03 January 2011

Short Monday: Fangs For Hire.

Welcome to the very first short monday! Where I work my way through short story books, poetry books, and whatever else that can be qualified for a short monday. (Please excuse me while I work out the kinks and find the right path for this.)

First, let me explain something about short stories and myself: I've never really liked them. I've never really given any a chance because they were never really part of my reading comfort zone. And I've never really actually sat down and spent time to read any. However, I have found myself adding collections of them to my TBR list, but managing to somehow just not get to them. Which leads to my short mondays, my venture to give (mainly) short stories a better spot in my reading tastes. I don't know if I'll ever do an entire book, since I'm having a hard time with The Mammoth Book of Vampire Romance right now, I'll be doing the stories I talk about here as they grab me. That means going along as whether I liked them or just hated them...

Short Monday #1: Fangs For Hire by Jenna Black, from The Mammoth Book of Vampire Romance.

Fangs For Hire by Jenna Black had a confusing ending for me. It was the very last sentence actually, did she kill him or not? Did she go to bed with him? (Am I supposed to even care?) It just felt so...unfinished. Maybe I just don't understand how short stories are supposed to work. I understand that sometimes the author just leaves it up to the reader, but this time I did not appreciate that. Especially since it is a short story. It left me wondering if this were a prequel, but after visiting the authors website (In fact I haven't even found a mention on her site of this collection.), it doesn't look like it is. Just an annoyingly left open to the reader short story. Which frankly, just gets on my nerves, especially since I had a hard time liking this one in the first place.
So there I have it, first short story that grabbed me was in a negative way. But, at least it was only a short story, and not an entire book. I promise next week will have a better result.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Robert Bloch might be most famous for penning the classic novel "Psycho" but I feel his short stories are much better than his novels. You might be interested in giving his work a shot. "Midnight Pleasures" would be a good place to start.