SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

So, I’ve been reading more short stories lately, but I am having trouble tracking them. I like to keep track of my favorite short stories, and I also like to keep new authors in mind whose stories/novels I might want to seek out. My three main problems are:

1) I cannot add most short stories to my Goodreads shelves as individual entries.

For example, I read Lightspeed Magazine, June 2016: People of Colo(u)r Destroy Science Fiction! Special Issue, and some stories, like Samuel R. Delany’s Empire Star, have their own entry on Goodreads, but most stories, like John Chu’s Double Time and Karin Lowachee’s A Good Home, do not. I want to be able to track stories like that which do not have entries on Goodreads.

2) Even stories I am able to add as part of an anthology or magazine are not searchable by author.

So, for example, if I go to Lisa Allen-Agostini’s Goodreads’ page, she is listed as an author for People of Colo(u)r Destroy Science Fiction, because she wrote Depot 256 from that issue. But on my book shelf only the editor, Nalo Hopkinson, is listed as the author, so if I search my bookshelves for Lisa Allen-Agostini, her listing in People of Colo(u)r Destroy Science Fiction won’t appear in the results.

3) Finally, some short stories are only available online, and don’t have an entry on Goodreads as a book or as an anthology/magazine.

For example, issues of Strange Horizons online magazine before 2016 do not appear on Goodreads, so any stories I’ve read from those issues I cannot mark as read here, because there is no magazine page to put on my bookshelf.

Has anyone found a solution to these problems?

Does anyone know of another online database for short stories that might help me?

Thanks in advance!

The Internet Speculative Fiction Database does a good job of compiling short stories, but I'm not sure it's exactly what you're looking for.

http://www.isfdb.org/

I keep them in a spreadsheet. Nothing fancy but works for me.

I've been using Calibre to catalog the short stories in all my anthologies/collections/magazines.

For each, I add all the authors to the author field, then I add the full story title + author as a tag. Lets me search things pretty easily.

The main downside is that tags won't let me use comma. Commas get treated like I'm adding a second tag, so I remove them all when entering.

It's nice because if, for instance, a story from an issue of Fiyah shows up in some of the years' best anthologies, clicking on that story's tag in Calibre will narrow down my main library list to just those items.

As far as stories that are only online, I haven't yet dealt with those. You could choose "Add empty book" and enter the details there. I've done that for my old print anthologies and magazines.

With Strange Horizons specifically, if you become a patron of theirs, one of the tiers and above will get you an e-copy of all their content from each previous month you support them.

If you're not concerned with tracking them on goodreads I second using Calibre- I use it to organize all of my reading, and you can set it up however you want.

Lol- and Calibre for me too. I run a scifi/horror/fantasy, magazine and whilst we keep records of all stories printed, there are also many that are very good that do not quite make the cut. I like to keep track of those authors output, To see how they improve or perfect and I do it on Calibre. Some I have contacted later to ask if they are still interested in being published by the Mag. Others that were not suitable for mag but still great writers, I follow, simply to enjoy their new writings.

Thanks for the help, folks! Yes, Trike, the Internet Speculative Fiction Database looks like a good place to find the short story listings if I need them, but I am looking for something where I can add and tag/notate them.

Calibre sounds popular, but is it... okay? My browser says there is a Certificate Error and the connection is not private. And this looks like an executable I download onto my computer and not something used by my browser, should i be worried?

Michael wrote: "Calibre sounds popular, but is it... okay? My browser says there is a Certificate Error and the connection is not private. And this looks like an executable I download onto my computer and not something used by my browser, should i be worried?"

Calibre is a standalone desktop application... but you should not get a certificate error. Where are you trying to download it from? You should be getting it from: https://calibre-ebook.com/download

Calibre is brilliant. I Used to use a spreadsheet, still do for my paper collection since I can sort easily.

The only problem I find with Calibre is sometimes it doesn't mention the order of a series.

Count me as another Calibre user. It's great, and I hardly use any of its features.

I only use Calibre for e-book format conversion. That alone makes it an essential tool for me.

I track all my books with Calibre including short story's / comics /novels / gaming books. never had a problem with it