SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

Challenge yourself to read short fiction every day/week/month of the year! Choose a level that feels most doable to you, and go for it! If you're feeling particularly motivated, work your way through all the levels, and complete the challenge seven years in a row. Encourage others to join you in short fiction buddy reads, to help you reach your goal.


Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it's off to read we go!

Sleepy: Read 1 piece of short fiction (any length)
Bashful: Read 12 pieces of short fiction (any length)
Happy: Read 12 novellas or short fiction collections/anthologies
Sneezy: Read 52 pieces of short fiction (any length)
Doc: Read 52 novellas or short fiction collections/anthologies
Grumpy: Read 365* pieces of short fiction (no poems or flash fiction)
Dopey: Read 365* novellas or short fiction collections/anthologies

* Bonus: 366 in a leap year


Is this only for 2020?

No, you can keep doing this every year if you want!

Will there be a challenge page?

No, because not all short fiction is on Goodreads, and challenges can't count stories from inside a collection/anthology, or separate between those and individual pieces of short fiction.

How do I keep track?

However you want! If you only read things that are on Goodreads, create a separate shelf to see how many you've read. Maybe just list them in your personal challenge thread or a notebook. Or use the spreadsheet for a very basic tally function. The spreadsheet is not for general tracking of what you read, so if you already have a spreadsheet for that, consider adding similar functionality to that instead.

Spreadsheet

Select the date format you prefer, and see Help! sheet for more info:

Spreadsheet (INT) - International style date: 2020-12-31 (YYYY-MM-DD)
Spreadsheet (EU) - European style date: 31.12.2020 (DD.MM.YYYY)
Spreadsheet (US) - US style date: 12/31/2020 (MM/DD/YYYY)

Browser: File -> Make a copy
iOS Sheets: ... -> Share & export -> Make a copy

For a few years now I've tried to read one short story every day. It sounds easy, just one tiny little story, it'll take no time at all. In 2017 I came pretty close, I calculated that I read 323 pieces of short fiction. So I decided to start tracking it in 2018, to make it easier. And I only managed 160. I almost gave up, but decided to give it one more try, and in 2019 I sort of succeeded. At the time of posting this challenge, I know for sure I will end the year with 365+ pieces of short fiction read. (This is why I've been so grumpy!) But it's still not what I intended. I wanted to read some short fiction daily, not cram several collections into November and December. The whole point was to read short fiction throughout the year, not in bursts of several collections/anthologies in succession.

So, I decided it's time to inflict this on everyone else, and see how I do if I feel accountable and have other people trying to achieve the same goals! I'm not sure I will be going for 366 in 2020, but I'd at least like to read 52 novellas/collections/anthologies, 12 of which should be short fiction magazines, mainly Uncanny. I'll have to go through my TBR to see if I have enough to even try for 366.

Join me in this madness! :D As I told Allison when I suggested this challenge, there's no reward, no glory, no nothing, except pain and bloody tears all year round!

Anna! Woot! That's my kind of challenge! Thank you!
Not sure where I will aim, but as high as possible.

I will track my reading privately, cause I don't want to water down my GR reading challenge.

Yeah, short fiction is really hard to track in general, but especially so on GR!

And yay for at least one person doing this with me! :D

I would start with the stories we've already had buddy reads for, or find an anthology that sounds interesting to you!

Just checked my physical and ebook shelves. With the short stories in collections/anthologies I already own I can already aim for Grumpy

(Which tells me that it is high time to read the stuff I bought)

Oh, I’m sure I have enough short fiction collections and anthologies to go for one story a day, but I bet that would mean I read nothing else! So maybe one a week would be a good place for me to start, I’m sure I could manage more in reality.

Diane, it's surprisingly hard! I thought it'd be so easy, and I've struggled every year. It's not that it takes such a long time, I'm just not in the habit of reading short fiction except in bursts. That is what I'd like to change, but others might have different goals. So go for one that doesn't immediately give you an anxiety attack!

Gabi, I'm looking forward to seeing how grumpy you get! :D

Well, since I read children's books, I already do this... But, restricting it to the collections in the SF dtbs that I own, I should be able to do Sneezy easily. And get some books out of the house, too!

How will we report & share & converse?

Cheryl wrote: "How will we report & share & converse? "

In this thread, or your personal challenge thread!

And it doesn't have to be SFF! All genres allowed! The only restriction is that if you go for the one per day, they shouldn't be very short, which is why poems and flash fiction are excluded. Use your own judgment, if you read a longer poem, you can certainly count it!

For example, for my own purposes I've counted Amanda Lovelace's Women Are Some Kind of Magic poetry books as four pieces of short fiction each, because there are four sections in the books, and the individual poems are teensy tiny.

I'll probably go for 1/week as well. Like Diane, if I tried to go daily I wouldn't have time to read anything else.

