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Note: Starting with this entry, “Confessions of a Book Junkie” will become a monthly feature.

I used to be a carnivorous short story reader.

Sorry. I think I meant voracious. Is carnivoracious a word, by the way? A voracious carnivore?

Anyway.

I used to be a-–voracious–-short story reader.

Which is to say-–I’m not any more.

The complication this causes in my life is that-–you may not know this-–I write short stories. I get paid for them. Per page, or per word, or perhaps–as the old joke goes–Badabing. And this leads certain editors of certain magazines to the erroneous-–another fine word, that one-–conclusion that, therefore, I should be subscribing to said magazines.

Of course, it would be terribly impolite of me to say something along the lines of-–well, sure, if you paid me more!

Thank you. I’ll be here all week. I mean, I suppose it’s a legitimate assumption, but for that fact that, no, I don’t, on the whole, derive much pleasure from short stories any more and-–as strange as it may seem-–I am not, in fact, the target audience for the magazines.

Which begs the question: who is?

I used to read a lot of short stories and, for that matter, I still do. But now I read them piecemeal and, on the whole, with a sense of suspicion. I suspect it is merely that, growing, um, older (cough), I find it harder to immerse myself in a short story. I need a longer scope, an ease of access, a sense of a wider vista spreading out before me. I’m the ideal target audience for novels, oh yes, ideally ones that come complete with a mysterious corpse, but as for short stories…

There is an assumption in certain circles that the primary readership for short story magazines is writers. Which seems daft to me, not to mention counter-productive. I saw this recently in an online discussion, and I see it a lot elsewhere, and to some extent I see it when the editors who buy stories from me politely remind me I should be subscribing to their magazines. It is true, of course, that most writers read (though not all, by any means). And yet it seems to me that those two functions-–reader and writer-–are not so well-defined. Readers write, and writers read, but it’s not to say they read what they write or write what they read-–and if that makes any sense to you, you must have a PhD in mathematics, or something. The people who buy short story magazines are readers (of short stories). They might be writers too, but I don’t think the writing aspect informs, or should inform, the reader inside.

But, you know, even though I say I don’t read short stories all that much anymore, I wonder if it’s true. If I pick up an anthology I’ll read two, or four, or even five stories and leave the rest. I read collections, or re-read them (Someone recently sent me C.L. Moore’s classic Shambleau and Other Stories collection, which I’ve read a couple of times in the past and re-read again with much happilyness). I read stories online, one here, one there, but they add up. So I’m an eclectic reader as far as short stories go, and I generally prefer spending my money on Chinese food than magazines (though in fairness, I don’t usually have money for either).

Anyway. The truth is that I do love magazines though. One of my top-five possessions includes a 1940s copy of Astounding Science Fiction that came complete with the bug-eyed-monster-chasing-Earth-girl-in-brassier cover. Now that’s science fiction! And I have a good run-–did I mention this before?-–of this kind of a Fortean Times clone from-–I think-–the 1980s. And back copies of The Armchair Detective, and all kinds of one-issue copies I bought because they had writers I like in them-–single back-issues of Interzone, The Third Alternative, F&SF from the 1960s (Roger Zelanzy’s Jack of Shadows in its serial appearance) and others. I’m not much for literary magazines, as you may have noticed, because frankly, life is too short.

Kind of like short stories.

But of course, at the same time, I love short stories. I love it when I approach a story with my usual suspicion and yet get completely blown over. I like the kind of stories that put a gun to your head. When I find one of those stories, I read them, and re-read them, and want to tell people about them. They’re mainly science fiction stories, because, well, I am a certified geek. But not only. One of my favourite stories is P.G. Wodehouse’s “Crime Wave at Blandings,” which is a masterpiece. But then pretty much everything he’d ever written is. I even read his golf stories collections. And I remember reading Marion Arnott’s “Prussian Snowdrops,” which is an utterly mind-blowing crime story. William Gibson’s “The Guttenberg Continuum” is a story I re-read regularly. I loved Ted Chiang’s “Hell is the Absence of God” and “Story of Your Life.” I like James Joyce’s “The Dead,” although I appreciate it more than like it, but I loved Salinger’s “For Esmé–with Love and Squalor” and “A Perfect Day for Bananafish,” and the Hebrew short-shorts of Etgar Keret, and I still re-read all the Sherlock Holmes stories regularly, and, and…

Speaking of Sherlock Holmes, a few years ago I purchased the complete annotated edition–two beautiful large volumes containing the complete novels and stories, with annotations. Quite collectible, I believe. Smells strongly of tobacco even after almost ten years–the previous owner must have been a pipe smoker.

And I do love collectors’ items. I have the first issue of Postscripts magazine, the 150-copy signed hardcover edition, which I think is my only signature by Ray Bradbury (though I own a beautiful second printing of the Martian Chronicles, and damn you all who own a genuine first!). I have quite a few Stephen Jones anthologies all signed by Steve and many of the contributors, my particular favourite being White of the Moon, a small-press hardcover that was launched in London’s Princess Louise pub in the presence of a large number of contributors who all signed it for me.

Which reminds me of an unrelated story. I own a very strange collectors’ item. I was at a one-day event organised in London by the venerable British Fantasy Society, for which you paid £20 at the door. Included in your entry price was a paperback fantasy novel. Every attendee received a copy of the book, and no-one was sure what to do with it. Well…

I ended up getting it signed by just about everyone I could corner. Stephen Jones refused to sign it (“I don’t sign books I didn’t work on”) but China Miéville did (“I’d sign anything, you know that”) and so did about 40 or 50 other people and, frankly, I wish I knew who some of them were. I was possibly a little drunk at the time… I might have put it on Ebay at some point but hell, who would have bought this?

In any case, I still get very excited when I find a new short story that blows me away. And I love the fact that short stories are alive and well, and proliferating not only in print but online, too. I’m still not sure who the people who subscribe to the magazines are. People with more money than me, that’s for sure. I just happen to be the kind of guy to prefer-–if I had the money-–a subscription to either Newsweek, New Scientist, The Fortean Times, or the Australian Women’s Weekly–because they have the best recipes.

Of course, I could always subscribe to Playboy and say it’s for the fiction…

Lavie Tidhar writes weird fiction. This is his web site. He grew up on a kibbutz in Israel and lived in South Africa and the UK. Most recently he’s lived in the Banks islands of Vanuatu, in the South Pacific, one of the most remote and isolated places on Earth. Lavie’s website is http://www.lavietidhar.co.uk/.

In 2007, Apex Publications released a collection of Jewish adventure stories titled HebrewPunk from Lavie Tidhar. This book is available as a direct order from the Apex Store and from the Apex aStore.