Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge discussion

Use this space to discuss books you're reading or that might fit the 21st Read Harder task. Sign up for our new Read Harder newsletter to get recommendations for each task delivered straight to your inbox! https://bookriot.com/newsletter/read-...

Ah, anthologies! So many. But I'll be knocking out The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2022.

I'm debating between these two:
Love After the End: An Anthology of Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction or
We're Here: The Best Queer Speculative Fiction of 2020

Both work as queer titles.

Tricia wrote: "I'm debating between these two:
Love After the End: An Anthology of Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction or
[book:We're Here: The Best Queer Speculative Fiction of 2020|5..."

Love after the end is so amazing, highly highly recommend

I'm thinking Taaqtumi: An Anthology of Arctic Horror Stories but I also have Africa Risen: A New Era of Speculative Fiction on my TBR list

This is one I'm reading for another challenge and it works perfectly here too: The Penguin Book of Mermaids

Unless I get to it before the new year (a possibility), I'm most likely going to read Blood Feast: The Complete Short Stories of Malika Moustadraf. I love short stories though, so I'll be paying attention to the recommendations. I'll look for more if I end up reading this sooner than later though.

The British Library has published a bunch of collections culled from pulp magazines. I’m going to go with one from the Tales of the Weird series’s

For this prompt, I recommend Jigs & Reels, Interpreter of Maladies, I, Robot, Ghost Summer.

I have some short story collections on my TBR and some that have come up as I find books for other challenges, so I will probably choose from those.
A Story as Sharp as a Knife: The Classical Haida Mythtellers and Their World
Mirabile
Black Enough: Stories of Being Young & Black in America
This Accident of Being Lost: Songs and Stories
Dead-End Memories: Stories
Africa Risen: A New Era of Speculative Fiction

I'm thinking about Exhalation or Liberation Day: Stories

Lots on my list as options for this.

Life Ceremony by Sayaka Murata
Tunneling to the Center of the Earth: Stories by Kevin Wilson (might double as my DNF, I didn't finish the audiobook)
Flowers of Mold by Ha Seong-nan
Falling in Love with Hominids by Nalo Hopkinson

I've had How Long 'til Black Future Month? unread on my Kindle for too long, so this is the nudge I need.

I just finished reading Neil Gaiman's Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fiction and Illusions. Another of his books I plan on reading soon is Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders.

I think I’m gonna go with Her Body and Other Parties.

I am reading Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders since it has been on my TBR for a while.

Lexi wrote: "I'm thinking Taaqtumi: An Anthology of Arctic Horror Stories but I also have Africa Risen: A New Era of Speculative Fiction on my TBR list"

I read Taaqtumi for a prompt this year and I highly recommend it. I did have to acquire via Interlibrary Loan, so if you are going to read it, I'd get your ILL request started now.

Read Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang.

Elizabeth wrote: "Unless I get to it before the new year (a possibility), I'm most likely going to read Blood Feast: The Complete Short Stories of Malika Moustadraf. I love short stories though, so I..."

I did actually end up getting to Blood Feast: The Complete Short Stories of Malika Moustadraf, I started it a couple days ago in audio format and will be finished before the new year (I'd be done already but I've been out of commission with a stomach flu). I had read one of the stories from the collection before and liked it (if that's the right word) so I'm not surprised to find myself enjoying it (definitely not the right word). I would absolutely recommend it, but with the caveat that like... every content warning? Moustadraf wrote about people on the margins and the stories are often bleak realities. The narrators for the audio version are solid and the translator (Alice Guthrie) is great.

I haven't fully decided what I want to do for a book of short stories in the new year, but I'm considering Lucky Breaks by Yevgenia Belorusets or Under a Kabul Sky: Short Fiction by Afghan Women, but I'd also really like to do a speculative fiction collection such as People of the Book: A Decade of Jewish Science Fiction & Fantasy or New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color.

I just started Man Made Monsters by Andrea L. Rodgers!

Lailah wrote: "I have some short story collections on my TBR and some that have come up as I find books for other challenges, so I will probably choose from those.
[book:A Story as Sharp as a Knife: The Classical..."

Thank you for suggesting these books. I think I'll pick one of them.

Peach wrote: "I just finished reading Neil Gaiman's Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fiction and Illusions. Another of his books I plan on reading soon is [book:Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders|70..."

Anything by Neil Gaiman is amazing!

recommending If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery

I am going to finally start https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...

I've chosen Her Body and Other Parties: Stories. Bonus: it also works as #9 Read an independently published book by a BIPOC author.

Reading Octavia Butler’s Bloodchild and other stories!

I'm not a huge short story fan, but read Interpreter of Maladies last year, and can whole-heartedly recommend it. Every single story was compelling enough to keep me interested where I continued to pick the book up, and not just let it languish, as is my usual habit with short stories.

I will be reading Black Enough: Stories of Being Young & Black in America.

I am currently reading The Secret Lives of Church Ladies for this task. Very good stories and well written which deals mostly with female relationships.

I am reading Ted Chiang’s Exhalation for this task. Nine stories tackling some of humanity’s oldest questions.

I read a couple for this prompt:

- An eclectic mix of horror/magical realism short stories. Some were interesting, some were just plain weird!

- This was a really interesting series of interconnected short stories. Be sure to pay attention to the characters' names in each story, as some of them reappear and some of them are important to later stories.

- A year-long series of essays on finding delight in everyday things. It was really good!

- A collection of Shinn's stories that have been published in other places, and some that have never before been released.

Question: could I include essays or does it have to be stories?

(I ask because fiction is a genre that I don't read.)

Ron wrote: "Question: could I include essays or does it have to be stories?

(I ask because fiction is a genre that I don't read.)"

It's your challenge, so it's up to you. But yes I think a collection of essay would work also.

Thanks, Tricia.

If you haven't read Love in Color: Mythical Tales from Around the World, Retold, that's my recommendation for this prompt. Really fun retellings of folktales and myths from across the world.

I was initially planning on reading Exhalation as it's been on my TBR for a while or If I Survive You since it's one of my book club reads, but some of the suggestions on here sound really interesting so I might deviate from my initial ideas.

Under a Kabul Sky: Short Fiction by Afghan Women would give me a chance to maybe read from a perspective I don't often get.
Her Body and Other Parties: Stories
The Secret Lives of Church Ladies I was considering this for the audiobook prompt but I didn't realize it was short stories
How High We Go in the Dark was mentioned in another thread but seeing it hailed twice makes me think I should consider it hehe

I ended up reading Ancient Ghosts:A Collection of Strange and Scary Stories from Northern Norway by Edel Marit Gaino, translated from North Sami by Olivia Lasky and Lea Simma. It's a pretty quick collection, but really interesting, and some of the stories were really good. I'm still hoping to get to some of the other collections and anthologies I mentioned earlier in the thread though.

I read Night of the Living Rez. 5 stars

I try to fit in a classic or two that I haven't read before, so I read The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories by Ernest Hemingway for this one.