For clarification: what is flash fiction?

It's super, super short short stories :D Under one page or thereabouts.

edit: Found online: "The typical definition of flash fiction is a short fiction story of under 1500 words, usually under 1000 words."

So for our purposes, let's say under 5 pages.

Thanks, Anna! Sorry ... could have searched online myself ... ^^'

That's fine, it was a good point! I added those page counts to the spreadsheets. It's not very strict, the point was just that I could easily read 366 pieces of flash fiction in one sitting, and that's not what we're looking for!

I'm in for this as I have a lot of anthologies on my TBR pile

So do I CBR, and it's time to get them read!

Amanda, I'm glad you're participating, but I agree it's best not to try and do too much! You can always go for more next year, or adjust mid-year it it feels like you're reading lots!

Another good way to consume short stories is with fiction podcasts like Escape Artist’s podcasts EscapePod, PodCastle and PseudoPod, or StarShipSofa and TalestoTerrify, or Cast of Wonders. I think Uncanny does a story a month as a podcast.

Yes, Uncanny, Lightspeed, Clarkesworld all do podcasts, too! I think we have a list of those somewhere, I'll look it up!

edit: Corinne's post here lists a lot of the free online short fiction magazines, many of which also have podcasts! The whole thread is full of great recommendations for short fiction, I pinned it at the top of the ShortFic folder!

I love this! I also have an excess of unread short fiction magazines piling up on my hard drive, and I just bought a new subscription to FIYAH. I probably have enough books to make it to Dopey, but more realistically, I'll aim for Sneezy or Doc.

I don't really want anyone to go (for) Dopey, which was named the Insane Mode before I went with dwarfs XD

I'm definitely in. I will decide on my level later. I'm thinking Sneezy or Doc.

Anna wrote: "I don't really want anyone to go (for) Dopey, which was named the Insane Mode before I went with dwarfs XD"

I mean ... Dopey isn't possible. Somebody would have to read a whole collection/anthology each day ^^'.

Woohoo, more people joining!

Gabi, it would be possible to read a novella every day! And I could technically read a collection every day, without taking anything in, but I wouldn't want to! :D I guess if I only read short fic magazines, some of them are pretty short.

Ah, okay, Anna. I was eyeing my collections here and they are mostly 300 and more pages, which I wouldn't manage even if I did nothing else the whole day. :D

You could 2x the audios! :D But like I said, it's the insane mode, I don't expect anyone to even consider it! Maybe over several years?

XD

Giving this some consideration as I also try to read some short fiction almost every day. Own many collections, anthologies and picked up quite a bit of short fiction from Project Gutenberg.

Prior to GoodReads, was using an open source book manager to track books and offer it as an alternative to a spreadsheet for tracking. Can track the short stories, a collection, or anthology. I try to expand out collections and anthologies to individual stories and if Goodreads has an entry, mark the collection/anthology on a shelf independent from marking the story as read. So does not count the stories and the collection but your read stats do show the stories.

Example collection: Joe Ledger: The Missing Files with all of the stories noted as read on Goodreads.

Info on free book manager I mentioned and highly recommend:
Calibre book management
Goodreads plugin

I love Calibre, but I've never thought about using it for tracking my reading.

Gabi wrote: "Ah, okay, Anna. I was eyeing my collections here and they are mostly 300 and more pages, which I wouldn't manage even if I did nothing else the whole day. :D"

I'd suggest reading one story a day from a collection and counting that then reading the second story the following day and counting that. It's what I'm going to do. This one:

Worlds Apart: An Anthology of Russian Science Fiction and Fantasy

and I have three collections of Andre Norton High Halleck tales that add up to 45-50 different short stories

That's what I do, CBRetriever :D. I was only wondering how one could achieve the Dopey goal, which calls for not 365 single stories, but entire collections (or novellas, as I was corrected by Anna).

Anna wrote: "I love Calibre, but I've never thought about using it for tracking my reading."

Yeah, I rely on it more than Goodreads as better searching and finally got all of different medias in it. Physical, audio, ebooks, owned and started tracking library holds/check outs.

Made Sneezy and probably Doc this year. Grumpy seems doable but Dopey is out of reach as also chipping away at The 6th Sense and just found out about a boss level.

We do like to throw a lot of things at you (and ourselves) at the same time! 😄

Gabi wrote: "That's what I do, CBRetriever :D. I was only wondering how one could achieve the Dopey goal, which calls for not 365 single stories, but entire collections (or novellas, as I was corrected by Anna)."

hmmm, I was thinking that was in collections, not collections

I won't be a Dopey then

and I could aspire to Doc has I currently have 52 Collections/anthologies in my TBR pile, but as 6 of them are Delphi Collected works, I doubt I'll make it unless I do just the short stories in those Collected Works

Oooh, this challenge is up my alley for sure. I have a bunch of collections and anthologies on my TBR and I've been reading a lot of novellas as a way to try out new authors.

