The Matador of the Five Towns by Arnold Bennett

Years ago while living in Texas I was at the Half-Price Books in San Antonio whereupon I found this bought this adorably wee little volume of short stories (6.5 x 5 inches/17 x 12.5 cm) by Arnold Bennett. I had just completed and loved his novel The Old Wives Tale so why not? Well, at least ten years and three moves later I finally gotten around to finishing it. One would think that a small volume of 22 short stories shouldn't take that long, but you know how it is.

If you haven't read Arnold Bennett, he seems to me a sort of transitional writer between the 19th and 20th centuries. This volume is copyrighted 1912, but many of the stories had a more Victorian feeling. Most of his stories are about working-class and middle-class people, just slices of life set in his fictional Five Towns which are modeled on the six Pottery towns in the Staffordshire area of Northern England. 

Once started, it still took me awhile to get into this book -- it's divided up between "Tragic" and "Frolic" with the majority in the latter category. The first stories is the eponymous "Matador of the Five Towns" and it's also the longest, which is probably why it seemed to take forever to get into. But once I started I found that I really enjoyed them, mostly the lighter comic "Frolic" stories. I won't go into each story into detail but just a few highlights:

"Catching the Train" -- a man and his brother are repeatedly thwarted on a train journey to a Very Important Destination which isn't revealed until the end. It's one of those trips where anything that can possibly go wrong, does so in the worst possible way. 

"The Blue Suit" -- a woman slyly manipulates her nephew's wardrobe choices while on a seaside holiday in Wales, with unexpected results.

"Hot Potatoes" -- the mother of a violin prodigy desperately tries to keep her son's hands warm for a concert on a cold day.

"The Long-Lost Uncle" -- a young man has an opportunity for romance after the sudden departure of his miserly uncle.

"Why the Clock Stopped" -- a pair of aging siblings have secrets from one another. 

I definitely preferred the lighter comic stories to the tragic (though they weren't so terribly tragic) and I found that many of them had delightful twist endings. They reminded me a bit of the short stories of Edith Wharton, a bit like O. Henry, and even a little like Trollope, so if you like any of these authors, you might enjoy exploring Arnold Bennett. This volume is also available on iBooks and on Project Gutenberg, as are most of Bennett's early works. To be honest, I actually ended up reading most of it on Gutenberg via my laptop because as cute as this volume was, the print was really tiny! (Plus I have become used to reading while I eat my lunch and it's so much easier while reading on a screen).

Overally I did enjoy this book and will definitely read more Arnold Bennett, I have a vintage copies of both Hilda Lessways and Buried Alive and would love to read both or either of them this year. 

This is my second book for the Back to the Classics Challenge, also counting this as my UK read for the European Reading Challenge. 

The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig

He lived one of those lives that seem otiose because they are not linked to any community of interest, because all the riches stored in them by a thousand separate valuable experiences will pass when their last breath is drawn, without anyone to inherit them. -- A Summer Novella

Short story collections are tough for me to review, especially enormous volumes like this one -- normally I have to spread out the reading over several weeks or even months, and it's hard to remember all the stories to comment on them as a whole. But I loved The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig so much that I sped through it in just over a week. They're so wonderfully written I simply could not stop reading this 700 page volume.

There are twenty-two stories in this volume, but the hardcover edition more than two inches thick and weighs in at two pounds! It's an unwieldy chunkster, to say the least, but luckily one of the nearby libraries had an ebook copy, so I could read it on my laptop and even on my phone. I made a goal of reading one short story every day, but I sped through them and sometimes read three or even four. Some of them are fairly short, and some are closer to novellas, like Amok and Twenty Four Hours in the Life of a Woman.

Stories are arranged chronologically by publication date. As I expected, most of them are set in Vienna and eastern Europe, but others are set in Renaissance Antwerp, Malaysia and Scotland. Like the stories of W. Somerset Maugham, several of them are framed as a story being retold to an anonymous narrator. I'm not going to going to go through all 22 stories, but here are some quick thoughts on a few of my favorites. 

Nice cover on this German edition.
Could it be Lake Como or Lake Geneva?

The Star Above the Forest: A waiter falls in love with an unobtainable countess. One of the shortest stories, but heartbreaking, beautiful prose.

Wondrak: A heartbreaking story about a disfigured recluse living in the forest, and her desperate attempt to save her son from being conscripted to fight in WWI. Sadly, this story is unfinished so we'll never know how it ends. I wish this story were a full length-novel.

Conscription: Another story about a man struggling with the decision whether to obey his orders to fight in the war. In this case he's an artist living in Switzerland. 

