Sunday, March 22, 2009

Week of Double Stories

I decided to take the extra time (vacation) this week and use part of it to dig deeper into the shelf of short story collections I've amassed.

I toyed around with the idea of picking a theme, or genre, or single author, but instead decided to double up with a different author each day. Reading Calvino, Doctorow (both of his on the iPod Touch with the Stanza e-book reader application), Hill, Brown, Lansdale, Gaiman, and King, I found that most days I'd find one story I enjoyed more than the other. I don't know if this tendency toward comparison would occur as naturally if I hadn't read the two stories essentially back to back, but it does make me curious. Three days (Hill, Lansdale, and Gaiman) I found the stories equally enjoyable, but the rest of the week was rather uneven.

I would still like to try a theme week, or single author week, but not for a little while. Two stories a day, in addition to other reading and life, was a bit of a challenge.

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