Reading in Reykjavík

“Santa Claus Beat” by Rex Stout. A clever policeman clears up a theft case. “Whatever Became of Ebenezer Scrooge?” by Tom Tolnay. What happened on Boxing Day, after the events of A Christmas Carol . “Who Killed Father Christmas?” by Patricia Moyes. A third murdered Santa. This ends Mystery for Christmas . “The Telephone” by Mary Threadgold. About a ghost, or maybe not. “Afterward” by Edith Wharton. About a ghost one doesn’t realise one has seen until long afterward. “On the Brighton Road” by Richard Middleton. About a tramp who is joined by a spooky companion on the road to Brighton. “The Absent-minded Coterie” by Robert Barr. A funny story about a super-sleuth who bears more than a little resemblance to Hercule Poirot, except he predates that estimable detective by more than a decade. The story itself is more in the vein of Doyle. Recommended. “The Problem of Cell 13” by Jacques Futrelle. A funny story about the original Thinking Machine and how he was able to think himself ou...

On with December: “Cold and Deep” by Frances Fyfield. About getting away with murder on Christmas. The next 12 stories come from Mystery for Christmas , a collection of Christmas crime stories originally published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. “The Christmas Bear” by Herbert Resnicow. About a missing toy and the grandmother who solved the mystery of its disappearance. “Christmas Cop” by Thomas Adcock. An undercover cop meets with a moral dilemma on Christmas. “Dead on Christmas Street” by John D. MacDonald. It looked like the mob did it, but did they really? Recommended. “I Saw Mommy Killing Santa Claus” by George Baxt. What the title says. “Kelso’s Christmas” by Malcolm McClintick. A second murdered Santa. Recommended. “The Marley Case” by Linda Haldeman. A modern Scrooge starts to wonder how Jacob Marley died and gets an unexpected visit. “Mystery for Christmas” by Anthony Boucher. A film studio script doctor helps the police ...

  Merry Christmas, Everyone! On with the reporting: “Caravan” by Rosalyn Chissick. A fine little tale about a girl who joins the circus. Recommended. “The Seven Steps from Shag to Spouse” by Tiffanie Darke . The stages of development in a relationship. About as dreary as the title suggests. “Lip Service” by Karen Moline. A man tells his friends the story of a narrow escape from a woman. “Saving Amsterdam” by Chris Manby. About finding love again. “A Form of Release” by Daisy Waugh. About a has-been pop star yearning for a come-back. “Hurrah for the Hols” by Helen Simpson. A family holiday and the woes of parenthood. “No Worries” by Sarah Ingham. About travel as a metaphor for healing after a breakup. “Re: The World”, by Amy Jenkins. GNI. About the one who got away. This finishes Girls’ Night Out . I had some inkling of what I was getting myself into when I decided to read this book for the challenge: lots of light-hearted stories about romance and some stories about brea...

“The Itch” by Polly Samson. About the beginning of a relationship and what may be the beginning of the end of the same. “Morro” by Alecia McKenzie. About a woman who is first the ‘victim’ of sex tourism but later becomes a sex tourist. “Flung” by Adele Parks. A frothy story about a jilted woman, a holiday and a fling with a younger man. “Pull Me in the Pullman Carriage” by Helen Lederer. A woman going through a sexual dry spell meets a hot stranger on a train. “The Plain Truth” by Claire Gilman. A plain girl gets to be sexy for a night, with consequences. Some realism, for a change. “Mr Charisma” by Yasmin Boland. About a paparazza who secretly hates being one. “The Sun, the Moon and the Stars” by Pauline McLynn. About a theatre production and a misunderstanding between lovers. Recommended. “The Shell of Venus”, by Victoria Routledge. GNI. Spa treatment as a metaphor for healing a broken heart. “Man with a Tan” by Anna Maxted. A girl meets a new guy just as she discovers that a...

When I looked at the list of stories I have read so far I realised I had read more stories by men than by women, so I decided to focus on short stories by women for the whole month of November. I finished Girl‘s Night In , an anthology of stories by contemporary female writers from the UK, Ireland, the USA and Australia that was published to raise money for the charity War Child . These stories were mostly women's magazine fare, relationship- and friendship-oriented stories with with lots of holiday romances, heroines working in publishing (the book having been published when Bridget Jones was at the height of its popularity) and several bad friends getting their comeuppance while several good or 'ordinary' girls got a life and got the guy, with a few different ones in-between. All good and fine by themselves, but reading so many of them so close together did get a bit boring after a while, but by the time ennui had set in I was almost done with the book, so I thought ...

