Pete's short story bonanza

I'm a sucker for buying short story collections. I really like them but I tend to take ages to read them and therefore they soon pile up. I aim in this challenge to empty my short story collection TBR shelf. I can't just read short stories for a whole year though and I'll also be reading other books but the challenge will be to empty the short story shelf. I'll also catalogue the other books I read (hopefully also from the TBR)

I shall also try and check in more and see what everyone else is up to, which I've been really bad at the past couple of years...

I have 49 short story books on my TBR - that's almost one a week if I aim to be clear by the end of the year. Gulp.

The shortest - Honeymoon in hell - is 149 pages. The longest - Tellers of tales - is 1,526 pages long!

January

Books Added
Ghost story
Blue in Green by Ram V
Twisty Little Passages
The climate of hell
The hollow places
Willard & his bowling trophies
The craft of the novel
A master of Djinn
Interior Chinatown
Ten 10 minute plays
The Mighty Healer
That Glimpse of Truth
Seven Demons
Literature class, Berkeley 1980
The Mirage

Books Read
Blue in Green
Make your brain work
Comet Weather
Willard and his bowling trophies
Interior Chinatown
New kings of nonfiction
Neurodiscipline
Ten 10 minute plays
By force alone
Cybertext
Ocean of Lard

February

Books Added
Language intervention
Lazy Dungeon Master
Course in general linguistics
Stroke Diary: A Primer for Aphasia Therapy
Stroke Diary 2
Stroke Diary 3
Aphasia caregivers guide
The 7 habits of highly effective people
The brain a beginner's guide
the man who mistook his wife for a hat
the brain book
Healing the broken brain
ARC's guide to living with Aphasia
Aphasia therapy workshop
Aphasia therapy 2e
In search of memory
The disordered mind
Foundations of aphasia rehabilitiation

Books Read
Black Buck
Healing the broken brain
Aphasia caregivers guide
Invisible Planets
Stroke Diary: A Primer for Aphasia Therapy
The brain: The story of you
ARC's guide to living with Aphasia
The price you pay

March

Books Added
Aphasia, my world alone
Stroke Diaries : A Guide for Survivors and Their Families

Books Read
Course in general linguistics
Aphasia therapy 2e
Stroke Diaries : A Guide for Survivors and Their Families
Foundations of Aphasia Rehabilitation
Stroke Diary: The Secret of Aphasia Recovery
Aphasia: my world alone
Seven Demons
Queen of Clouds
Best of Tharg's Future Shocks
The mighty healer
Labyrinth by Simon Stahlenhag
Alan Moore Future Shocks

April

Books Added
Resilient by Allen Stroud ARC
Body Work
Elements of Fiction
Feel free
The blind spot
Suppose a Sentence
How to write it
Story Matrices
The dark between the trees ARC
Under fortunate stars ARC
Someone in Time

Books Read
In search of memory
Language intervention strategies
Literature class Berkeley 1980
All systems red
Your story matters
Greensmith
Elements of fiction
The man who lost his language
my stroke of insight

May

Books Added
One hundred names for love
How the mind works
Brain longevity
This wild darkness
Math without numbers
The world without us
John Fowles Journals vol 1
Newton the last sorcerer
Beating Anger
Jade City
Art, Mind & Brain
Aphasia and it's therapy
Coping with Aphasia
Brave Art
Musicophilia
The Shadow Factory
Deep Play
The Human Age
Moon by Whalelight
A Natural History of the senses
How to set goals with kaizen

Books Read
Body Work
A Stroke in the family
My Year Off
Wings, Arthur Kopi
Stroke a diary of recovery
One Hundred names for love
Glitterati
Beating Anger
Math without numbers
Coping with Aphasia
Return to Ithaca

June

Books Bought
The ark sakura
The End, Katie Goh
The Disenchanted Earth
Reverse Engineering
Livewire, David Eagleman
Devil House
Format
Layout
Typography

Books Read
Format
Coward: Why we get anxious
The ark sakura
The end, Katie Goh
Layout
Triggering town
A stroke of genius, Paul West
The shadow factory, paul west
The Word escapes me
Rewire your brain
So you've had a stroke
Laugh a lot cry a lot
The Watchmen
Flaubert's Parrot
Livewired

July

Books Added
Before we get started
7 Figure Fiction
GMC: Goal, motivation, conflict
Personal Kanban
The strategy journal
Shakespearian Design
Cherish Farrah
A Technique for producing ideas
Burning down the house
The outermost dream
Wonderlands
Talking about Aphasia
Aha! The moments of insight
Writing Meditations
The Multi-hyphen method
The How, Yrsa Daley-Ward

