With each passing year, my attention span wanes and my reading list gets more abbreviated. Thankfully next year is already being dubbed “The Year of the Short Story,” perhaps in response to those like me who are short on time and long on commitments.

Another piece of good news: We don’t have to wait until 2012 to jump feet first into the short fiction fray. Chris Power of the Guardian has compiled a list of the top short stories published this year and he contends that there were some fantastic short reads if you knew where to look. Check it out.

And for those of you who are too time poor to read the article, I feel your pain. Here’s the recommended list:

1. Alice by Judith Hermann (Clerkenwell Press)
2. All the Lights (And Other Stories) by Clemens Meyer
3. The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories by Don DeLillo (Picador)
4. The Beautiful Indifference by Sarah Hall (Faber and Faber)
5. Best European Fiction 2012 edited by Aleksandar Hemon (Dalkey Archive)
6. Best British Short Stories 2011 edited by Nicholas Royle (Salt)
7. The Granta Book of the African Short Story edited by Helon Habila (Granta)
8. It Was Just, Yesterday by Mirja Unge (Comma Press)
9. Long, Last, Happy: New and Selected Stories by Barry Hannah (Atlantic)
10. Saints and Sinners by Edna O’Brien (Faber and Faber)
11. Scenes from Village Life by Amos Oz (Chatto & Windus)
12. The Suitcase by Sergei Dovlatov (One World)
13. We Others: New and Selected Stories by Steven Millhauser (Corsair)