I suspect we all have our own lists. I love ten of the stories on that list, don't care at all for the others. . . . But that's just my reading taste.
Yeah, but it's still a highly interesting list.
As for why many of the best movies come from short stories, they really don't.
Agreed. It's not hard to find a lot of great movies derived from novels. All depends on the skill of the screenplay writer, producer, director and actors. Sometimes really fine movies get made from novels that really aren't that great. For me, as viewer, the list of great movies produced from novels would include:
To Kill a Mockingbird
Gone With the Wind (movie better than novel)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (likewise)
What's Eating Gilbert Grape? (haven't read the novel, but the movie is excellent)
The Ox-Bow Incident (made around 1940, with Henry Fonda)
The Hound of the Baskervilles (classic Sherlock Holmes, with Basil Rathbone)
The Invisible Man (classic H.G. Wells, with Claude Rains)
Cannery Row
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Life of Pi (again, haven't read the novel, but the movie is way good)
Love in the Timo of Cholera (novel by Gabriel García Marquez, film starring Javier Bardem, both good)
Lord Jim (Conrad's great novel, with Peter O'Toole and James Mason in the great movie)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Hugo's classic, filmed multiple times, my fave being the 1950s version with Anthony Quinn)
For me, the best movie I've ever seen adapted from a short story is "The Man Who Would Be King", from Kipling's classic story, film starring Sean Connery, Michael Caine and Christopher Plummer. A big sumptuous swashbuckling adventure of the kind nobody makes anymore.
caw