Books Read
Typography (Basic Design)
The Professor's Tumor: A Journey Out of Aphasia and More
THe disenchanted earth
On writing fiction, Jauss
Master Class: Scenes from a fiction workshop
Devil House
Fluent Aphasia
Reverse Engineering
Jargonaphasia
Pathways, moving beyond stroke
Ring Shout
Healing the shame that binds you
A Technique for generating ideas
Beyond Aphasia
Before we get started
Improving your punctuation and grammar

August

Books Bought
Story Machines
Jumbly Words

Books Read
Jumbly Words
Talking about Aphasia
The How, Yrsa Daley-Ward
Shattered Minds
Analogia, George Dyson
Burning down the house
Kidnapped
The twilight world

September

Books Added
Weird Fiction
DIY MFA
Headstrong Girl
What to do when you don't have a book coming out
capturing ghosts
From baby brain to writer brain
eyes on the stars
the martial art of writing
you are not your writing
wide open fear (writer chaps)
C Programming language

Books Read
Paper Girls 1
Paper Girls 2
Paper Girls 3
Paper Girls 4
Paper Girls 5
Paper Girls 6
After Realm 1
After Realm 2
After Realm 3
From baby brain to writer brain
goal setting (literally)
Absalom Ghosts of London
Brain-dead megaphone
Under the blue
Quarantine Comix

October

Books Added
On writing and worldbuilding volume 1
On writing and worldbuilding volume 2
Devil-Land
Writing poetry in the dark
writing in the dark the workbook
you have no normal country to return to
Helgoland
Slime: A Natural History
An artificial revolution
language and the persuit of truth
The diving bell and the butterfly
Jurassic Mary

Books Read
C+nto
The Pallbearers Club
Helgoland
An Artificial REvolution
Personal Kanban
Invasion of the spirit people
Nobody wants to read your shit
Declutter your mind
How to write readable English

November

Books Added
The Kids
Clockwork Muse
Making an elephant
The writer's mentor
Deep Writing

Books Read
Headstrong Girl
What to do when you don't have a book coming out
the martial art of writing
you are not your writing
Show your work
You have no normal country to return to
8 steps to side characters
Flake
Ashiel Rising

December

Books Added
What If?
An inventory of losses
Dark Tales
The Warren
Bibliomaniac
Long Way Down
The things they carried
Illuminations
Viaducts and river views

Books Read
Jade City
The writers mentor
Cherish Farrah
Worldbuilding for fantasy fans
Joshua Essoe guide to writing: Worldbuilding
Long way down
The Warren
Bibliomaniac
The things they carried
Dinosaur therapy

Planning

Good luck with your short story collection! I love Somerset Maugham stories but don't have Tellers of Tales.

Good luck with your 2022 reads! I like short stories a lot, so I'll be interested in your reviews.

Have a great year reading through your short stories! I'll have to pull a couple of my own collections off the shelves to join you.

I too am hoping to get into more short stories than I usually read. Will be watching to see yours.

Good luck with your 2022 Challenge!

Happy reading in 2022!

Good luck with your 2022 reading!

Good luck and happy new year, Pete.

Good luck with those short stories!

Popping in to wish you well in your 2022 reading.

Best wishes on your 2022 reads!

Although I don't have as many short story collection as you have, I feel with you. I love the idea of short story reading and I am intrigued by many collections, but when I buy them, I seldom read them and have a hard time finishing a collection.

Happy reading and I'm looking forward to following your challenge!

May your books read exceed your books added in 2022. Happy reading!

A book blogger I follow is doing a TBR challenge and I will follow along - IF I get the (average) 4 SS per month I need to hit this challenge I'll then do this runalong the shelves as a bonus challenge.

https://www.runalongtheshelves.net/blog/2021/12/29/your-tbr-reduction-book-chall...

I'll also be trying to make sure that the books I got for Xmas and the ones I'll get for my birthday (beginning of Jan) don't end up on the TBR

>29 psutto: That looks like a very doable challenge - I might just give this one a try.

>29 psutto: Ooh, I like this challenge! Might have to try it out as well ;)

>29 psutto: - I copied it so I could find it easily and might work it into a future challenge.

>29 psutto: That's a good one! I bookmarked it, maybe for next year!

That is a nice challenge, but I'm already mostly focusing on reducing the TBR pile next year. Hope you have a great 2022 reading year.

Unlike last year when I specifically told people to not buy me books I got a few books for my birthday. I always (these days) try and read all the Xmas & birthday books in January so as to not add them to the TBR> This year (like last year) I got another massive 900+ page book of short stories - but at least that fits my challenge!

(books added are in the January post above)

First present read but am now starting Comet Weather which is this month's book club read. After that I'll be back to the presents - but I also need to read short stories, so may be doing the 'palate cleanser' challenge until I've got through the presents - this means reading 3 short stories between each book read. I suspect that will be my January and then I'll have to start prioritising the short story books...

I'm my own worst enemy as well of course - because after adding lots of books to the list that people bought me, what did I do with a voucher someone gave me for Xmas? Yes, I bought some books...

