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First week!

muddhricula, Leave a comment

Two years ago I had the WORST reading year ever. I did read more than the year before (and more than last year, ouch…), but by the end of the year, I couldn’t even pick 10 books I’d enjoyed reading.
Since I love reading, and not enjoying it pissed me off immensely, I tried being extra-careful in selecting what I read in 2015. If I didn’t like a book 20% in, I gave up on it. I ended up reading less, but I enjoyed myself a LOT more.
Last year was also when I realized how much I was trying to stick to the authors/genre I know better, and tried to change that a little. I found out that short stories are the best way to do that. You get to have a peek inside an author’s mind, something that’s not as demanding as a whole book, but can still give you a pretty clear idea about the style/themes/genre the author likes best.
So I decided 2016 would be the year of short stories. I already have a goal for books (50, like every year), but I decided to make it my personal little challenge to read one short story per day until next year.
Needless to say, since it’s me we’re talking about, I already failed miserably. I was sick for most of the past seven days (I still am, really), and I completely forgot I even decided to give this challenge a try. I did, however, make up for it, and managed to read 7 short stories (6 short stories and a longish one, actually) this morning. So I’m back on track!

I’d thought I would write a little review for each short story, and maybe I will do it later on, when my computer is finally fixed/replaced. For now, I’ll just (hopefully) link to the short story in question, and if I can’t find that, to the goodreads page of it/the book in which it’s contained.
Of the seven stories I’ve read so far, unsurprisingly, my favorites have been the Ken Liu ones, and the Neil Gaiman one; though if you consider the reason why I thought of doing this in the first place, and also know that Neil Gaiman and Ken Liu are two of my favorite authors, you’ll see how that’s not really progress at all!

I’ve gathered a lot of short stories anthologies during the past year, so I’m eventually going to read from those too, but I’ve also found two sites that I’ll probably end up checking out a lot:
americanliterature.com
giganotosaurus.org
freesfonline.de
I also started my journey into short stories from this post on tumblr.