I have fallen way behind with my reporting of the short story challenge because I keep finding more interesting subjects to post about, but here is one more report: “The Ghost of a Hand” by J. Sheridan Le Fanu. About a ghost that only shows its hand.  “The Sweeper” by A.M. Burrage. The tale of a woman haunted by an event from her past. This ends October. “Couching at the Door” by D.K. (Dorothy Kathleen) Broster. About the dangers of dabbling in the dark arts. Highly recommended. “The Familiar” by Sheridan Le Fanu. About a man haunted by a demon from his past. Very boring. “Full Fathom Five” by Alexander Woollcott. A very short tale that sounds like a “true” ghost story. “The Millvale Apparition” by Louis Adamic. About a painter working in a church who encounters an apparition/ghost. We now come to Roald Dahl’s Book of Ghost Stories , a collection of ghost stories chosen by Dahl, who, I think everyone who has read his books will agree, knew his stuff when it came to chill...

“The Silence of the Sea” by Vercors. A powerful story of shattered illusions during the German occupation of France during World War II. Recommended. “The State of Grace” by Marcel Aymé. A funny satirical fantasy about the desire for conformity. Highly recommended. “The Women” by Pierre Gascar. About life in a WWII work camp. Recommended. “The Adulterous Woman” by Albert Camus. A strongly metaphorical tale about emotional estrangement and alienation. Recommended. “ The Secret Room ” by Alain Robe-Grillet. An atmospheric description of a grotesque situation. Recommended. And that concludes The Penguin Book of French Short Stories --- Since the gloominess of autumn/early winter is upon us and it is now dark outside when I wake up to go to work, I have been reading spooky stories I have found in the Web. " The Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall " by John Kendrick Bangs. Web. A humorous ghost story. Recommended. " The Terror of Blue John Gap " by Sir Arthur Conan Doyl...

I have fallen a bit behind posting these lists, but here is one and I will post the next soon. I have been keeping to the challenge more or less steadily, except I have been concentrating on spooky stories and horror tales in the latter part of October. You will see some of them on the next list. " Fear " by Guy de Maupassant. Web. About what it is to be truly afraid. Here is a quotation from the story that I think captures the feeling very well: “Fear — and the boldest men may feel fear — is something horrible, an atrocious sensation, a sort of decomposition of the soul, a terrible spasm of brain and heart, the very memory of which brings a shudder of anguish, but when one is brave he feels it neither under fire nor in the presence of sure death nor in the face of any well-known danger. It springs up under certain abnormal conditions, under certain mysterious influences in the presence of vague peril. Real fear is a sort of reminiscence of fantastic terror of t...

“The Patriarch by Colette. A story about a country doctor and his experiences that seems to be part of a longer story. “Noah’s Ark”, by Jules Supervielle. PFS. An imaginative rendering of the story of Noah‘s ark. Recommended. “ Fanny and Annie ” by D.H. Lawrence. A story about choice and the lack of it. “ The Voyage ” by Katherine Mansfield. About a girl who has recently lost her mother. “The Breakout” by Joyce Cary. About a man who has a breakdown. Or does he? Recommended. “The Gioconda Smile” by Aldous Huxley. About love and infidelity. “The Fly in the Ointment” by V.S. Pritchett. About the changelessness of human nature. “Mr. Loveday’s Little Outing” by Evelyn Waugh. A nasty little story about mistaken kindness. Recommended. “Across the bridge” by Graham Greene. About the sad fate of an elderly criminal. “Raspberry Jam” by Angus Wilson. About the cruelties of childhood.Recommended.

