Skip to main content

Short stories 181-185

How Lazaro Served a Bulero” by Diego Hurtado de Mendoza. Originally a chapter from Lazarillo de Tormes. A story about a scoundrel and seller of papal indulgences that rings very true, considering what I have read about them. I think I’ll put Lazarillo de Tormes on my reading list, because I love me a good picaresque tale. (in the link, scroll to the chapter "How Lazaro Went to Work for a Pardoner and the Things That Happened to Him Then" - obviously this is not the same translation as the one I read)

“Guzman and My Lord Cardinal” by Mateo Alemán. Originally a chapter from Guzmán de Alfarache , another famous early picaresque novel. In this narrative Guzman, the narrator, is hoist with his own petard when he tries to swindle a Cardinal of the Roman church who turns out to be a truly good man.

“Rinconete and Cortadillo” by Miguel de Cervantes. Originally from the Exemplary Novels. A funny little picaresque, written in the florid language of a courtly Romance with the low-life characters behaving as if they were knights or aristocrats, and thus a pretty good parody. Recommended.

The Tall Woman” by Pedro Antonio de Alarcon. A creepy story that is best read aloud to a group of people on a foggy night for full effect. Recommended. (This appears to be the same translation. The links opens a pdf file).

Maese Pérez, the Organist” by Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer. A nicely inventive ghost story. Recommended. This appears to be the same translation. The links opens a pdf file).

Comments

George said…
I enjoy your short story reviews. The best short story collection that I've read lately is Ben Greenman's What He's Poised to Do: Stories.

Popular posts from this blog

Book 40: The Martian by Andy Weir, audiobook read by Wil Wheaton

Note : This will be a general scattershot discussion about my thoughts on the book and the movie, and not a cohesive review. When movies are based on books I am interested in reading but haven't yet read, I generally wait to read the book until I have seen the movie, but when a movie is made based on a book I have already read, I try to abstain from rereading the book until I have seen the movie. The reason is simple: I am one of those people who can be reduced to near-incoherent rage when a movie severely alters the perfectly good story line of a beloved book, changes the ending beyond recognition or adds unnecessarily to the story ( The Hobbit , anyone?) without any apparent reason. I don't mind omissions of unnecessary parts so much (I did not, for example, become enraged to find Tom Bombadil missing from The Lord of the Rings ), because one expects that - movies based on books would be TV-series long if they tried to include everything, so the material must be pared down

List love: 10 recommended stories with cross-dressing characters

This trope is almost as old as literature, what with Achilles, Hercules and Athena all cross-dressing in the Greek myths, Thor and Odin disguising themselves as women in the Norse myths, and Arjuna doing the same in the Mahabaratha. In modern times it is most common in romance novels, especially historicals in which a heroine often spends part of the book disguised as a boy, the hero sometimes falling for her while thinking she is a boy. Occasionally a hero will cross-dress, using a female disguise to avoid recognition or to gain access to someplace where he would never be able to go as a man. However, the trope isn’t just found in romances, as may be seen in the list below, in which I recommend stories with a variety of cross-dressing characters. Unfortunately I was only able to dredge up from the depths of my memory two book-length stories I had read in which men cross-dress, so this is mostly a list of women dressed as men. Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb. One of the interwove

First book of 2020: The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel by Deborah Moggach (reading notes)

I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but I loathe movie tie-in book covers because I feel they are (often) trying to tell me how I should see the characters in the book. The edition of Deborah Moggach's These Foolish Things that I read takes it one step further and changes the title of the book into the title of the film version as well as having photos of the ensemble cast on the cover. Fortunately it has been a long while since I watched the movie, so I couldn't even remember who played whom in the film, and I think it's perfectly understandable to try to cash in on the movie's success by rebranding the book. Even with a few years between watching the film and reading the book, I could see that the story had been altered, e.g. by having the Marigold Hotel's owner/manager be single and having a romance, instead being of unhappily married to an (understandably, I thought) shrewish wife. It also conflates Sonny, the wheeler dealer behind the retireme