Short stories 86-90

Page count: 1472

I cheated a bit on the challenge over Easter. I thought could safely leave behind all my short story collections when I went to stay with my parents over the holidays because I was sure they were bound to have something I could read for the challenge. This proved wrong. Therefore I will be reading 2 short stories a day until I catch up.

“The Good Bargain”, a folk tale from The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm. A story about stupidity, greed and unexpected cleverness. Rather racist and certainly not one of the memorable tales. (Link is to a different translation).

“Harry”, by Rosemary Timperley. From Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories. A chilling and well written tale of an imaginary friend – or is he? Recommended.

“The Sand Sifter”, by W.D. Valgardsson. From The Divorced Kid’s Club and other stories. A bit of depressing social realism.

“The country mouse and the town mouse” by Aesop. From Great Short Stories of the World. One of Aesop’s immortal fables. (Links to a different translation).

“A bracelet at Bruges”, by Arnold Bennett. From More Rivals of Sherlock Holmes. A clever little crime story. Reads like it could originally come from a collection of interconnected stories.

I have a bit of a problem with Great Short Stories of the World: not all of what the editors of the collection call “short stories” are what I would call short stories. They do have the requisite structure and brevity, but are taken from within longer narratives – not frame stories, which were and still are a perfectly acceptable way of tying together collections of short stories, but for example from within the Odyssey and The Bible. I have decided to use my discretion when choosing which of them are suited to the challenge.

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