“ King Solomon of Kentucky ” by James Lane Allen. A tale of unexpected heroism. Recommended. “ Miss Tempy’s Watchers ”, by Sarah Orne Jewett. About two women spending a night watching over the corpse of a friend, and the confidences and remembrances such an occasion can bring out. “A Letter and a Paragraph” by Henry Cuyler Bunner. An epistolatory tale with an unexpected ending. “ Supply and Demand ” by O. Henry. A tall tale, full of funny turns of phrase. “A Dark-Brown Dog” by Stephen Crane. Yet another animal cruelty tale, this one very realistic and giving as much insight into child abuse as it does into cruelty to animals. “The Lost Phœbe” by Theodore Dreiser. A sad naturalistic tale about old-age dementia. Recommended. “ Sophistication ” by Sherwood Anderson. About the coming of age of two young people. “A Wagner Matinée” by Willa Cather. About a farmer’s wife visiting the city for the first time in 30 years. Recommended. “ A Brown Woman ” by James Branch Cabell. Abo...

From Brazil: “The Attendant’s Confession” by J.M. Machado de Assis. A sordid tale of murder and greed. From Peru: “The Legend of Pygmalion” by Ventura García-Calderón. A poetic and tragic interpretation of the Greek legend of Pygmalion and Galatea. From Venezuela: “Creole Democracy” by Rufino Blanco-Fombona. A rather brilliant little story about vaqueros summoned together for an election. Recommended. From Nicaragua: “The Deaf Satyr” by Rubén Dario. An idyll, a tale spun off from two Greek legends. About the cruelty of fate. The remaining tales in the book are all by authors from the USA. “ The Specter Bridegroom ” by Washington Irving. An entertaining and subtly satirical little ghost story in the form of a fairy tale. Recommended. “ Mrs. Bullfrog ” by Nathaniel Hawthorne. A funny little tale about the choice of a spouse. “ Journalism in Tennessee ” by Mark Twain. A typically Twanian funny tall tale. “ The Man and the Snake ” by Ambrose Bierce. A chilling psych...

From Croatia (as part of Yugoslavia): “The Neighbour” by Antun Gustav Matoš. GSS. A rather melodramatic story about a cultural misunderstanding. From Slovenia (as part of Yugoslavia): “Children and Old Folk” by Ivan Cankar. GSS. About the strange wisdom of children, the sorrows of the old, and about war. Recommended. From Serbia(as part of Yugoslavia): “At the Well” by Laza K. Lazarevich. GSS. About a young woman whose behaviour disrupts the family she married into and how the wisdom of the old redressed the problem. Recommended. From (what was) Czechoslovakia (when the collection was published): “ The Vampire ” by Jan Neruda. A charming tale that turns chilling. Recommended. (This appears to be the same translation). “Foltýn’s Drum” by Svatopluk Čech. An entertaining little tale of servants and gentry and moral differences. Recommended. From Greece: “ The Priest’s Tale ” by Demetrios Bikelas. A sad tale about a man with rabies. (This appears to be the same translation. ...

From Norway: “ The Blacksmith Who Could Not Get Into Hell ”. Collected by Asbjörnsen and Moe. An amusing folk tale about beating the Devil. Recommended. (A different translation from the one I read. “The Father” by Björnstene Björnsson. About a proud father and a parish priest. “Skobelef” by Johan Bojer. A humorous tale about a horse that has a tremendous influence on a small rural community. Beautifully translated. Recommended. From Sweden: “ Love and Bread ” by August Strindberg. A rather cynical tale about a man who discovers that one cannot live by love alone. Recommended. (This is such a very different translation that it makes me want to read the original to see which is truer). “The Eclipse” by Selma Lagerlöf. A heart-warming tale about an old peasant woman who needs an excuse to invite the neighbours over for coffee. Recommended. “The Falcon” by Per Hallström. A haunting tale about a peasant boy who rescues a hunting falcon. Beautifully translated. Recommended. ...

Next come the Polish stories: “ The Lighthouse Keeper of Aspinwall ” by Henryk Sienkiewicz . A wonderfully lyric tale of a happy interlude in a long life full of misfortune. Recommended. (this appears to be the same translation as I read) “Forebodings, a sketch” by Stefan Zeromski. There were actually two sketches, but one was too short to include here. About finding peace in adversity. And now the Yiddish authors: “A Woman’s Wrath” by Isaac Loeb Peretz. A rather harrowing tale of n incident between a woman and her good-for-nothing husband. Recommended. “The Passover Guest” by Sholom Aleichem. A wryly humorous tale about the power of good storytelling and a Jewish family who entertain an exotic foreign guest during Passover. Heartily recommended. “A Picnic” by Z. Libin. A humorous tale about a family picnic gone wrong. Recommended. “The Kaddish” by Abraham Raisin. About a man obsessed with having a son. “Abandoned” by Sholom Asch. Both sad and humorous, about a criminal...

