I read fast, so I love a GOOD engaging massive tome.

I also love good series; I really like following characters I love despite the OMG GIMME MORE NOW A YEAR, FUCK -ness of many.

One of my truest pleasures is finding a new-to-me series I really like that already has about 4-5 books in it published. NOM CRACK.

Flash fiction always feels like writing exercises to me, although some can be excellent. I love a good anthology of short stories, esp. as bedtime reading, because then I don't feel compelled to stay up till 3 finishing the book.

I love an elegantly crafted shorter novel, too; Duras is especially a favorite for this, although some leave me cold (Blue Eyes, Black Hair) and some I adore (The Lover.)

Oh, hell, I like it all. Depends on mood.

I have trouble with short stories generally speaking. I definitely prefer a meatier read.

I love anything compelling, doesn't matter if it's long or short or in between. Just don't bore me. I also prefer efficiency and can't deal with written meanderings or people desperately in need of an editor. Boyfriend obsessively loves the endless words (and books) of William T. Vollman and I can't deal with even one paragraph. Eggers is the same way.

After 11 years of reading nothing but "serious" fiction and non (mostly for school, but also because I wanted to be well-read in the classics), I am having a serious case of "CRACK ONLY" please! It started with "The Passage" and is now "Mockingjay". So I will need some more crack soon but not right away(after the baseball play-offs). Crack suggestions are welcome. I will probably go and re-read a bunch of Stephen King, to begin with.

I always think I dislike short stories, because of the fast reading/wanting something big to sink into issue, but then on the rare occasions that I actually make myself sit down and read them I usually love them. But then I don't think to go back and try more until the next time.

After 11 years of reading nothing but "serious" fiction and non (mostly for school, but also because I wanted to be well-read in the classics), I am having a serious case of "CRACK ONLY" please! It started with "The Passage" and is now "Mockingjay". So I will need some more crack soon but not right away(after the baseball play-offs). Crack suggestions are welcome. I will probably go and re-read a bunch of Stephen King, to begin with.

I started The Passage last night. My excuse is that it's due back to the library before War and Peace.

I am JZ wrt to short stories.

And I am currently reading a long book, and liking it a great deal, even though neither my mother nor my aunt liked it. The 19th Wife -- it's about Mormons, flipping between Brigham Young shenanigans and a modern day off-shoot cult.

I love short stories and will read them pretty indiscriminately (because if they aren't very good, they don't take up much of my time, but if they are good I can keep thinking about them), but what I tend to seek out are novels in series, or novels by authors I know I like, but finding the next one in a series is practically a compulsion (until I hit a really disappointing book and drop the series and possibly author entirely). I find novellas awkward because I want to read them all at once as if they were short stories rather than picking them up and putting them down like novels and that can be problematic. Of course, I will sometimes do that with novels, too, but I figure that's more my own fault.

I prefer novels. I enjoy short stories too, but because I remember them more easily,they don't have the same reread-value as a novel.

I generally avoid series, at least those which might be described as "epic." I mean, I still like most of McDonald's Fletch/Flynn books, and more serialized things like that. The books I'm reading right are technically in a shared universe (or multiverse) but there's no prescribed order or anything.

I've never had a preference about story length. Just story quality and the appropriateness of the length to the story at hand. Some take a while, some should be brief.

Joe Hill's Twentieth Century Ghosts was the last collection (by one author) that I read, and it was fantastic. Some longer, some shorter, just wonderful.