Skip to main content

Short stories 126-130

“The Dream” by Apuleius. Originally from The Golden Ass. A satisfyingly spooky tale with a horrible twist. Recommended.

“The Dove and the Crow” by Anonymous. Originally from the Panchatantra. An interesting Indian fable about the weak coming together to defend themselves from the strong. Rather strangely titled, as the dove is only briefly mentioned in the beginning passages.

“The Story of Devadatta” by Somadeva. Originally from Katha-Sarit-Sagara. An anecdote about the dangers of marrying out of one’s class.

“Jamshid and Zuhak” by Abul Kasim Mansur Firdawsí. Originally from The Book of the Kings. A story about ancient kings and power struggles that reminds me strangely of the Nordic tales of antiquity (Fornaldarsögur Norðurlanda) and even the Nordic myths.

Launcelot’s Tourney” by Sir Thomas Malory. Originally from Le Morte d’Arthur. An interesting tale of chivalry and justice. This reminds me that I have been planning to read the Morte d’Arthur for ages. Maybe I should make it a reading task for next month. (I have linked to that part of the book that contains the story - the passage begins in chapter III and ends in ch. VII, with ...every knight new that he was the noble knight, Sir Launcelot.")

Comments

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