Amok: Closer in length to a novella, it's riveting story of a man's confession to a stranger on a sea voyage. It reminded me very much of the stories of W. Somerset Maugham, possibly because of the colonial setting and the shocking ending (and, sadly, the anti-Asian racism, which disappointed me).

Letter From an Unknown Woman: Another novella, about a writer who receives an anonymous letter from a woman obsessed with him. 

The Invisible Collection: Melancholy story of an antique dealer visiting a longtime collector during the period of massive inflation in Germany.

Did He Do It?: A cautionary tale of overindulgent dog owners, with a horrifying ending. 

The Debt Paid Late: The most uplifting story in the collection, about a woman's chance encounter with a faded actor. 

Stefan Zweig

I'm both glad I finally got around to reading this, and annoyed with myself for waiting so long! I definitely want to read more Zweig. I've also read The Post-Office Girl and Chess Story, both of which I loved, and I still have Beware of Pity unread on my TBR shelves -- might save it for next year's European Reading Challenge! I'm also tempted to buy his Collected Novellas and some of his other works published by Pushkin Press. I had actually resolved not to buy any new books this year but I do have a birthday coming up in a few months!

I'm counting this as my Austrian read for the European Reading Challenge; also counts towards the Chunkster Challenge.

The Complete Stories of W. Somerset Maugham, Vol. I: East and West

Not the same edition as mine, but I love these Vintage International covers. 

One of my particular goals for the Big Book Summer Challenge is to finally read some of the enormous volumes of short stories in my unread book collection -- I probably have twenty short story collections unread, and at least eight of them are over 500 pages long! I'm hoping to finish at least one per month.

I started with the most daunting volume: a 955 page volume of the short stories of W. Somerset Maugham, one of my favorite writers. I loved Of Human Bondage and The Painted Veil, and his novella Up at the Villa is one my all-time favorites, I probably read it every year. I'm pretty sure I bought this this two-volume set of his Complete Short Stories at Friends of the Library book sale, and I probably paid one dollar for each (they're 1953 reprints and I think you can find them online for under $5.) Despite the length of the book, it was easy to finish in less than a month -- my goal was one short story a day. There are 30 stories in this volume, and they're all fairly long, about 30 pages each. 

Not a particularly exciting cover, but a nice edition.

Maugham often starts his stories with a character (often himself, in the first person) meeting people and having stories told to them, as a sort of narrative framing device. It works very well in the South Sea stories, since they're often told by colonials who seem desperate for someone new to talk to. There was also a story called "The Book-Bag" which is rather dark, but has a wonderful introduction by the anonymous narrator describing his love of reading and obsessive need to travel with an enormous bag full of books, which delighted me. It's rather long but here's an excerpt:

Some people read for instruction, which is praiseworthy, and some for pleasure, which is innocent, but not a few read from habit, and I suppose that this is neither innocent nor praiseworthy. Of that lamentable company am I. Conversation after a time bores me, games tire me and my own thoughts, which we are told are the unfailing resource of a sensible man, have a tendency to run dry. Then I fly to my book as the opium smoker to his pipe. I would sooner read the catalogue of the Army and Navy Stores or Bradshaw's Guide than nothing at all, and indeed I have spent many delightful hours over both these works.

Some the stories in this volume are among Maugham's most famous, including "The Letter," about a plantation owner's wife who shoots a family friend and is on trial for murder. It was adapted into a stage play and then into a film starring Bette Davis in 1940. I particularly loved "Jane," about a plain woman who becomes the toast of British society, much to the chagrin of her fashionable sister-in-law; and "The Creative Impulse" about a pretentious woman writer and her celebrated salons. A lot of his stories have wonderful twist endings that were normally unexpected. 

It also includes most of the Ashenden stories, also available in a separate volume (which I also own). Ashenden is a British spy, loosely based on Maugham's own work for the British government as an intelligence agent during World War I. (He spoke French and German fluently, and his job as a writer made an excellent cover for him). I enjoyed these stories but they're not exactly cloak-and-dagger, James Bond stuff. Like Maugham himself, Ashenden's job is to make contact with local field agents and pass information back to the home office, often encoded (Maugham was based in Geneva and used to encode messages in his manuscripts). Fun fact: intelligence agents nearly always get local people to spy and sell them information, they don't take on new identities and use Deep Cover -- that's strictly movie fodder. Not what I was expecting, but I enjoyed them nonetheless, so I took a brief detour and ended up reading all the other stories in my copy of Ashenden, so that was one more book crossed off my list.

