Counting Short Fiction

[Heather]

I've started listening to the LeVar Burton Reads podcast. If you're not familiar with it, LeVar Burton Reads is a podcast of LeVar Burton reading his favorite short stories. It's like an audiobook, but for short fiction instead of a novel. Each episode is about 30-50 minutes. It's fantastic and perfect for my lunch break!

I'm pretty sure I'm going to use this podcast as my favorite category from a previous year (an audiobook) after I finish all the episodes. The thing I'm a little iffy about is how I want to count these for the Goodreads challenge. I'd like to add each short story to my "read" shelf, but there are alot of episodes/short stories. I'm not sure I want to finish my Goodreads challenge on short fiction.

How do you track short fiction? Do you count it as a "book" read for the Goodreads challenge? Do you leave it off your reading list? Is there another option I haven't thought of?

[Raquel (Silver Valkyrie Reads)]

Usually I just count everything and then increase my challenge to account for some being short if it seems appropriate.

Occasionally though, I mark something as read but don't put a date on it so it doesn't count toward the challenge. I mostly use that if I look through enough of a cookbook or knitting pattern book to want to review it, but not enough to feel like it counts as a book read. Seems like it might also be applicable to your situation.

[poshpenny]

I count everything, even picture books. Just because it's short doesn't make it less worthy.

[Jackie]

I mark everything as read on goodreads regardless of length, though I rarely read individual short stories so it's difficult to say. One way of handling it that I thought of is to find a large collection of short stories that contains many of the ones you have read and mark it as "currently reading" and then add a status update to say which story you read, with a rating/comments, etc. I don't know if the podcast focuses on older well known short stories or on newer stuff or what, but it would be a way of coralling them into groups if that's what you want.

[Jess]

I would just add it without a date. I've done that recently when I want to mark off a book that I read before Goodreads.

[Johanne]

I count everything, including picture books and I set my reading goal accordingly (this is the first year I´ve actually registered my reads thoroughly, so I´ve recently adjusted my reading goal). If you want to count your novels and short stories differently, you can do as the others suggest, or you could make a shelf exclusively for your longer reads, that way you can keep count and still have all reads counting toward your personal GR challenge, depending on how you want to interpret it.

[Heather]

Thanks for all the suggestions!

A couple of you mentioned picture books. I've never counted the picture books I read. I don't read a lot of them, but it makes me sad that I don't know which books I've read with my niece or when. That helped me decide that I'm definitely going to add the short stories to my shelf. They're good and I want to remember reading them and share them with my friends.

[Sara]

You could create a separate "read" shelf for just short fiction. Then you could still mark it as read, but it wouldn't count towards your Goodreads goal.

If you go to "my books" in a web browser, in the left sidebar find "Bookshelves (edit)" and click "edit". Add your new shelf and select "exclusive" which will make it a similar designation to the "read", "currently reading", "want to read" categories that are already there.

Hope that helps!