
06/10 The Alchemist by H.P. Lovecraft
07/10 A Visit to Newgate by Charles Dickens
08/10 The Private History of a Campaign That Failed by Mark Twain
VOLUME TWO
01/16 A Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury
02/16 Beyond the Door by Philip K. Dick
03/16 Beware of the Dog by Roald Dahl
04/16 Iron Hans by The Brothers Grimm
05/16 The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
06/16 The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell
07/16 A Wagner Matinee by Willa Cather
08/16 I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison
09/16 The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin
10/16 The Pale Man by Julius Long
11/16 Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut
12/16 A Perfect Day for Bananafish by J.D. Salinger
01/17 The Nightingale and the Rose by Oscar Wilde
02/17 A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings by Gabriel García Márquez
03/17 The Street That Got Mislaid by Patrick Waddington
04/17 The Witness for the Prosecution by Agatha Christie
05/17 From Beyond by H.P. Lovecraft
06/17 The Reunion by Maya Angelou
07/17 Exterminator! by William S. Burroughs
08/17 We Ate the Children Last by Yann Martel
09/17 The Veldt by Ray Bradbury
10/17 The Witcher by Andrzej Sapkowski
11/17 The Invisible Man by G.K. Chesterton
12/17 Kunuuksaayuka by Anonymous
01/18 The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains by Neil Gaiman
02/18 Happy Endings by Margaret Atwood
03/18 Evidence by Isaac Asimov
04/18 Three Players of a Summer Game by Tennessee Williams
05/18 The Bet by Anton Chekhov
06/18 The Egg by Andy Weir
VOLUME THREE
07/18 The Secret Life of Walter Mitty by James Thurber
08/18 Brothers Beyond the Void by Paul W. Fairman
09/18 Girl by Jamaica Kincaid
10/18 The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving
11/18 A Hunger Artist by Franz Kafka
12/18 The Greatest Gift by Philip Van Doren Stern
01/19 The Pomegranate by Yasunari Kawabata
02/19 The Landlady by Roald Dahl
03/19 The Rule of Names by Ursula K. Le Guin
04/19 The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe
05/19 The Secret Garden by G.K. Chesterton
06/19 Sticks by George Saunders
07/19 A Village After Dark by Kazuo Ishiguro
08/19 The Temple by H.P. Lovecraft
09/19 A Thousand Deaths by Jack London
10/19 Mr. Arcularis by Conrad Aiken
11/19 The Menace from Earth by Robert A. Heinlein
12/19 A Christmas Dream, and How It Came True by Louisa May Alcott
01/20 The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster
02/20 A Jury of Her Peers by Susan Glaspell
03/20 The Story of the Lost Special by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
04/20 The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees by E. Lily Yu
05/20 The Word of Unbinding by Ursula K. Le Guin
06/20 The Way We Live Now by Susan Sontag
07/20 The Possibility of Evil by Shirley Jackson
08/20 It’s a Good Life by Jerome Bixby
09/20 Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street by Virginia Woolf
10/20 Recitatif by Toni Morrison
11/20 The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin
12/20 The Snow Maiden by Anonymous
VOLUME FOUR
01/21 Farmer Giles of Ham by J.R.R. Tolkien
02/21 The School by Donald Barthelme
03/21 The Scholar’s Disciple by Walter Tevis
04/21 Death and What Comes Next by Terry Pratchett
05/21 Galatea by Madeline Miller
06/21 Digitocracy by Andy Weir
07/21 The Man to Send Rain Clouds by Leslie Marmon Silko
08/21 The Devil, You Say by Charles Beaumont
09/21 Little Tricker the Squirrel Meets Big Double the Bear by Ken Kesey
10/21 The Sentinel by Arthur C. Clarke
11/21 A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor
12/21 The Day Before the Revolution by Ursula K. Le Guin
Featured Poems
VOLUME ONE
03/08 Each and All by Ralph Waldo Emerson
04/08 Do not go gentle into that good night by Dylan Thomas
05/08 The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd by Sir Walter Raleigh
06/08 The Tyger by William Blake
07/08 Lenore by Edgar Allan Poe
08/08 To a Mouse by Robert Burns
09/08 The Red Wheelbarrow by William Carlos Williams
10/08 The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes
11/08 The Destruction of Sennacherib by Lord Byron
12/08 The Gift of the Sea by Rudyard Kipling
01/09 Grass by Carl Sandburg
02/09 Holy Sonnet 10 (Death Be Not Proud) by John Donne
