This is the interesting question that I mentioned in my previous post about Tor Beta – which I still can’t link to. So here’s the question for you, dear readers. Do you read short fiction? Why or why not? Under what conditions will you read short fiction?
I read mostly novels as that’s what I enjoy the most. I like long stories I can sink my teeth into. I like basking in meatier tomes. It’s enjoyable to me.
But I should note that I usually go through 2 novels a week, more or less, so thicker novels give me more reading time, which is important from the point of view of running out of available reading material. And considering travel, it’s easier for me to bring two or three novels than a very large, very thick anthology of short stories.
However, the husband has a lot of pre-wedding anthologies that I’ve been making my way through here and there, and while I enjoy them, short stories end too soon for me and the disjointed styles from one story/author to the next isn’t as easy reading as a good novel for me. As another person put it, there’s too much cognitive overhead from the task switching. Sure, it’s not the same as switching from doing the accounts to talking on the phone to typing up a letter to the government about this tax issue or another to turn around and deal with… But it’s still task switching.
Added to that that those anthologies are very thick and very large, which means very heavy. With my worsening joint problems, I do fine with a regular thickness novel, but anything any bigger is becoming painful and tiring, so it greatly impacts how long I can hold the book up, and therefore how long I can read it for.
On the other hand, short story collections by a single author or set in a single universe is equally as enjoyable to me as a novel, probably because I don’t have to gear up for a totally different style or universe every ten or twenty pages or so. The task switching is less, as is the cognitive overhead. It works better. For me.
Having said all that, I also know that my brain doesn’t work the same way that everyone else’s does.
What about you? Do you read short fiction? Under what conditions will you or won’t you?
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
I don’t read short fiction because I like character-driven stories. I feel that short fiction doesn’t allow the character development that I enjoy.
Very true. Which is another reason I prefer novels, too.
In my college days, we had to read a selection of short stories. I studied “The Gift of the Magi” of O. Henry, Luncheon of Maugham, “A Mother in Manville”. I liked all of them. I became interested to read of O. Henry and I liked A Double-Dyed Deceiver. “The Mexican” of Jack London and “The Most Dangerous Game” of Richard Connell are among my most favorite short stories. In fact, I find it difficult to compare between short stories and novel. I love both of them.
I think there’s a time and a place for short fiction – like popping a literary pill so you can get back to whatever it was you were doing. The ones I like best are the subgenre ones – say, fantasy>vampires>abduction, or the ones by one author from one world on a common theme (like Charles de Lint’s Waifs and Strays). There’s also the common voice route – Neil Gaiman, for example, writes excellent short fiction, and his voice is so steady that reading e.g., Fragile Things gives the same sense of… completion, I guess, as reading a novel.
Razib, you’ve just reminded me of a bunch of short fiction I read in high school that I really enjoyed – Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Columbian) with No One Writes to the Colonel and Jorge Luis Borges (Argentinian) with The Aleph and Other Short Stories. Introduced me to a whole other style of writing, and genre, too, that I found immensely interesting and fascinating. Thought provoking stuff that, more than 20 years later, is still with me. And quite possibly, or even quite likely, will find its way into my own stories in some way or another.
Thank you for reminding me of those two authors and their short story collections. Now I’m going to have to hunt them down and read them again.
Cyates, that’s an eloquent way of putting it – popping a literary pill.
Thanks for commenting. 
I’ll read short fiction if it draws me in. It has to grab my attention right away or I figure it’s not really worth it.