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.

I tend to read more long novels or series than anything else, but I've never really thought of it as a preference.

It's also not like the bookstores abound in short story collections anymore, and unless you're seeking out lit mags or reading online, short stories are generally in short supply anymore.

I have another collection by Kelly Link I keep meaning to start, but I haven't started it yet. What I love about the form, though, is that I could sample one, put it down, and come back to it later.