selenicseas

I wrote a post last month where I talked about my shifting genre preferences, both in reading and writing. This month I'd like to write something similar, except with regards to the length of stories I'm reading these days.

I started reading SFF short fiction in 2020, mostly because I was unemployed, no one was hiring, and I had very little better to do with my time. It didn't really ramp up until 2021, where I read almost a thousand short stories. That number has decreased since and has slowed down to maybe 100 per year for the past two years. I suppose that number is still a lot, but I typically read 3-4 of these stories at a time, and that takes maybe an hour per week, so it's not a particularly large time commitment.

Last year I decide to take the time and start reading actual books again, and I've been doing that almost every single day since May. This book-reading time happens before I go to bed, and it lasts until I start getting tired. That could be anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour.

Ever since I started reading books again, my desire to read short fiction has waned significantly. There are plenty of weekends where I'll straight-up skip reading any short stories – not because I don't have the time, but because I just don't want to.

I've been thinking about unsubscribing to some magazines that don't suit my current preferences in order to make things more manageable, but the problem remains that, for the most part, I just don't want to read short stories. I've barely read any books for the past ten years, and I really want to get caught up on that.

If you've been following my blogging for any amount of time, you'll have noticed the Recommendations posts I put out regularly. I used to do one every month, listing all the short stories I read that month and thought others should read. Now I do one every quarter, and that's entirely related to the lessened amount of short fiction I'm reading these days. Some months, I don't have anything to recommend.

So, if I switch to prioritizing books and only read a few short stories here and there, the Recommendations posts are going to look a little different. I don't know if I'll be doing them quarterly after this year. Maybe ever half a year? Maybe at the end of the year?

Yes, it's February and I'm already thinking about how to do things in future years. I know I'm probably getting ahead of myself.

I've read eight books this year, which is actually more books than I've read in the past three years total. Remember how I said I was switching my reading time to before I went to bed? I've actually finished reading five books since then.

This has corresponded with a drop in me reading short fiction. It's not a time conflict, as I never spent any time reading short fiction before bed. I think it may be a shift in priority on what I want to read. I've been telling myself for years that I need to get back into reading actual books as the stack of books in my physical to-be-read pile kept on growing, but I was never able to get around to doing something about that stack of books until now.

It does feel great to make progress on reading physical books, but I think I'm neglecting reading stories a little too much. I only managed to read 6 in June when I wanted to read at least 9. The priority shift from short fiction to books is fine, but this? Not so much.

It's been a success!

Every day this week (except today, because I'm posting this before I go to work), I've been able to set aside time to read after I get home from work. There are two "chapters" left for me to read of Lost Places, one of which I'll read today and one I'll get to on Monday – if I don't decide to finish the book tomorrow.

I'm super pleased that this experience has been a success! Maybe it's too early to say that since it's only been four days, but I haven't made this much progress on a book in weeks, if not months. If I can keep this pace up, I should be able to get through another book this month.