This volume is subtitled East and West and they're drawn from Maugham's travels, many of them in the South Seas. They were written between 1919 and 1931, during the British colonial period, and many of them are set in British colonies and islands, including Malaysia, Singapore, Samoa, and Hawaii, though of course nearly all the characters are white British people. I mostly enjoyed reading the South Sea stories but nearly every one of them had some uncomfortable racist elements -- the natives are described as heathens, there are racial epithets, and most of them don't even have names (house servants are frequently just addressed as "boy." Some of the male characters have native wives and children who are just tossed aside like yesterday's newspaper. There's also some misogyny, and some anti-Semitism in the Western stories set in Europe. There's one story called "The Alien Corn" which is particularly anti-Semitic; another "The Vessel of Wrath" has some misogyny which left me aghast.

It's really hard to read the racism and sexism in classic books -- I love classics, but where do you draw the line? Should you stop reading a favorite author because of attitudes which were considered acceptable at the time in which they were written? How do you reconcile loving an author's work if it has racist elements? I really love books written in the first half of the 20th century, but the racism makes me really uncomfortable and some authors are so sexist I can hardly read them any more. I suppose that's why I've been focusing more on women authors. 

I still own the second volume of Maugham's stories, The World Over. It's a much shorter volume, only 681 pages, but those stories are much shorter and there are a lot more of them. I'll probably read the rest of them this summer but I think I'm going to tackle another (woman) author's short stories first. 

Plum Pie by P. G. Wodehouse

For my Back to the Classics Challenge, I needed a volume of short stories, so I turned to my own TBR shelves. Lately, I've been in dire need of fun, escapist reads, and P. G. Wodehouse has never let me down. I chose Plum Pie, a collection of nine stories. First published in 1966, it just made the cutoff for the challenge.

Wodehouse had an amazingly long publishing career -- his first novel The Pothunters was published in 1902; his last complete novel, Aunts Aren't Gentlemen was published an astonishing 72 years later, in 1974. Though Plum Pie is late in the Wodehouse oeuvre, it still has some stellar moments, and include some of his classic bits, including Jeeves and Wooster, a golf story, a Blandings story, and an Ukridge story.

By far my favorites from the collection were the first story, "Jeeves and the Greasy Bird," in which Jeeves and Aunt Agatha manage to disentangle Bertie from an unwanted engagement once again (seriously, how many times has Bertie inadvertently been betrothed?) and the final story, "Life with Freddie," which is really a 70-plus page novella about Freddie Threepwood of the Drones club. That one involves three different romantic entanglements on a cruise ship; smuggling an expensive diamond necklace to avoid paying stiff import taxes; and Freddie's attempts to land a dog biscuit account with a large department store executive. It's all very slapstick and silly and naturally it ends well for the majority of the characters (well, at least the ones I was rooting for).

Hugh Laurie as the hapless Bertie Wooster and Stephen Fry as Jeeves in the brilliant ITV adaptation from the early 1990s.

I love Wodehouse but some of these stories seemed a bit tired and not very memorable, and I'm quite sure at least one of the stories had a recycled plot about a dog that was given away and had to be stolen back (I swear I've seen that story with Bertie Wooster and a Scottish terrier on the TV adaptation. Is it technically considered plagiarizing if a writer copies his own work?) And when will the members of the Drones club ever learn that it's a very bad idea to bet money on horse races -- especially money that they don't actually have?  However, even if the plots and themes are the same, Wodehouse nearly always manages to amuse me.

Most of the stories in this volume were previously published in magazines; also, there are some bits and pieces between the stories which I believe are excerpts from newspaper columns Wodehouse published in the U.S. They really didn't add much to the collection. However, lesser Wodehouse works are still funnier than most books and stories, so it wasn't a waste of time.

Overall, I'd say this is worth reading if you are a die-hard Wodehouse fan. If you're a Wodehouse beginner, I'd stick with some of the earlier Jeeves collections, like Very Good, Jeeves or The Code of the Woosters, both of which is are just brilliant. I've only read about a dozen of Wodehouse's works so I have plenty of books left before I run out, in which case I will start over from the beginning.

Bloggers, are any of you Wodehouse fans? Which are your favorites?

Arsene Lupin, Gentleman Thief by Maurice Leblanc

What is it about mysteries that makes them such perfect summertime reading?  I was looking for a fun, quick read for the holiday weekend, and I put Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Thief into my carryon bag.  I could not have chosen a better book -- short stories are perfect vacation reads, especially when traveling (since one is so often interrupted by those pesky airport and in-flight announcements); also, this book had the added advantage of being on the TBR shelf and a book translated from French, so I can use it for the Paris in July event.