I read 30 short works this year, mostly novellas but also several collections/anthologies.

I think I'll start with a Happy goal, with a double-Happy as a stretch goal. I don't think I'll hit Sneezy/Doc level unless I count individual stories in collections (which I am not above doing).

Great idea Anna!

re: The Spreadsheet

Those of us with Kindles will need, in most cases, to use Locations and not page numbers. A few of my anthologies have page numbers but most do not.

I have some embarrassingly old (look - there's a reason they got to volume 35) Year's Best Science Fiction collections that I'd like to read. There's also a virtual stack of Clarksworld here that's been guilt tripping me. So I'll be participating as well - probably at the Sneezy level to start.

CBRetriever wrote: "Those of us with Kindles will need, in most cases, to use Locations and not page numbers. A few of my anthologies have page numbers but most do not."

The page/word counts are only there for a reference, in case you want to differentiate between the different lengths of short fiction. You don't have to! If you're going for a novellas/collections mode, then make sure the individual works you're reading are a minimum of 70 or so pages, or wherever you yourself draw the line. (The works inside the anthologies/collections don't have to be novellas! As long as the entire anthology/collection is at least novella length.) These page counts are from some old blog post, I use them when I'm not sure how a work has been categorized. Novellas can be longer than 160 pages these days, I have no problem with people counting them, as long as you're not counting works way under 70 pages as novellas.

If you're reading an anthology/collection, and are only counting stories, it doesn't matter what length they are, unless you're going for the Grumpy level, in which case they shouldn't be flash fiction (under 5 pages) or poems (unless they're 5 or more pages).

A lot of online short fic has the word count listed, which is what I use to categorize the stories into novellas, novelettes, short stories and flash fiction (usually named such).

And these are really more guidelines than rules! I like to make all challenges my own, and you're free to do the same with mine! If you want to read 366 pieces of flash fiction and/or poetry instead of short stories, you can totally do that! Just tell us when you report in :) Maybe we'll call that the Slightly Grumpy level :D

The spreadsheet is only there for those people who have never tracked their short fiction reading at all and have no idea how to go about it. I wasn't going to make a spreadsheet at all, but decided to throw one together at the very last minute anyway. So it's really not something I would recommend for tracking any kind of reading, it only really serves for the purpose of this challenge, and could be much better for that. Feel free to make your own and share how you track your short fiction reading!

How you could achieve Dopey:

Read novellas that are 70-100 pages long, and short fiction magazines/anthologies that are about the same length. You'd technically be reading a novella or an anthology every day, but you'd still only have to read 70-100 pages.

Listen to novellas as audiobooks on your commute, you should get through one per day. Same is true for those short fic magazines that have their whole issues released as podcasts.

Some examples of short magazine issues:

Lightspeed Magazine, April 2011 (90p)
Uncanny Magazine Issue 13: November/December 2016 (134p)

And short novellas:

The Sleeper and the Spindle (72p)
Fire Watch (92p)
The Only Harmless Great Thing (93p)
Binti (96p)

It's possible! I still don't want to do it :D

I have a bunch of anthologies on my TBR as well, my plan was to get through at least one this year, plus I wanted to read all the Hugo nominated short stories, novelettes, and novellas. That's probably enough, but if I were to add to it I get Locus and each month they recommend a few online short stories so I could read those as well.

Now I'm itching to read short stories, but I will wait till 2020. I guess I indeed aim for Grumpy. I don't read daily, but I have short story bursts and perhaps I can do it this way.

This fits right in with my goal to "get caught up on award-winning science fiction". Looks like I'm getting Grumpy this year!

1/20/2020 update: Not sure if there is yet a designated tracking place for this, so I thought I would jot down here how pooly I am doing...
~05 Jan:  Dancing to Ganam, Ursula K. Le Guin
~12 Jan:  Another Story, or A Fisherman of the Inland Sea, Ursula K Le Guin

Looks like we'll be a Grumpy lot in 2020!

Looks like Sneezy is the one for me. Atchoo!

I was thinking Sneezy (double-Sneezy?) would be a good way to get Her Smoke Rose Up Forever done (it's been languishing on my Currently Reading shelf for months) but then I realized how many other collections are already on my kindle (Skin Folk, Sisters of the Revolution: A Feminist Speculative Fiction Anthology, Tor.com Short Fiction Fall 2019, Meet Me in the Future: Stories, The Trans Space Octopus Congregation: Stories, Exhalation: Stories), plus new Fiyah subsciption, plus dozens of online stories I've bookmarked & never gotten back to, so I'm gonna go full Grumpy! (Started already, just to get into the habit.)

I'm aiming at Grumpy, but will most likely hit Doc or Sneezy or some point between them and Grumpy. I'm aiming for 100 short stories read in 2020.

