Authors, Writers, Publishers, and Book Readers

Nice to see Oprah choose a short story collection!

I saw in the press she'd chosen Say You're One of Them by Uwem Akpan. A first collection no less! Talk about the stuff that dreams are made of for writers.

The power of Oprah has it zooming up the Barnes and Nobles charts where it's second only to Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol.

The article also said this.

In making her 63rd book selection on "The Oprah Winfrey Show," the queen of talk said she never before had given a book of short stories the nod because, she explained, "usually short stories leave you wanting something and you're like, `Huh, what happened?"

Is that a fair assessment of short stories?

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Permalink Reply by scribbler on September 20, 2009 at 5:11am

No, it is not a fair assessment. What's she been reading? I've never read short stories or essays and felt shortchanged in any way by them.

I've suffered through novels that were 400 pages of rubbish thinking they would get better and read short stories that were a dozen pages of sheer magic. If anything a short story is tighter because it's so condensed. That isn't the same as unfinished. She needs to read more of them if that's her experience.

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Permalink Reply by Kay Elizabeth on September 21, 2009 at 6:46am

Scribbler, I think you're right. I can remember reading the short story collection, Tales of the Unexpected, by Roald Dahl after seeing the TV series in the UK. I was blown away by them. It was my first encounter with short stories and I was amazed at how good they were.

scribbler said:

No, it is not a fair assessment. What's she been reading? I've never read short stories or essays and felt shortchanged in any way by them.

I've suffered through novels that were 400 pages of rubbish thinking they would get better and read short stories that were a dozen pages of sheer magic. If anything a short story is tighter because it's so condensed. That isn't the same as unfinished. She needs to read more of them if that's her experience.

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Permalink Reply by scribbler on September 22, 2009 at 5:30am

There is a fallacy that a short story is written by an author who doesn't have the skills or talent to write a novel. I hear some version of that from non-writers repeatedly and brands the short story as the poor relation. That's nonsense. Clive Barker wrote a collection called Books of Blood that's brilliant. No one would call him a failed novelist.

Kay Elizabeth said:

Scribbler, I think you're right. I can remember reading the short story collection, Tales of the Unexpected, by Roald Dahl after seeing the TV series in the UK. I was blown away by them. It was my first encounter with short stories and I was amazed at how good they were.