So.  Arsene Lupin is a dashing, debonair gentleman thief -- he steals from the rich (but doesn't give to the poor); first published in 1907, he's a bit like the French version of Sherlock Holmes -- but if Sherlock were the criminal mastermind, instead of the detective.

Arsene Lupin himself is a mix of James Bond, Robin Hood, and Hercule Poirot.  He's suave and sophisticated, the ladies all swoon over him, and he's so brilliant that he always outsmarts the police, especially his nemesis, the detective Ganimard.

This edition includes thirteen short stories, all of which were delightful, if not always strictly believable.  Lupin is a brilliant master of disguise, despite the fact that his photograph is published in newspapers, he's able to fool even the police; he always manages to escape the worst situations; and he's so brilliant he can steal the unstealable, and break into any building, no matter how impenetrable and well-guarded.  He can also solve the crimes of other perpetrators.  In short, he's rather over the top, but the stories are light-hearted and full of witty banter, so it's hard to take them too seriously and judge them too harshly. They're a really fun alternative to Sherlock Holmes, plus they're French, so what is not to like?

The New York Stories of Edith Wharton

Short stories collections are really hard to write about.  Many people dislike short stories; my theory is that most people, once they get invested in characters and settings, want the stories to continue.  To me, a short story is a just a moment captured in time with these characters, an introduction.  Sometimes as a reader I want more.  

Edith Wharton is one of those rare writers that was equally good at writing both short stories and full-length novels.  Some of her novels are among my favorites; as are some of her short stories.  This collection, published by NYRB Classics, features twenty stories that are all set in New York, or includes characters that are New Yorkers.  

Some of her stories are sad, some are extremely funny.  Many of them are deliciously ironic, and she was especially good at ghost stories.  This collection includes all of these, and are selected from those published at beginning of her career to works published near the end.  It begins with "Mrs. Manstey's View," her very first published short story, and ends with "Roman Fever," from her last short story collection.  

"Roman Fever" is possibly Wharton's most famous short story and one of my personal favorites.  This was one in the collection I had actually read before, but I never get tired of it.  It's the story of two New York society ladies who meet unexpectedly while in Rome with their grown daughters.  They sit on the terrace of restaurant, admiring the view, and the reader learns the history of their complicated relationship.  The ending is deliciously ironic, and I'll say no more.  It's quite short so if you have a few minutes do click on the link and read it -- tell me in the comments if you liked it, but don't give the ending away!!

My other favorites in the collection are mostly ironic or funny.  They include "Expiation," an amusing tale about writers in the same family; "Diagnosis," about a wealthy man who has recently discovered the truth about his illness; and "The Pomegranate Seed," which is one of the ghost stories.   The only one I really didn't care for was "The Long Run," which, as the name implies, seemed to go on forever. 

Unfortunately, this collection does not include "Xingu," my other favorite of her stories, about a pretentious group of women who attend a "Lunch Club" to become more cultured.  I reread the story today before I finished this posting, and I suppose it wasn't included because it really doesn't have a New York connection.  It's still really funny though, and definitely worth reading.  Many of Wharton's works are available free online through Project Gutenberg, so you can just click on the links and start reading if you're curious.  They're really worth trying, even if you're not willing to tackle a 450 page book with twenty stories in it.  

This book counts toward my Back to the Classics Challenge and is one of the alternate reads for my TBR Pile Challenge. 

Jeeves and Wooster and P. G. Wodehouse

My latest obsession is Jeeves and Wooster by P.G. Wodehouse.  I was looking for DVDs that were family-friendly but didn't bore me to death and I thought the kids might enjoy these, especially since they got a hoot out of the audiobook version of Three Men in a Boat that we listened to in the car.

My youngest daughter especially has gotten a real kick out of the videos.  We liked them so much we bought the entire series in a box set, which we found for a great price at Costco.  It worked out to about $1 per episode, which is pretty good since I know we'll watch them over and over.  It's so fun to see Hugh Laurie in his pre-House days, and Stephen Fry is just brilliant as Jeeves.  We particularly enjoy it when Jeeves disapproves of fashion choices:

[There's actually a better and even funnier montage of Jeeves' disapproval on Youtube, but somehow I couldn't imbed the video.  If you're interested, click here.]

