Carolime Time

While reading a Forbes article (via CBC) on attention span and 10 things that erode our attentive abilities, I found myself bombarded by advertisements that would not even let me read the whole article!

Talk about oxymorons!:

http://www.forbes.com/2008/10/15/short-attention-span-forbeslife-cx_avd_1015health_slide_4.html?thisSpeed=15000

It’s only been in the past few weeks that I’ve really come face to face with these methods of pop ups..they’re ads that are difficult to close and taunt you like a schoolyard bully waving his fist in your face.. seriously, these lingering ads have GOT to go cause I would rather go to an independent news site, I’d probably be safer there anyway!

I’m going to go try reading that article again once more..

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I saw a note from Barbara Julian, reviewing the workmanship of Charlotte Gill… I believe this is an accurate framing of a good short story..
“I have a fancy that characters in short stories really want to be in novels. After all, the novel is a larger canvas and everyone wants a big life, fictional people as well as real. I suppose this is another way of saying that if characters and their stories are engaging the reader wants to read on to the next chapter and the next-wants a whole novel. If they are not engaging the story was a failure; either way it is hard for a short story to be enough in itself, and it takes a real master to give it a conclusive, satisfying totality.
It is not enough to peep through a window on characters engaged in a random series of actions, before they happen to shut the curtain or wander out of view. A short story is not a fragment or a snapshot. “Short” means told economically, not cut off, and “story” suggests an unfolding, a process, requiring the time-honoured structure of conflict, climax and denouement. The short story, like its ancestors the fable and the parable, uses the same devices as a long story-a novel-but without the luxury of discursively sprawling into all sorts of beckoning highways and byways. Choosing to write the short rather than long form of fiction means choosing precision over expansiveness.”

This is not to say one is better than the other, though. Her first line may suggest such a thing, but I believe precision is the technique of some, and expansiveness the weapon of others.

I think I prefer short stories to novels. But I’ve spent the past year trying to read novels and completing around 6 full lengths.  I can spend the next 2 mos reading the two novels I’m reading right now (yes, I even practice polyamory in my reading habits) or move to better things. I have half a mind to buy this “Ladykiller” compilation by Charlotte Gill. Maybe I will!!! I bought some really stupid books recently which I meant to give as a gift to a friend (a joke gift), but I came up with something better (pitched in on a voice recorder)

I’m blabbering now..sigh

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