Short stories

[andrewducker]

[Poll #1613002]

Inspired by

Comments

[zornhau.livejournal.com]

I tend not to read short stories unless they are pulp-era reprints, like Harold Lamb's "Swords from the West."

[kvlt-kitty.livejournal.com]

It very much depends on the collection in question, for me. If it's a single-authored collection I'll generally assume the author's chosen the order of stories for a particular reason (Alistair MacLeod's Island springs to mind as a good example - the last story in it very much needs to be the last story).

Obviously an editor makes the same sort of decisions, but in a collection by several authors there's probably more likely to be a much bigger range between 'stories I love' and 'stories I loathe', so I'll ignore the reading order a bit and pick and choose.

A work (especially something brief like a short story) needs to be really, really shit for me to give up part-way through, to be honest - I'm loathe not to finish what I've started.

[dapperscavenger.livejournal.com]

I pick the order entirely at random. Towards the end, I forget which ones I've already read and waste valuble minutes rereading paragraphs to try to figure it out.

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

I ticked front to back as a general rule but some exceptions. I'm not particularly bothered about length but I will usually leave an actual novella until the end. This is because I'm often deliberately reading a collection in short bursts at the same time as a novel. And I will sometimes read a favourite author (or a new author or an acclaimed story) first if I'm not planning to get round to the whole collection for a while.

[nmg.livejournal.com]

Pretty much the same here.

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

I read collections the same way I read novels, front to back.

And I can't remember ever giving up on a short story.

[onceupon.livejournal.com]

I almost never give up. This is also true of novels. I think part of it is a function of reading very quickly (my base investment in texts is just lower because they aren't a significant commitment of time and that's magnified with short stories) but also because I am stubborn and even when I hate something I won't let it "win" by putting it down. That's ESPECIALLY true with short story collections with multiple authors. Because I keep thinking that surely the NEXT story will be better. But every now and then I find an editor with whom I just have an incompatible taste. And then, oh, then, I bitch about it on livejournal. ;)

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

Yes, "at least five pages" means "the whole thing" for me.

[onceupon.livejournal.com]

That's the option I chose as well. It makes me wonder how common it is for people NOT to finish. I hadn't given it much thought, though I suppose I knew people didn't finish novels. Huh.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, I realised after I clicked it that I had forgotten an "I never give up" option.

[onceupon.livejournal.com]

Never give up, never surrender!

[sageautumn.livejournal.com]

Yup, me too. I very very rarely give up, and not on short stories.

I will admit, I've bought 3 books by the same author--because they are a lj friend and I LOVE their blog posts... and I haven't been able to finish any of them. (I keep buying though, total support.) I don't find their writing style accessible, and because of that I don't find it enjoyable. This is about the only reason I give up on reading anything... it is pretty much never about the story.*

Oh, and THIS IS NOT YOU. (Hand to god.)

*in this instance, I often can't really tell what the crap IS the story, I get lost in the end-to-end million dollar words and flashing back and forth from places/story chains/viewpoints.

[sageautumn.livejournal.com]

OH! I'll also give up when a book pisses me off.

I gave up on the bible after Job... it didn't matter if his kids were good/righteous/etc or not, they all died because God was screwing around, then God was like... oh look... new kids. Cause that's TOTALLY the same!

I gave up on Lord Foul's Bane when he stopped being a leper. The rest of the book may've been really good, but I was kinda into the dude living live day-to-day with/being a leper.

[andrewducker]

Spoiler - he doesn't actually stop. When he's not in The Land, he's still a leper, and even when he's there his leprosy, and the attitudes he picked up with it, continue to affect him.

[sageautumn.livejournal.com]

I've since heard that. Not enough of an appeal to draw me back to it though.

Plus I tend to not like world-switchy stuff. Pick a thing and go with it.

[andrewducker]

He did pick a thing and go with it - the thing was "If someone who had picked up all of the behaviours and practices that a person with leprosy has to in order to survive, how would they cope with being transplanted into a fantasy world and healed?"

Came out of his parents work with a leper colony in India, I believe.

[ladysisyphus.livejournal.com]

My system for reading bb_shousetsu issues is mostly: find stories by authors I know (that I haven't read prior to publication), read those, then start at the top and grind my way through.

I can tell if a story's worth reading in the first paragraph, of course, but I'll hang on through the first page to see if I might be wrong this time.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I normally read front-to-back, but will skip ahead if I feel like it, or if there's one story I bought the collection for.

I will _temporarily_ skip past a story on a whim, if I happen not to like the first paragraph, but will always intend to come back to it, and normally do so, although not always. I'd feel obliged to read at least several pages before saying "I _definitely_ don't want to read this".

[cdave]

When I buy a short story collection because it has a story I read online, I'll often skip that story as it'll be too soon for a re-read.

[ajr.livejournal.com]

While I largely read front to back, I like to read each story in one sitting. So on occasion when the next story is a lengthly one, I'll skip ahead to the next short one instead.

On rare - *very* rare - occasions, I'll dip into an anthology to read a story by a particular author.

[soon_lee]

Front to back: yes, with occasional exceptions. Either the editor or author placed the stories in that order for a reason.

And with short stories, I never give up. That way, I can trash bad stories without qualm (having given them a fair go). With novels, I tend to be more discriminating about which books I commit to starting.