August 5, 2021 at 10:37 pm (anthologies, Artists and Writers, Books, Recommended, Surprises)
Tags: COVID Reading, discoveries, fantasy, praise, reading lists, Russian writers, summer
Even though he was carrying a very thick briefcase, he lacked the power to just house me wherever he pleased, but he did offer me the empty quarters of the Central Bank, where 260 rooms stood like pond water, quiet and empty.
— The Ratcatcher, The Big Book of Classic Fantasy
He just tosses these sentences off like they were so many bon-bons.
Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.
August 5, 2021 at 9:33 pm (anthologies, Artists and Writers, Books, Recommended)
Tags: COVID Reading, discoveries, fantasy, reading lists, Russian writers, translation
As for firewood . . . in those days, many ventured into the attics, and so did I. I walked along the slanted darkness of the roofs like a thief, listening to the wind blaring in the chimneys, and spying a pale splotch of the sky through the broken window as the snowflakes settled over the debris.
— The Ratcatcher, Story # 73 in The Big Book of Classic Fantasy
There is such an immediacy to his voice.
Kudos to translator Ekaterina Sedia. According to the Editor’s note, this was the first English translation of The Ratcatcher.
Stay cool, dear blog readers. Stay cool.
August 5, 2021 at 7:27 pm (anthologies, Artists and Writers, Books)
Tags: COVID Reading, fantasy, humor, reading lists, Russian writers, short pieces, summer, translation
The thing about this anthology, it is just TOO LONG. How can one properly appreciate stories when the text is so dense and infinitesimally small, and the pieces are mostly short, so there is a pattern of same-ness that tends to dull the appetite.
Nevertheless, self has encountered a treasure in the latter stages of this book! And that treasure’s name is Alexander Grin!
He is represented by two short stories, and they are completely different from each other. One is about a house spirit with a tooth ache (In Russian, the house spirit is known as a domovoi). The second story (Story # 73 of this anthology) is about a ratcatcher and begins this way:
Wow, she loves that opening!
Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.
August 5, 2021 at 6:00 pm (anthologies, Artists and Writers, Books, Food and Drink, Lists, Surprises, Women Writers)
Tags: COVID Reading, fairy tales, fantasy, reading lists, summer, translation
Skimming! Whoa, self is skimming!
Story #50, The Hump, is by Fernan Caballero (1796-1877), a Spanish writer who self has never heard of. Her real name was Cecilia Bohl de Faber and she wrote about Andalucia, “although she was not raised there.”
August 5, 2021 at 2:27 pm (anthologies, Artists and Writers, Books, Conversations, Lists, Recommended)
Tags: COVID Reading, fairy tales, fantasy, humor, Irish writers, reading lists, summer
This is self’s favorite story so far in The Big Book of Classic Fantasy. It’s Story # 27. Kudos, Oscar Wilde!
LOL
August 5, 2021 at 6:00 am (anthologies, Artists and Writers, Books, Flowers, Lists, Recommended)
Tags: COVID Reading, fairy tales, fantasy, favorites, Irish writers, reading lists, summer
What a relief to encounter Oscar Wilde in this monster of an anthology (The Big Book of Classic Fantasy).
His “The Remarkable Rocket” is Story # 27, and I read a Tolstoy story, “Ivan the Fool,” before getting here, and that story is nothing compared to “The Remarkable Rocket.”
An excerpt:
August 5, 2021 at 12:00 am (anthologies, Books, Surprises)
Tags: COVID Reading, fantasy, humor, reading lists, Russian writers, summer
“The women began to rain down bombs onto the army like borax upon cockroaches.”
— The Story of Ivan the Fool, Story # 24, The Big Book of Classic Fantasy
Whew, this story! Another multi-chap, the second one so far in this anthology. She doesn’t like these long fables as much as the short ones. In fact, the only long fable she liked was one of the early ones in this volume, the excerpt from E. T. A. Hoffmann’s The Nutcracker. The Jules Verne multi-chap was just painful to slog through. And even though she read it only a few days ago, she’s already forgotten the title.
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