' Oh, whistle, and I'll come to you, my lad ' by M.R. James. Originally from Ghost Stories of an Antiquary . An almost perfect little ghost story. Recommended. This one is not from Great Short Stories of the World - it was mentioned in a book I was reading ( Maps & Legends ) and I read it to be able to better understand the discussion of it in that book. I then decided it was perfect for the challenge. “ St. John’s Eve ” by Nikolai Gogol. A story written in the form of an oral tale – rambling and very well rendered. Recommended. “ The District Doctor ” by Ivan Turgenev. Another story in the oral form, even more confusing that the last one. (different translation) “ The Christmas Tree and the Wedding ” by Feodor Dostoievsky. A well-told story about status and money and how they affect people. Recommended. (appears to be the same translation) “ The Long Exile ” by Leo Tolstoy. This is what the editors of GSS call this story, but the original title is “God sees t...

“The Pier” by Mori Ogwai. An elegant story about the sorrow of parting from a loved one and not being able to express one’s feelings. Recommended. “ A Domestic Animal ” by Shimazaki Toson. A heart-warming tale about how one’s appearance can affect people’s attitudes. Recommended. (The link will take you to a page from which you can jump to the book containing the translations of this story and the previous one, in various different formats, including pdf and Kindle). Here end the Japanese tales, and we jump back to Europe, to The Netherlands. “ The Story of Saïdjah ” by Eduard Douwes Dekker. Originally from the novel Max Havelaar. What at first seems to be a simple story about young lovers turns out to be scathing criticism of the behaviour of the Dutch colonialists in Java. Recommended. (The same translation, only the version I read was edited to make it shorter). “ Grandfather’s Birthday Present ” by Herman Heijermans. Originally from Sketches. A lovely, funny story about a s...

“Adios, Cordera!” by Leopoldo Alas. One of those nasty sentimental tales of the kind I used to hate as a kid, about the death of an animal (here as a metaphor for loss of innocence), that always made me feel as if I were being manipulated into crying. The introduction calls it “consistently charming and thoroughly Spanish”, whatever that means. Here end the Spanish short stories and we jump back in time and all the way to China. “ The Story of Ming-Y ” by Anonymous. Originally from Marvellous Tales, Ancient and Modern (Kin-Kou-Ki-Kuan). A charming and romantic little ghost story. Recommended. (This is the same translation, except the first paragraph, which gives away an important plot element, so avoid reading it if you can. The link will open a pdf-file). “A Fickle Widow” by anonymous. Originally from Marvellous Tales, Ancient and Modern (Kin-Kou-Ki-Kuan). Yet another of those horrid stories where people feel obliged to test the fidelity of a spouse. Admittedly, this one is mo...

“ 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 t...

“Mendicant Melody” by Edmondo De Amicis. More of a meditation on the human condition than a short story, this tells of poor people who earn their living by singing. Beautifully translated. Recommended. “Lulu’s Triumph” by Matilde Serao. A clever little romantic story about a young woman who has wisdom and insight beyond her years. Recommended. “The Hero” by Gabriele D’Annunzio. A horrifying but powerful story of religious fervor. Recommended. “Two Miracles” by Grazia Deledda. A touching tale of two very different miracles. Recommended. Here end the French stories and the Spanish begin. “The Son and His Friends” by Juan Manuel. Originally from Count Lucanor . About a “true” test of friendship. Rather distasteful, but well written. 365

“The Friar of Novara” by Angolo Firenzuola. About an avaricious friar who gets a comeuppance for his un-Christian behaviour. “The Greek Merchant” by Giovanni Battista Giraldi Cinthio. Another comeuppance story, this one about a miserly merchant and a poor, honest widow. “The Venetian Silk Mercer” by Carlo Gozzi. A humorous moral tale about a clever merchant wo falls prey to an unlikely thief. Recommended. “ Cavalleria Rusticana ” by Giovanni Verga. A lively tale of love and honour that became the libretto of Mascagni’s epynomous opera. (different translation) “The Peasant’s Will” by Antonio Fogazzaro. A sorrowful tale of greed and hard-heartedness.