>36 psutto: Aren't gift cards supposed to be used for buying books???!!!

>37 Tess_W: - What she said.

>36 psutto: - Interesting choice for a book club. I'll be looking to see what you have to say about it.

Finished Comet Weather and I enjoyed it - it was a little bit Mythago Wood a little bit Alan Garner but a lot of its own thing. I did think it was a bit slow and gentle - if it were a film or TV show they may put a content warning of 'mild peril' on it. It's very British rural and West Country (set in and around Glastonbury) with a hint of The Archers too, if that radio programme was about 4 sisters who live in a world of ghosts and star spirits and wild magic ;-)

I'd recommend it - it's not an action-packed book but it's always engaging.

I like your short-story theme for your challenge. I'm also a fan of short-story collections. My daughter gave me A Dream of a Woman by Casey Plett for Christmas, so that's on my TBR stack.

Things have gone sideways - dealing with a major family illness means I'm mostly reading non-fiction right now (researching strokes) but I did manage to read Invisible Planets which was a bit variable...

>41 psutto: Oh no! I'm so sorry your family is dealing with this.

Sending you best wishes!

>41 psutto: Sorry to hear that.

Thanks folks - 2022 is proving to be quite challenging...

Just read and loved Queen of Clouds - a fabulous second world fantasy

Accidently went bookshopping at the weekend - was suposed to be going for a bike ride but there was a bookshop and well, it'd be rude to just ride past, right? Bought 9 books. Whoops!

>47 psutto: Haha, I think everyone on LT can relate to this! Hope you enjoy your 9 books. :)

Re-read The Watchmen - still a work of genius

Can't believe my last update was in June - I have been popping in and adding books read (just finished The Twilight World)
It's bizarre that it's almost September - the first half of this year has been spent mostly on the road to and from my mum's, whe lives a 3 hour (on a good day) drive away and now, finally, after 4 months in hospital and 4 in convalescence she's home and I need not go quite so often (although the stroke has left her aphasic which is a big challenge). I think I'll start this challenge again next year - I've not really tackled any short story books, and my reading has often been medical books and books about stroke and aphasia as I try to understand how best to help mum.
Anyway the next few months I'll read for pleasure more!

Sounds like you had your plate full this year. I hope you find some pleasurable books!

Hope you enjoy the rest of this year's reading, and that your mother continues to recover!

Sorry to hear that things have been difficult. Parents can be a worry at that stage in life. I hope your last sentence comes true.

Thinking of you and your mum, and hoping all goes well with her recovery. Take care of yourself too.

Sorry to hear about your Mum, hope things continue to improve.

Thanks all!

so I'm still slowly reading the best of Richard Mathison as my short story fix but 'accidentally' bought three new short story books at FantasyCon this past weekend Isolation: the horror anthology, behind a broken smile and major arcana a horror anthology

https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/do-i-own-too-many-books/?utm_medium=Social&u...

A friend shared this article with me and I feel slightly less guilty about having a massive TBR

Great article, thank you for sharing!

>58 psutto: That article makes me feel much better. Thank you!

Just finished Jade City which is a pretty good fantasy story - it's the first in a trilogy and I'm not enticed to read the next one - I don't really like series...

I've totally failed this year's challenge - for obvious reasons, so I'll have to have a think about next year

So apparently I've read 129 books this year (although some of them are categorised as 'unfinished') so that's unexpected - it felt as if I read a lot less than usual...

Maybe next year won't have quite so many suprises and I'll be back on track. Must actually try and read some of those TBR books then.

Book haul from Christmas

What If?
An inventory of losses
Dark Tales
The Warren
Bibliomaniac
Long Way Down
The things they carried
Illuminations
Viaducts and river views

Part travelogue, part book haul boast, part biography there's a lot for booklovers to like about Robin Ince's new book Bibliomaniac I recommend it

Congrats on a good book haul!

shutting down this thread now and moving over to the 2023 challenge.

I read 127 books in 2022 – I read 154 in 2021 (I’ve been keeping track since 2010 here on LibraryThing, my best reading year I read 165, since 2010 I don’t think I’ve read less than 100 books a year)

Standouts for me:

Queen of Clouds by Neil Williamson – lovely bit of worldbuilding and a gripping tale.

The man who lost his language by Sheila Hale – My mum suffered a stroke in January and has aphasia so I ended up reading a lot of books on the subject, this was the best of them.

The Things they Carried by Tim O’Brien – I know I only read this a couple of days ago but I really inhaled it, beautifully affecting language and an intriguing structure.

I bought (mostly secondhand) and read a lot of books on stroke and aphasia so my fiction and other reading suffered. I look back on my year and see that these are the only 3 books I gave a ‘Brilliant’ rating to. I hope to change that next year.

See you in the 23 challenge!