Benjamin Solah mentioned this on Twitter and the original idea came to him from Jodi Cleghorn. The idea is that a person makes time to read (at least) one short story every day. This appeals to me for many reasons.
I love short fiction, as I’ve mentioned here several times before. I love reading it and writing it. I’ve got loads of anthologies and magazines piled up all over the place and I try to dip into them as often as possible. Some are books that I have a story in and I’ve got a contributor’s copy. Others are anthologies or single author collections I’ve bought because the theme or writer appeals to me, maybe it’s someone I know and so on. Then there are all the magazines, in print and online, that I enjoy. So I read a lot of short stories.
When I read a good book, I try to review it here, and on Amazon and Goodreads. I posted on that very subject recently. Sometimes that will be a review of an anthology or single author collection. But too often, the short stories I read go by unmentioned. When I saw this “A Short A Day” idea, it occurred to me that I could use it to draw attention to short stories with the same kind of reviewing I do for books. I’m not really a reviewer, as such, but I do think it’s important for people to spread the word about stuff they enjoy. Why not apply that to short fiction too? It only takes ten or fifteen minutes to read a short story and surely we can all find that much time in our day to have a break and read.
So, here’s the plan. I’ll be reading at least one short story every day and I’ll try to keep a note of them all. Every week or so, I’ll post here with a list of the things I’ve read and I’ll review some of the ones that really moved me. With any luck that will help other lovers of short fiction out there find stories and authors they might otherwise have missed.
I’m posting now to put it in permanent ink that I plan to do this and hopefully that will help me see it through. If I slack off on the concept, be sure to give me a virtual kick up the arse about it.
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So glad to see someone else take this up. I look forward to seeing what stuff you read and it might give me some other things for me to read.
That’s the plan! Feel free to comment on my posts with any of your weekly recommendations.