tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4130421352415377273.post4495203583152441392..comments2024-03-28T16:31:23.093-07:00Comments on Books in Northport: A Lot More to It Than Word CountP. J. Grathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12693462910472164289noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4130421352415377273.post-24805271497379334152015-12-29T19:09:15.943-08:002015-12-29T19:09:15.943-08:00Okay, Pamela. I'm up for the challenge althou...Okay, Pamela. I'm up for the challenge although my analysis will be simplistic and personal. But here's why I think most readers opt for novels over short stories:<br />1) Most people are first and only exposed to short stories in high school English classes. The really good SS's have layers of meaning and keys to the doors that unlock their code and you either get excited about that or you don't. Plus you have a teacher there to guide you through the process. Outside of that arena, unless you majored in English in college, most people just aren't exposed to SS. So they are what--scary? unfamiliar? different? And reading them is, frankly, a lot more work than reading a novel, at least on a per page basis.<br />2) I, for one, am partial to plots and tension when I read fiction. If there's a subplot or two it's even better. Novels have those and many short stories do not, unless you're willing to search for them. If a person is reading for pleasure, they're often not up for that journey.<br />3) A long work gives the reader an opportunity to get inside the life of a character (or characters), to know them as well or better than we know most of the people in our lives. In a SS the characters are synthesized, distilled, revealed through hints and subtleties. Getting to know them is, here I go again, more difficult and ergo, most people won't take the trouble.<br />4)If I have a bit of time to read and I have the choice between getting acquainted with a character heretofore unknown to me in a setting with which I have to familiarize myself (a SS) OR getting better acquainted with a character I've already come to know, empathize with, perhaps identify with, and on some level like (a novel), I'm going to select the latter because I'm invested there, I'm part of that world, and I want to know as much as I can about it. Ergo I pick the novel.<br />5)I often finish a short story only to feel like the author didn't really know how to end it. It's unsatisfying and even disappointing. Some famous writer (you probably know his name but I can't recall) wrote that the ending of a short story should be both shocking and inevitable. How often does that occur? If I ran across that kind of SS more often, I promise I'd read more of them.<br />6) And finally, I think most people like novels as opposed to SS's because they are a story with a beginning, middle, and end. Some collections of SS's feel like that and those are recognized and appreciated by more readers than most (I'm thinking of Valerie Trueblood's Seven Loves and Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge). <br />All this having been said, there are some SS collections I love, love, love but if I made a stack of those and measured it against the stack of novels I've read and loved during the same period, the novels would win, hands down. <br />Marilyn Zimmermanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13460373076753467686noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4130421352415377273.post-6173172056449108462015-12-29T07:44:21.351-08:002015-12-29T07:44:21.351-08:00I am reading Lucia Berlin's "A Manual for...I am reading Lucia Berlin's "A Manual for Cleaning Women" now. Writing is good. But I am indeed struggling with no resolution.Dawnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00824027366993286152noreply@blogger.com