Reading in Reykjavík

“ The Selfish Giant ” by Oscar Wilde. Wilde had a talent for writing tales that played expertly on the emotions that was perhaps only equalled by Hans Christian Andersen. This story is no exception – it’s a tale of redemption that, while sugary sweet, can still bring a tear to the eye and has deservedly become a classic. Recommended. “ Julia Cahill’s Curse ” by George Moore. Originally from The Untilled Field . A rather good story about an independent-minded young woman and her revenge against the patriarchy. “ That Brute Simmons ” by Arthur Morrison. Originally from Tales of Mean Streets . A humorous tale of a husband who finally got enough. Recommended. Here ends the chapter of English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh stories and the short stories of the Germanns begin. “The Coming of Gandin” by Gottfried von Strassburg. Originally from Tristan and Iseault . A self-contained story from a longer narrative, a clever story of trickery turned against a trickster. “Bruin the Bear and ...

A commenter on the Smart Bitches blog mentioned that the plot of a book a reader was looking for the title of sounded like a modern rip-off of Georgette Heyer's Devil's Cub and set off a discussion of that book. So naturally I had to read it to see for myself what they were talking about. I am ashamed to admit that I have several of Georgette Heyer's novels sitting on my TBR shelf, waiting to be read. You see, I love Heyer's writing. She is my favourite writer of historical novels, and yet I have had some of those books for several years and never tried to read them, because I have just never felt like it. In the meantime I have re-read most of my Heyer favourites at least once. Well, the discussion finally got me into the mood to read more Heyer, and need I say I loved it? I did, although not as much as These Old Shades , in which the Duke of Avon and Léonie, the parents of the hero of this book, found each other. The Marquis of Vidal, their son, is not as attractive...

I will probably include one or two tales of selkies and kelpies in this collection later on - folklore that Iceland shares with other northern European countries like the Faeroe Islands, Norway, Ireland and Scotland. However, I haven't come across the following piece of folklore in the folk tales of other countries. If you know of similar folklore about bears in other countries, please leave a comment. The story goes that bears(*) are really humans under a curse, and that the she-bears give birth to human babies that only turn into bears if the mother is able to pass her paw over them. The story is told that once upon a time on Grímsey, an island and the northernmost inhabited part of Iceland, that a man noticed a she-bear that looked poorly. He went into the barn and got her some warm cow's milk to drink. Later that same night, when he came back to give the cows their evening feed, the she-bear was in the barn, giving birth. He was able to get one cub from her - a large and ...

As you can see below, I have started linking to online editions of the stories I have been reading. I have also gone back to the previous 365 short stories posts and linked to all the stories I could find online. I will continue to do so as I post more mini-reviews. If anyone wants to discuss the stories with me, you can post a comment under the post for the story in question. “ The White Trout ” by Samuel Lover. A dramatised folk tale or a short story written to resemble a folk tale, this is a nicely mythical story of how a supernatural event turns a bad man good. (The edition I read begins with the sentence "There was wanst upon a time..." - the online edition is longer) “The Old Man’s Tale of the Queer Client” by Charles Dickens. From The Pickwick Papers . A dramatic and atmospheric tale of obsessive vengeance. While a modern reader might find it somewhat overwritten and even melodramatic, it is a fine example of the English 19th century short story. Recommended. (I...

Here is the seventh book I read for the Bibliophilic Books Challenge , which puts me just past the halfway point of the Bibliomaniac level. This book fits into the challenge in several ways: The main sleuth is a journalist, and her writing course is featured and the classes described several times; the other teachers are writing or have written books (one is a world-famous author) - two even have motives for murder related to their books; and the students are writing assignments that are part of what drives a section of the story. Genre: Mystery Year of publication: 2003 No. in series: 1 Series detective: McLeod Dulane Type of mystery: Murder, cosy Type of investigator: A, journalist and lecturer in non-fiction writing at Princeton University Setting & time: Princeton University campus, New Jersey, USA Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist McLeod Dulane is thrilled to be given a chance to teach journalistic writing at Princeton University, but her enthusiasm wanes so...

“Roberto’s Tale” by Robert Greene. Originally from Greene’s Groatsworth of Wit Bought with a Million of Repentance . Ugh! (The edition i read seems to have been heavily edited from the original, so no link). “ True Relation of the Apparition of One Mrs. Veal ” by Daniel Defoe. A rather dull ghost story that reads more like a newspaper article than a deliberate work of fiction. “ The Story of an Heir” by Joseph Addison . Originally published in The Spcetator . A short romantic moral tale. “The Disabled Soldier” by Oliver Goldsmith. Originally from The Citizen of the World . Another short moral tale, but not quite so sickly sweet as the previous one. " The Bridal of Janet Dalrymple " by Sir Walter Scott. Although I can’t find a publication date for this story to confirm it, this seems to be an early version of the story Scott would later expand into novel form in The Bride of Lammermoor . The tightly written dramatic narrative of the tragic story of thwarted love is ru...

The Virgin in the Ice by Ellis Peters, being the 6th chronicle of Brother Cadfael. Here Brother Cadfael is thinking about fate and accidents of birth: Well, they happen, the lightning-strokes of God, the gifted or misfortunates who are born into a world where they nowhere belong, the saints and scholars who come to manhood unrecognised, guarding the swine in the forest pastures among the beech-mast, the warrior-princes villein-born and youngest in a starving clan, set to scare crows away from the furrow. Just as hollow slave-rearlings are cradled in the palaces of kings, and come to rule, however ineptly, over men a thousand times their worth.