03/09 The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot
04/09 The Arrow and the Song by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
05/09 Because I could not stop for Death by Emily Dickinson
06/09 Requiem by Robert Louis Stevenson
07/09 Fire and Ice by Robert Frost
08/09 Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley
09/09 O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell by John Keats
10/09 The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe
11/09 When You Are Old by William Butler Yeats
12/09 Christmas Bells by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
01/10 Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came by Robert Browning
02/10 The Face That Launch'd a Thousand Ships by Christopher Marlowe
03/10 Ode to Augustus by Horace
04/10 The Meteorite by C.S. Lewis
05/10 In a Disused Graveyard by Robert Frost
06/10 The Alchemist in the City by Gerard Manley Hopkins
07/10 Squire Norton's Song by Charles Dickens
08/10 America by Walt Whitman
VOLUME TWO
01/16 If by Rudyard Kipling
02/16 An Old Snare by Philip K. Dick
03/16 The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot
04/16 Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll
05/16 Child of the Amazons by Max Eastman
06/16 Lady Lazarus by Sylvia Plath
07/16 The Gourmet's Love-Song by P.G. Wodehouse
08/16 Past, Present, Future by Emily Brontë
09/16 I Am Not Yours by Sara Teasdale
10/16 Invictus by William Ernest Henley
11/16 The City Planners by Margaret Atwood
12/16 Early Fall in Central Park by J.D. Salinger
01/17 Sonnet 106 by William Shakespeare
02/17 Courage by Amelia Earhart
03/17 Sailing to Byzantium by William Butler Yeats
04/17 In a Dispensary by Agatha Christie
05/17 Desiderata by Max Ehrmann
06/17 Still I Rise by Maya Angelou
07/17 A Supermarket in California by Allen Ginsberg
08/17 A Satyr Against Reason and Mankind by John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester
09/17 Amaze by Adelaide Crapsey
10/17 Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti
11/17 The Emperor of Ice-Cream by Wallace Stevens
12/17 The Day the Saucers Came by Neil Gaiman
01/18 Relativity by Sarah Howe
02/18 Variation on the Word Sleep by Margaret Atwood
03/18 The End of Science Fiction by Lisel Mueller
04/18 Androgyne, Mon Amour by Tennessee Williams
05/18 The Ballad of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde
06/18 Attack of the Crab Monsters by Lawrence Raab
VOLUME THREE
07/18 Natural History by E.B. White
08/18 The Old Astronomer by Sarah Williams
09/18 Interview by Dorothy Parker
10/18 The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
11/18 Her Kind by Anne Sexton
12/18 ‘Twas just this time, last year, I died by Emily Dickinson
01/19 New Year’s Day by Kobayashi Issa
02/19 The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats
03/19 How It Seems to Me by Ursula K. Le Guin
04/19 Acquainted with the Night by Robert Frost
05/19 The Panther by Rainer Maria Rilke
06/19 Differences of Opinion by Wendy Cope
07/19 Wild Geese by Mary Oliver
08/19 Diving into the Wreck by Adrienne Rich
09/19 The Listeners by Walter de la Mare
10/19 Dead Man’s Hate by Robert Ervin Howard
11/19 Dulce et Decorum est by Wilfred Owen
12/19 Waking in Winter by Sylvia Plath
01/20 The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot
02/20 Bored by Margaret Atwood
03/20 Adlestrop by Edward Thomas
04/20 The Cry of a Generation by Shu Ting
05/20 The Sea is History by Derek Walcott
06/20 We Real Cool by Gwendolyn Brooks
07/20 Pokeberries by Ruth Stone
08/20 Mother to Son by Langston Hughes
09/20 Hanging Fire by Audre Lorde
10/20 Antigonish by William Hughes Mearns
11/20 Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird by Wallace Stevens
12/20 Spellbound by Emily Brontë
VOLUME FOUR
01/21 The Adventures of Tom Bombadil by J.R.R. Tolkien
02/21 A Glimpse by Walt Whitman
03/21 Love and Black Magic by Robert Graves
04/21 Instructions by Neil Gaiman
05/21 The Shield of Achilles by W.H. Auden
06/21 Rising from Earth by Al Worden
07/21 Remember by Joy Harjo
08/21 In the Bazaars of Hyderabad by Sarojini Naidu
09/21 First Party at Ken Kesey’s with Hell’s Angels by Allen Ginsberg
10/21 Her Strong Enchantments Failing by A.E. Housman
11/21 Consolation by Billy Collins
12/21 The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy