Classics Considered

Another re-read and another Dupin - hurrah! One of the many wonderful things about this Poe  story is the beginning.  The narrator basically starts with a spiel on how checkers players have to be more analytical than chess players, since "the higher powers of the reflective intellect are more decidedly and more usefully tasked by the unostentatious game of draughts [checkers] than by the elaborate frivolity of chess."  His words, not mine.  He argues that chess requires concentration, but checkers requires cleverness, as when, for example, a game of checkers results in four kings and one player wins.  I like this bit very much, since I'm good at checkers and absolutely dismal at chess. The real story, of course, centers upon the meeting of C. Auguste Dupin and the narrator, as well as a gory murder case which occurs soon after.  It's hard to believe I had forgotten the solution to the mystery; now it seems very memorable and one I'm not likely to forget aga...

Once again - I assure you I shuffled this deck very well!  But I can't really complain to get another fairytale, and what could be more appropriate for Valentine's weekend than this story? The original "Beauty and the Beast" was written in the 18th century by  Jeanne-Marie LePrince de Beaumont .  According to the endnotes of the online version I read, Beaumont in turn based her story on a folktale retelling by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve. It's interesting that in both cases the author was female, because I've always felt that Belle (to use her Disney name!) was one of the best fairytale heroines.  In this story, she is completely unselfish and quite honest in her feelings for the Beast, which are initially just those of friendship.  The Beast himself is more melancholy than sinister, and even for a short story the romance is developed enough to make sense and bring closure at the end. I would say one thing Disney did right was to make the antago...

The Mystery of Marie Rogêt  is from the trio of C. Augustus Dupin mysteries by Edgar Allan Poe .  It is closely based on the real-life murder of Mary Cecilia Rogers, except the setting is Paris instead of New York City.  Marie Rogêt leaves her home one Sunday evening, purportedly to visit a relative, and she is not seen again until her body is found floating in the Seine.  The newspapers are full of speculation regarding the mystery, but Dupin's only concern is to reconcile the known facts with each other and, slightly different than his British counterpart, to eliminate the unlikely . I remember when I first read this story, years ago, and found it to be pretty bland.  It is more of a commentary than a story.  The one thing that stood out to me this time was the brutality of the crime, much worse than the average Holmes story, but more true to life in that it was based on real life.  I think we tend to have a rose-colored perspective of the 19th centu...

The actual title of the book is Billy Budd and Other Stories , published by Penguin Classics.  However, there is such a similarity in the writing, I was reminded of the title of a Hawthorne collection, Mosses from an Old Manse .  Since Hawthorne was the dedicatee of Moby-Dick  and also referenced by name in one of these stories, I'm sure Herman Melville  would take the comparison as a compliment! Overall, I give the book 4 stars , but it's a mixed bag, so I'll review each story on its own: Bartleby, the Scrivener I really loved this story.  It's probably the closest thing to Kafkaesque,  pre -Kafka, that I've read.  Bartleby is an enigmatic scrivener (copier - think Nemo from Bleak House ), and it's hard to say if he's the hero or the antagonist, but he is certainly the mystery.  I'm still not sure what to make of it, but it's one of those stories that is very good at painting atmosphere and the impression of things. The Piazza Another kind of mys...

...also known as Cinderella! I promise I shuffled the cards very, very well at the beginning of this challenge, and yet here we have another fairytale.   Not that I'm complaining.  (And besides, random selection is unlikely to be uniform.)  I already know my next card - and rest assured! it's not a diamond. The Grimm fairytales are an altogether different assortment than Andersen.  For one thing, the Grimm brothers were primarily collectors, scholars, and editors, not inventors of original tales.  There is decidedly less poetry in their stories.  The style is terse and upfront, making these plots fast-paced and very short.  "Ashputtle" is no exception. Once again, I was unsettled by the violence - and, well, mutilation - found in an otherwise familiar setting.  There was no modern feeling of concern in Ashputtle's marrying a stranger, since she could hardly do worse than her own family.  Even her father, alive in this version, appears to dis...

Not gonna lie...I cried.  :( This is an original fairytale by Hans Christen Andersen  (who also wrote the lesser-known "The Wild Swans," probably my favorite fairytale of all time).  Most people know "The Little Mermaid" from the Disney film, and initially the plots are very similar.  A young mermaid, forever fascinated by the world of humans, is finally allowed to rise to the surface of the sea on her fifteenth birthday.  As it would happen, she falls in love with a human prince, who is also celebrating his birthday on board a ship.  And - as it always does - the little mermaid's love is a lost cause, because when she tries to escape the world she was born into, it comes at a terrible price. I almost just called her "Ariel," but Andersen's mermaid, prince, and Sea King are anonymous throughout the story.  It makes it even more poignant, I think, and maybe that is the power of these old fairytales - you are allowed to project your own characterizat...

In this second round of the Deal Me In challenge, I was excited to read a classic by Ray Bradbury , whose works are new to me.  "A Sound of Thunder" is one of his best-known science fictions, and it's about a man named Eckels who signs up to go back in time on a safari - hunting dinosaurs, that is. I guess I will always compare these kinds of plots to The Lost World  by Conan Doyle, a big favorite of mine.  My overall feeling about "A Sound of Thunder" was that, in scope, it was trying too hard.  It covered the two big topics, prehistoric life and time travel, but there wasn't a lot of development, and the reader was asked to take a lot at face value.  For example, (spoiler in white):   Eckels's behavior seemed perfectly natural to me, and it's hard to imagine him being the first offender.  There were some good descriptions throughout, but also gratuitous cussing that felt like filler. 1.5 stars.  Decent read for waiting at the doctor's office,...