April 2023 Short Story Reading Post

This post is a roughly tidied version of my April 2023 tweets about short stories. There’s a list of all stories at the very end of the post (linking to where they are first mentioned). Finishing early this month because I have to prepare for a workshop in Gympie on Friday 28 April and get some PhD paperwork in!

And I should mention, my novella Flyaway, while one story, contains several almost-stand-alone short stories, and comes out in US paperback this month!

Fascinations and encroaching interests this month include:

• Big Ideas vs actual theme
• Compressing a story shape
• Innocence and experience (vs story structures)
• The interrogation of objectivity
• Stories that trap the protagonist
• Passivity and flat affect
• Food and AI
• Competence

Background and related posts:

• Each dot point is one possible three-mood shape — one way of reading the shape of the story. I use “mood” very broadly. ee Story Shapes — Three-Mood Stories for detail.
• How I select these stories. (At the moment I’m working through the Locus 2022 recommended list and catching up on The Sunday Morning Transport stories.)
• Previous posts are under the short story reading notes category (all the 2022 posts are linked here).

And now, the story notes:

March 2023 Short Story Reading Post

This post is a roughly tidied version of my March 2023 tweets about short stories. There’s a list of all stories at the very end of the post (linking to where they are first mentioned).

(ALSO: My short story collection Kindling is coming out from Small Beer Press soon!)

February 2023 Short Story Reading Post

This post is a roughly tidied version of my February 2023 tweets about short stories. There’s a list of all stories at the very end of the post (linking to where they are first mentioned).

January 2023 Short Story Reading Post

This post is a roughly tidied version of my January 2023 tweets about short stories. There’s a list of all stories at the very end of the post (that list links to where they are first mentioned, but there’s often further discussion).

This is fairly short post, but I’ve made up for that with a recent long post on List stories — how they work, what they offer.

Fascinations and encroaching interests this month include:

• how to take parts of a large story in order to make a short one
• how to keep short stories short
• monologues
• shapes that echo themes
• changes in climate change fiction

Background and related posts:

• This project is me studying story structure in real time (and often working my way back to well-known maxims from first principles! See Story Shapes — Three-Mood Stories for detail.
• How I select these stories.
• Each dot point is one possible three-mood shape — one way of reading the shape of the story. I use “mood” very broadly.
• Previous posts are under the short story reading notes category (all the 2022 posts are linked here).

And so, to begin…

November 2022 Short Story Reading Post

This post is a roughly tidied version of my November 2022 tweets about short stories. There’s a list of all stories at the very end of the post (that links to where they are first mentioned, but there’s often further discussion).

A short post this month! I was travelling for most of it, and also preparing and giving a writing workshop on short stories at World Fantasy, and an academic paper at the WIP conference at UQ. However, it is still a relatively long post, so the rest is below the cut…

October 2022 Short Story Reading Post

This post is a roughly tidied version of my October 2022 tweets about short stories. There’s a list of all stories at the very end of the post (that links to where they are first mentioned, but there’s often further discussion). Also, as usual, this post is long, so the rest is below the cut…

(Also, I’ve hurt my arm, so this is even less tidied than usual.)

September 2022 Short Story Reading Post

This post is a roughly tidied version of my September 2022 tweets about short stories. There’s a list of all stories at the very end of the post. Also, as usual, this post is long, so the rest is below the cut…

Keeping thoughts on books

Having reading groups postponed after I’ve read the book sometimes means forgetting all the compelling and witty thoughts I had. What helps is keeping quick notes made at the time.

I use the following mashup of approaches from Todd Henry’s The Accidental Creative and Austen Kleon’s Steal Like An Artist (consult both for far more details and justification!).

This keeps the notes contained while also teasing out ample thoughts and opinions, and jolting the memory adequately. I’ve posted about this before, because it’s a useful framework for creating conversations and opinions in class discussions. But I use it a lot myself.

I aim to make at least three notes for each of these points:

• Patterns (between this and anything else, and go wide — after any obvious connections, I try to force links with the last things I watched/read)
• What surprised you? (and why)
• What did you like? (and why)
• What didn’t work for you? (and why? how could it have been done differently, and how would that have changed things?)
• What would you like to steal or try, or (rephrased for serious groups) what did you find particularly interesting?
• [Sometimes, for narrowly subject-specific groups: how does it relate to established key themes]

I don’t do this for everything I read or watch. Ephemerality is nice too, and days are brief. For short stories, this framework can be overkill, and I have the whole three-moods reading project for them anyway. In the observation journal, I often just list “Five Things To Steal” (here’s the tag), or look for larger patterns as a separate exercise.

But I do keep a running collection of general notes this way — especially for reading groups and for books I plan or hope to discuss with someone! The full suite of questions is excellent for having things to say, and remembering what they were. I’ve used notes from 5 years ago without anyone realising I had not reread the book (and without losing any debates)

Bookmarks for a class (this is the Terribly Earnest phrasing)

August 2022 Short Story Reading Post

This post is a roughly tidied version of my August 2022 tweets about short stories. There’s a list of all stories at the very end of the post. Also, as usual, this post is long, so the rest is below the cut…

July 2022 Short Story Reading Post

This post is a roughly tidied version of my July 2022 tweets about short stories. It was curtailed by travel, but is still quite long, so I’m putting the rest of it below the cut. There’s a list of all stories at the very end of the post.

Also a warning: I was either in transit or badly jetlagged for a lot of this. Coherency may vary.