I have a ridiculous number of short story collections, I'll try for an optimistic Grumpy.

Edit: I ran out of space to list the individual short stories, they're listed in full here.

2020 Short Fiction Challenge
Goal: 512/366, 139.89% - 52/52 collections

01. Dark Entries - 06 Jan, 3/5: 6 stories
02. Robots Have No Tails - 11 Jan, 2/5: 5 stories
03. The Future is Japanese - 20 Jan, 2/5: 12 stories
04. The Club of Queer Trades - 26 Jan, 3/5: 6 stories
05. Ukridge - 05 Feb, 3/5: 10 stories
06. Poirot Investigates (Hercule Poirot, #3) - 11 Feb, 3/5: 14 stories
07. Jirel of Joiry - 28 Feb, 2/5: 6 stories
08. Sword of Destiny (The Witcher, #2) - 29 Feb, 4/5: 6 stories
09. Swords and Deviltry (Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, #1) - 05 Mar, 2/5: 4 stories
10. The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - 12 Mar, 3/5: 28 stories
11. Fen - 21 Mar, 2/5: 12 stories
12. The Imago Sequence and Other Stories - 30 Mar, 2/5: 9 stories
13. Mothers & Other Monsters: Stories - 02 Apr, 3/5: 14 stories
14. Books of Blood: Volume One (Books of Blood, #1) - 05 Apr, 3/5: 5 stories
15. Books of Blood: Volume Two (Books of Blood, #2) - 08 Apr, 4/5: 5 stories
16. Books of Blood: Volume Three (Books of Blood, #3) - 09 Apr, 3/5: 5 stories
17. Exhalation: Stories - 17 Apr, 3/5: 4 stories
18. Books of Blood: Volume Four (Books of Blood, #4) - 22 Apr, 3/5: 5 stories
19. Books of Blood: Volume Five (Books of Blood, #5) - 23 Apr, 3/5: 4 stories
20. Books of Blood: Volume Six (Books of Blood, #6) - 24 Apr, 3/5: 5 stories
21. The Compass Rose - 04 May, 3/5: 20 stories
22. The Quarantined City - 31 May, 3/5: 6 stories
23. The Door in the Wall, and Other Stories - 08 Jun, 2/5: 8 stories
24. Switch Bitch - 10 Jun, 3/5: 4 stories
25. Explorations - 17 Jun, 3/5: 6 stories
26. The Diving Pool - 18 Jun, 3/5: 3 stories
27. Three-Ten to Yuma and Other Stories - 19 Jun, 3/5: 7 stories
28. Volt: Stories - 04 Jul, 4/5: 8 stories
29. Goodbye to Berlin (The Berlin Novels, #2) - 09 Jul, 2/5: 6 stories
30. My Man Jeeves (Jeeves, #1) - 12 Jul, 3/5: 8 stories
31. Widdershins - 20 Jul, 2/5: 8 stories
32. Between Here and the Yellow Sea - 23 Jul, 2/5: 9 stories
33. The Courage Consort - 25 Jul, 3/5: 3 stories
34. The Decameron Project - 04 Aug, 2/5: 29 stories
35. Tales from Earthsea (Earthsea Cycle, #5) - 09 Aug, 3/5: 6 stories
36. The Rediscovery of Man - 24 Sep, 2/5: 12 stories
37. Birds of America: Stories - 28 Sep, 4/5: 12 stories
38. The Outlaw Album - 30 Sep, 3/5: 12 stories
39. Ancient Sorceries and Other Weird Stories - 05 Oct, 2/5: 7 stories
40. The Wide, Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies - 13 Oct, 3/5: 9 stories
41. Green Tea and Other Ghost Stories - 20 Oct, 3/5: 4 stories
42. Goth - 28 Oct, 4/5: 7 stories
43. The Valancourt Book of Horror Stories: Volume One - 31 Oct, 3/5: 16 stories
44. Time is the Fire: The Best of Connie Willis - 03 Nov, 4/5: 10 stories
45. Eggs, Beans, and Crumpets - 07 Nov, 4/5: 9 stories
46. A Few Quick Ones (Jeeves, #11.5) - 10 Nov, 3/5: 10 stories
47. The Inimitable Jeeves (Jeeves, #2) - 13 Nov, 3/5: 11 stories
48. Carry on, Jeeves (Jeeves, #3) - 15 Nov, 3/5: 5 stories
49. Binscombe Tales - The Complete Series - 22 Nov, 4/5: 26 stories
50. Very Good, Jeeves (Jeeves, #4) - 28 Nov, 3/5: 11 stories
51. The Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories - 06 Dec, 3/5: 10 stories
52. After-Supper Ghost Stories - 09 Dec, 3/5: 11 stories

I'm not usually one for challenges, but I do hope to read more short fiction in 2020!