Archive for March 13th, 2011

Recently I’ve noticed an influx of short stories written by some very successful authors, quite a few of them being Chick Lit Authors. From Emily Giffin to Jennifer Weiner to Lauren Weisberger, Adriana Trigiani, Meg Cabot, Cecelia Ahern and more. There is no small supply of short stories by great Chick Lit authors. Many of them in the last few months have been available primarily only to Kindle, Nook and other eBook readers which leads me to believe that perhaps this has something to do with the increasing popularity of eReaders. Is it to entice readers to try more by that author or perhaps a way to gain more sales or both? Makes you wonder.

When I reviewed Jennifer Weiner’s recently published short story, The Half Life, I noticed after posting my review to Goodreads that there were numerous negative reviews. Now, granted I did give the story a 3 out of 5 rating myself, but I’m talking 1 star ratings from numerous readers. Most of them cited the length of the book. As I’ve stopped around looking at other short story reviews on Amazon and Goodreads I’ve been noticing a similar trend with many of the negative reviews pointing toward length as the problem. It must be stated that the vast majority of these short stories are quite reasonably priced at somewhere around $1 to $2 US dollars, so do they still feel cheated somehow?

Short stories are in no way new. For years before a 400 page novel was the standard people enjoyed reading short stories that ranged from 40 to 100 pages and thoroughly enjoyed them. Now, for whatever reason they’re making a comeback and I am actually quite pleased about that, but I wonder about other readers. For me it’s the perfect way to get to know an author without having to take the plunge into a rather lengthy book that doesn’t suit my tastes in the end. With a short story I can spend 30 minutes reading 50 pages and know right then that I’m going to need to pick up a full length novel because the writing was exactly what I love. And the nice thing, for myself at least, it didn’t cost hardly anything at all. For the price of an mp3 on iTunes I get an often times enjoyable read for 30 minutes to an hour. It sounds fantastic to me, but that may also be because I have small children who only give me 30 minutes in a single sitting to read most of the time.

Now my questions for you are: Have you noticed a recent surge of short stories and what do you make of it? Are you likely to give any of them a try and if you have what did you think? Would you be willing to try them again in the future to discover a new author? Or do you think this is all rubbish and you’d rather have a standard size novel or nothing at all? I’d love to hear everyone’s thoughts on this as I think it’s definitely an upcoming trend!

All of the above covers link directly to Goodreads pages, so feel free to check them out when your done commenting!

Her life’s a mess. And so is her kitchen.

Divorced, heartbroken and living in a lonely New York apartment with a tiny kitchen, Rachel Goldman realizes she doesn’t even know how to cook the simplest meal for herself. Can learning to fry an egg help her understand where her life went wrong?

She dives into the culinary basics.

Then she launches a blog to vent her misery about life, love and her goal of an unburnt casserole.To her amazement, the blog’s a hit. She becomes a minor celebrity. Next, a sexy Spaniard enters her life.

Will her souffles stop falling? Will she finally forget about the husband she still loves? And how can she explain to her readers that she still hasn’t learned how to cook up a happy life from scratch?

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