Anthologies and Me

I kind of hate anthologies. My feelings are not strong enough to actually hate them, but it's close.

Anthologies remind me of "Reading" textbooks from when I was a kid. They're essentially anthologies themselves, with questions designed to get you primed for later "English" classes here in the US.

I have largely avoided anthologies, preferring my stories in long form: novellas and novels. That's not to say I'm snobby about it, just that reading a bunch of largely disconnected short stories in a row is not my thing. I am, of course, now aware that you don't have to read the whole anthology at once, but that's how I read them for years and I was not a fan.

All that said, I am warming up to anthologies. Slowly. Not all at once. It helps that the short story anthologies I've been reading lately have been all nicely collected with the stories in the world they all take place in. I'm only frustrated that stories are not arranged in the anthologies according to the timeline, but internet chronology lists are there for that. Makes my GoodReads reading charts look real weird, though.

I've been embarking on some long-term series that include short stories as part of the overall narrative. They're not essential to the stories, strictly speaking, but they do actually enrich the stories overall. My rearead of Kelley Armstrong's Women of the Otherworld/The Otherworld being my first real foray into the additional short story content.

I basically wanted to write about this to explain how I'm going to be handling anthology reviews. This will be coming up later because Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar series I'm currently reading/rereading right now is rife with short stories within anthologies... like seriously, I now own four Valdemar anthologies because there are a handful of short stories interspersed timeline-wise.

Anthology Review "Rules"

1. I will not be reviewing the anthologies as a whole.

2. Each story in the anthology will have an individual review.

3. If I did not read a story, it won't have a review, but I'll still be counting that book as "Read." Not that it matters to anyone but me... anyway, there will be placeholder spots in my overall reviews.

4. I'm only reading what's relevant to the overall timeline of whatever series I'm reading.

5. Only anthologies collected specifically for the series or author will be included. I'm not about to buy a mixed series anthology just to read one story from it. Nope. Not happening.