Is it cheating? Logging Novellas

[Robyn]

I just started reading Steven King's four novella collection, If It Bleeds, and it occurred to me that when I read a novella that is stand-alone, like those in the Murderbot Diaries collection, then I log it as a stand-alone book. But if multiple novellas are compiled together in one book, is it cheating to log each novella separately, or should I only log the full collection as one book once I've read all four? How do you log novellas that are packaged as part of a larger collection? I want to be as honest (with myself) for my total books read number every year.

Edited to add: You can't actually find or select the individual novellas from If It Bleeds yet on Goodreads, probably because they haven't been published individually yet. But previous King novellas that were originally published as part of a collection have since been published individually, and thus can be selected separately. So I feel like I would have to read all four and log as one book since that is it's intention at this point...

[David H.]

I always log the format that I read it in.

In the Murderbot Diaries, they've all been published standalone, and since I didn't read them in a single collection, I mark them separately.

I haven't read If It Bleeds yet, but Wikipedia says that all 4 novellas were previously unpublished, so there technically *shouldn't* even be a book page for each of the stories.

This issue comes up for me more often with omnibus books (which are collections of full books). There, if I read the omnibus, I mark it read with a date (so it counts towards the Goodreads reading challenge). If I felt like it, I might also mark the books that made up the omnibus as read without a date (so that Goodreads stop recommending those books to me and that I also don't forget I already read them as part of an omnibus).

[Christos]

I had the same exact thought when I read Different Seasons. I try to balance it out by reading collected books and counting them as one. For instance I recently read all 10 books in the Chronicles of Amber series but I only counted The Great Book of Amber (book 1-10 collected) in my read list.

[Phillip]

It doesn't matter. Whichever way makes sense to YOU. Ever since the War of 1980, the Book Read List police have been abolished. You have the right to double dip.

[John (Taloni)]

Not cheating. I think back to the earlier days of SF when a standard paperback was 200 pages, give or take 20 pages. "Novel" started at 40,000 words, or about 160 pages at the standard 250 words per page of that time. This month's "Novella" selection was more than that. Log separately in good conscience.

[Mark]

If it bleeds, it can be logged... I mean, if it has a Goodreads record, l log it as a read, even short stories. I like to keep track of which reads are short, novelette, novella, etc, but my books read count includes everything.

[Trike]

Robyn wrote: "I just started reading Steven King's four novella collection, If It Bleeds, and it occurred to me that when I read a novella that is stand-alone, like those in the Murderbot Diaries collection, the..."

You are a terrible person who is heralding the end of civilized society.

Or it’s perfectly fine.

Whatever. YMMV

[Tassie Dave, S&L Historian]

We may have a similar problem with a future book pick.

What if we read books that when I read them 35+ years ago was 1 volume, but now is 2 books.

Do I read the single Volume I still own and mark it as 2 books for the challenge, or do I mark them as 1 book :-?

[Elizabeth]

Obviously it's up to you. I log novellas, because I don't usually log my DNFs, and so in my head it balances out.

[William]

It really is up to you.

On a connected topic, I remember reading an essay by Isaac Asimov in which he gave his definitions of various story lengths including Novel and Novella.

Would anyone happen to remember that? I've got a huge pile of Asimov, but I can't track that essay down.

[Jenny (Reading Envy)]

I just log it how I read it. If you're looking to up the number of books it looks like you read, I guess you could game the system sometimes. I just don't worry too much about it!

I've noticed some short stories have standalone entries but that seems rather extreme.

[Serendi]

Jenny (Reading Envy) wrote: "I've noticed some short stories have standalone entries but that seems rather extreme."

It makes sense when a story is part of a larger series. That way it can be listed with the rest of the series.

[Joseph]

I just log whatever exact format I'm reading -- if it's a standalone novella, I'll log the standalone; if it's an omnibus of novels, I'll log the omnibus -- and figure it all comes out in the wash.

The one exception is when I get one of those Collected Works of Victorian Author with a dozen separate novels on my Kindle; then I'll log the novels individually (since I'm probably not going to just read everything Charles Dickens ever wrote from beginning to end in one sitting).

[terpkristin]

I do the same as Jenny - I note what I read. I figure novellas and other shorter things balance out with the 1200 page tomes I also read.

[Stephen]

If the title shows up on Goodreads, I log it, but if not I just skip it . I log in Digital Magazines as whole issues even if I read only a few of the content. It all even out in my view.

[Sheila Jean]

I've taken to logging individual works in a book along with the format/edition I actually read. I tag the individual works as a books in an omnibus - mainly so if I do a search on the individual works, I'll know if I've already read them. For tracking I only date the format I read.

[Joseph]

If I ever read The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen, you better believe I'll be logging the individual books.

[Trike]

I think the only omnibus I split into two books was Theft of Swords (hi Rob!), because that’s how another GR bookclub counted them. Other than that I just count them as whichever way they are packaged.

I do find it odd that some short stories are counted by themselves. For 2019 my shortest read was The Egg by Andy Weir, which is 3 pages. But that was balanced out by the longest read, The Way of Kings, at 1,283 pages. That’s still a 643-page average length. I read 12 books last year in the 500-800 page range, and 11 in the 10-99 page range.

So I think it averages out. Don’t sweat it.

[Aaron]

I generally take a page out of Joseph's book so to speak: I log them as I read them with the exception of collected works (the most recent one I can think of where I had this issue was H P Lovecraft).

I also try to get the format right when selecting an edition (kindle vs audio vs paperback, etc.). This can be a little frustrating when I am using the app instead of the website since as far as I can tell, the app doesn't support selecting a specific edition of a book.

I have found that with some new short stories they will initially have their own entry in Goodreads, but when the library police come along to clean things up, they get rolled up into the publication they were released in. This is how I end up with things like Apex Magazine Issue 105, February 2018 in my read list, from which I believe I only read A Witch's Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies, or Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 137, from which I believe I only read Umbernight. Strangely, I do not believe I get a notification when this kind of modification occurs to a book already on my read list.

I do try to respect the rules of the S&L challenges though, so while I may tag a short story I read as science fiction, I have a separate shelf for laser-challenge that will not include scifi graphic novels or short stories.

Only counting full-length novels in the read count went out the window when I started logging the children's stories I was reading to my daughter and son (4 and 1 respectively). I only get to count Goodnight Moon once though, no matter how many times I read it last night.

[Trike]

Aaron wrote: "I do try to respect the rules of the S&L challenges though, so while I may tag a short story I read as science fiction, I have a separate shelf for laser-challenge that will not include scifi graphic novels or short stories."

Same.

I’ve even considered changing the graphic novel shelves to something like “graphic-novel-fantasy” in order to distinguish them from novels and short stories, so when I pull up “Fantasy” it doesn’t also pull up the hundreds of comics.

It’s just that’d be a lot of work.