Short Story Project Wrap-Up

There was absolutely no way I could've fit all this in one post without crossing the 5k word limit I often joke about. I wrote 32,736 words and gave 5 stars to 33 out of 200 (16.5%) stories. Most of the stories secured a three or a four star rating, something that I was expecting. Feel free to take a peek at my 2024 reading list. I thought it would be criminal not to make some general observations and reflections from the reviewing endeavor. So here they are:

The Point of Knowledge is Not More Knowledge. It is Action

If you like some character's trait while reading, go ahead and apply it to yourself. If you dislike something, don't do it. This is a simple but profound concept. Everyone wants access to knowledge, no one realizes the enormous amount of accountability it would put you under. Those who know better should do better and the burden of knowledge is that you cannot feign ignorance.

Sometimes You Change Your Mind. Other Times Your Position Becomes Even More Entrenched

There are things on which I do not budge like nihilism and others where a different perspective did soften me up or change my views altogether. I think it's necessary to have a frame of reference, a standard against which you compare ideas that you're opening yourself up to. It's bad hygiene to be too agreeable with everything that comes your way and it's your job to train your mind to act as a checkpoint before letting ideas take root.

It is a Project With A Significant Emotional Investment

Reading fiction isn't similar to reading a technical book or contemporary non-fiction. Some of the greatest works of literature are often depressing. This is true for sci-fi and it is true for when the story is about familial relationships or desire. It is also why I slightly judge people when all of their recommendations have incredibly grim or bleak outcomes. I say this as a friend: take care of yourself when reading the greats. Their grief, psychosis or cruelty is not yours.

Writing Reviews on a Personal Blog Gives You A Lot of Freedom

Choosing to write these reviews on a personal blog than on a book review site like Goodreads or Storygraph means a lot of freedom. Who cares if it's a 3200 word post? Brevity is for email and social media bio anyway.

The beauty of running a one-man-show is you can do whatever the hell you want. Does that mean there will occasionally be weak areas and kinks that haven't been ironed out? Absolutely. Will I lose sleep over it? Unlikely.

It's How You Said It

Many a times you'll read something and you'd wish you wrote that. How meaningful it is that someone wrote something 50, 100 or 150 years ago and it still resonates. Some writing is evergreen but you have to find it and it takes a lot of time.

A New Quote Repository

It's cool that a lot of reading means having an army of new quotes and new stories about so-and-so situation that you can just share whenever.

On Language

91% of the stories I read were in English and the rest were in Urdu. I wanted to read more of the classic Urdu novellas written by Pakistani and Indian authors. I didn't read that many because being my native language, I had read my fair share of books in it up until adolescent years.

Besides I LIKE English and it's incredible that we have so many translated works from great authors in La Lingua Franca. I do wish that someday I'd review some literature in Arabic, Persian, Spanish, Russian, German and Mandarin. Might happen. Ask me again in a decade (I'm a polyglot).

It's A Conversation

I always pictured reading short stories as a casual fireside discussion with the writer where you tell them "I liked so-and-so part. I disliked that part. This point is so profound, it almost reminded me..." and letting the discussion move organically. That's how I wrote these reviews anyway, more conversational style and less like a high school critique paper.

Contrary to popular belief, not all writing that is a 100 yrs old is good. Some have passed their age of relevancy and someone else who is twice as good in prose and formulating ideas has come out and done it better in recent times.

Writing Reviews Is Not That Easy. If It Were Easy, Everyone Would Be Doing It

It does becomes easier after a while. At first you have to wrack your brains to put something on paper and after a while it feels more like words and analogies come to you; that your job is to act as a vessel and transfer these thoughts quickly to the blog before you forget. Saying "I liked it" or "I hated it" and leaving it at that doesn't contribute much because it doesn't explain the Why part.

Can't Do Quality Hating If You're Not A Reader

The world is awash with mediocre book recommendations. We live in an age of sameness where everyone reads, watches and listens to the same things. Coddling is plenty and having a unique voice makes some people very angry. Just like when the Roman poet Juvenal asked Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? we should be asking who is going to check the recommenders?

Far too often we have a tendency to override any objectivity when someone with authority is mentioning their favorites. How do you know what their criteria of good is? Reading helps because you can dismiss many viral recommendations with the look below. Claude and co. may help you with picking out initial themes of what a work is about but they cannot forecast how you would interpret it or if you would even consider it good by the time you're finished. Regurgitate LLM-generated talking points at your own peril.

Data Visualizations

I also made some mildly interesting charts because, well, why not. First up, author breakdown by nationality:

Next up is the breakdown of stories by year of publication. The oldest story I read was La Grande Bretèche by Honoré de Balzac published in 1831 and the latest were The Face in The Mirror by Mohsin Hamid and Does Anybody Remember Google People by qntm. Both of these were published in 2022. I made a hacky quadrant chart to show some of the data:

That's all. Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this project, you could buy me a ko-fi here.