(no subject)

[skygiants]

Someday I will be caught up on booklogging! Today . . . is probably not that day, but oh well.

I read Elizabeth Knox's Dreamhunter a little while ago, and found it interesting but frustrating. The sequel, Dreamquake, was equally interesting and much less frustrating! Questions get answered, relationships are portrayed with wonderful complexity, there are several brilliantly well-written and chilling sections (much of the strength of the books as a pair come from Elizabeth Knox's ability to convey genuine terror in each novel's climactic scene, the opera house and the debutantes' ball) and all of the characters grow and develop, and you guys know I love that. I do, however, think that the author slightly copped out on the ending and did not really explore all the implications of a development that is FULL of Implications, but I will leave it at that because spoilers, and I don't want to spoil because, despite that, with the completion of the pair I can now say that I really do recommend the books.

On the subject of continuing fictional universes, I read Kage Baker's Mother Aegypt and Other Stories because it contained one of the very last few stories in the Company universe that I had not read. That would be the title novella, and it did not in the least disappoint, dealing with, among other things, the suicidal immortal Amaunet, deals with the devil, and evil chickens of doom done right. As for the rest of the stories, the first four didn't grab me, and I was beginning to be disappointed when I got to "What The Tyger Told Her," a thoroughly creepy and wonderful story about a little girl observing the twisted family dynamics on her grandfather's estate. After that, there were a whole slew of stories that I really liked. Special fondness went to "Nightmare Mountain", which filled me with joy as a one-time Californian for intertwining the story of Cupid and Psyche with the legend of the Winchester House; "Pueblo, Colorado Has The Answer", which does the kind of mix of thoroughly ordinary people and thoroughly extraordinary happenings that I love best; and "Her Father's Eyes," which I had to read twice to figure out what was going on (and then felt extraordinarily dim for not getting it), but which is also one of the best little-girl-with-the-Sight stories I have ever read. I'm not a big short story reader on the whole - they don't tend to satisfy me the way novels do - but when Kage Baker is on, I enjoy her stories in a way that I usually don't with others.

Because I'm curious: how do you guys feel about short stories? Love them 'cause they're short, hate them for the same reason, think they're well used but only by some?

Comments

[agonistes]

Short stories are the same as visual art for me: they need to make a hell of an impression for them to register at all. The ones I love best have powerful visual components to them, and can't be floaty or abstract like pretty well anything and everything you find in Best American in the last fifteen or twenty years. Even Steve-O falls victim to this, every now and again, though his editor's essay in 2007's Best American gives lie to it.

[skygiants]

Yeah, floaty and abstract does not work for me at all with short stories. (Well, it doesn't necessarily work for me in novels either, but.) If I am going to invest in a short story, it's got to make me feel something powerful other than ennui.

I have not read that essay! What does he say?

[gramarye1971]

I'm agreeing with agonistes -- there's got to be something that really hits me to remember them at all. I'm reading a book of two short stories by Solzhenitsyn right now, and though they're pretty good they don't have nearly the punch of something like Ivan Denisovich...which isn't all that much longer, really.

One genre where short stories work really well, I've found, is mystery writing. I was hooked by Dorothy L. Sayers' short stories about Lord Peter Wimsey before I even touched the novels, not to mention the Sherlock Holmes stories and several others. I also love Roald Dahl's short stories, even the grotesque ones. ^_^

[skygiants]

Oh yeah - some of the Wimsey stories are fabulous, though some of them are kind of ridiculous. Although really, the other thing that makes the Wimsey and Holmes and so on stories work for me (aside from the fact that some mysteries just don't need to be book-length) are the fact that they're often continuing episodes in the story of their protagonist-detective, like episodes of TV; they're fun in and of themselves, and there's more in the characters and the world that you can get invested in, as opposed to one-off stories that give you twenty pages to either not care at all about a character, or care so much that you're not satisfied with just a taste. Lose-lose situation!

I can't remember if I've read any Roald Dahl's short stories, but I feel sure that they (and especially the grotesque ones) pack an awesome punch. :D

[gramarye1971]

One of my favourite Dahl stories is 'Parson's Pleasure', and involves a dishonest antiques dealer who dresses up like a vicar and roams the countryside bilking people of their antique furniture and knickknacks. ^_^ His World War II stories are really very good, too.

[ceitfianna]

One of my favorite things to pick up when I'm not sure what to read is an anthology of stories around one topic.

I'm currently reading The Oxford Book of British Mysteries which has a lot of my favorite authors in it and I just enjoy. Sometimes I've discovered new authors through an anthology, that's who I got into Charles De Lint since he has some amazing collections that overlap and are just fantastic.

So for me it all depends on what I'm in the mood to read since sometimes, short stories just work.

[skygiants]

Yeah, the best thing about anthologies for me is that they're a way to discover new writers you might not have heard of before - and, conversely, much of the time when I'm tempted to pick up short story anthologies, it's because I know the authors included and I'll read anything by them, whatever length. They still never stick with me like books do, though.

[batyatoon]

I love the short story format. I've never been able to make it through any of Arthur C. Clarke's novels, but his short stories take me apart. Larry Niven, Stephen King, Ray Bradbury (when he's not being insane), Ursula K. LeGuin ... I think there are some others who've done it really, really well.

[skygiants]

Of those, the only ones I've read short stories by are Stephen King and Ray Bradbury's - the one I read by King SERIOUSLY freaked me out (which is probably a good thing; I still remember it and shiver to this day) and I do remember liking Bradbury's! The sci-fi short story does tend to work for me a little better than the literary, I think, because it's exploration of a conceit as well as characters, and thus generally pretty original.