Anyhow, I've found watching the series absolutely delightful and it inspired me to pick up more Wodehouse at the library recently.  I have far too many books checked out and on the TBR shelves, but I needed a break from all the big fat Victorians I've been reading lately.  I could not resist this cover: 

Of course it would look so much better without the library sticker covering up the swan on the front.  Oh well.  If you haven't fallen in love with these already, they're the Overlook Press reprints of the works of P. G. Wodehouse.  He published more than 90 books and I think they've reprinted about 75 so far.  Which could be dangerous!!   I had a birthday recently and I strongly hinted to my family that any of these would be greatly welcomed.  Well, I suppose "hint" would be an understatement; I handed my husband a Borders coupon with the words "P. G. Wodehouse Overlook Press" written on it in large printing, so he wouldn't miss it.  I admit that I am not terribly subtle.  The result was this nice little stack:

I've started reading The Man With Two Left Feet, which is a collection of Wodehouse's early stories, including the very first appearance of Bertie and Jeeves.  Jeeves is merely mentioned and Bertie's apparently has no last name, but it's still pretty funny.  The dreaded Aunt Agatha ships Bertie off to America to prevent his cousin from making a ghastly marriage to a chorus girl.  Bertie does not enlist Jeeves' brainpower and it all goes terribly wrong, of course, though hilarity still ensues.  Perfect summer reading! 

Stories: All New Tales Edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio

I put this book on hold from the library since included a new story by Neil Gaiman, one my favorite authors.  I was surprised and delighted to find that my favorite stories in this collection were by other authors, some of whom I'd never read before.  For example, I probably never would have read anything by horror author Joe Hill (son of Stephen King) but his story, "The Devil on the Staircase," is one that I won't forget.  After committing a crime of passion, a poor Italian laborer rushes down mysterious stone steps into what he believes is Hell, with devastating long-term results.

I expected this collection to be filled with stories of the supernatural, fantasy, and science fiction, but some of them were mystery and suspense.  I recognized quite a few of the authors, and some of them surprised me -- Jodi Picoult, who isn't really known for fantasy/supernatural; Joanne Harris, best known for Chocolat; Joyce Carol Oates; Richard Adams (of Watership Down fame).

My least favorite was probably "Catch and Release" by Lawrence Block, which gets into the mind of a serial killer.  Normally I like his stories, but this one was just a little too realistic, so much so that I can't forget it and wish I hadn't read it.  Block has a similar story in an older collection called Some Days You Get the Bear -- I read it more than ten years ago and I still can't forget it, and not in a good way.  Still makes me shudder to think about it.

But anyhow, I should focus on the best stories.  My favorite has to be by Diana Wynne Jones (I didn't even know she was in the collection until I saw it in the book, so that was a lovely surprise!); it's called "Samantha's Diary," about a woman who starts receiving gifts from a stranger -- all the gifts from The Twelve Days of Christmas.  Every day -- it begins with the partridge in the tree, then the doves, the hens, and all the rest.  It's driving her crazy and all the birds are making a horrible mess.  I thought it was hilarious.  Even if I wasn't an enormous fan of her work, I think I still would have liked this one best.

Of course the collection includes a vampire story.  After Twilight and Sookie Stackhouse, I'm a little tired of vampires, but "Juvenal Nyx" by Walter Mosely was really good, one of the best vampire stories I've ever read.  I'd never read Mosely though I've seen the movie version of Devil in a Blue Dress.  Next time I'm in the mood for a mystery I will definitely look for one of his books.

Overall, this was a really interesting mix of stories, authors, and styles.  They seem really disparate, but the collection really works because of the quality of the writing.  It really sucked me in and I was compelled to finish all of them, so that's saying something.

A Night in the Cemetery: And Other Stories of Crime and Suspense by Anton Chekhov

So many of the lists of "best" and "must read"books include Russians.  Sadly, my knowledge of Russian literature is pretty limited.  I'm generally pretty intimidated by Russian classics.  But I really did want to participate in this month's Classic Circuit.  Chekhov was the perfect solution -- an easy introduction to Russian lit for the intimidated.  Though he's best known for his plays, he was a master of the short story.  There are many different collections available, and I finally settled on A Night in the Cemetery: And Other Stories of Crime and Suspense, a collection of some of Chekhov's earliest stories.  As the title suggests, each of the 42 stories somehow relates to a mystery, crime, or death.

Though some of the stories are tragic, many of them are funny, or have ironic twists, a bit like Saki or Roald Dahl, but mostly less macabre.  Several of the tales had characters who were doctors or medical people, or the coroner, which makes sense if you remember that Chekhov began writing while in medical school.  He was so successful he paid for school with his earnings, and was able to support his family as well.  According to the introduction, many of these tales have rarely or never been translated into English.  These are some of his earliest stories, and some of them were published under pseudonyms.

A few of the stories are available in other collections.  Since I was waffling at first and couldn't decide which volume of stories to read, I also began reading Forty Stories, which was translated in 1963 by Robert Payne, who also wrote the volume's introduction.  (The introduction itself is great reading if you're interested in Russian writers, and now I have to finish that collection as well.)  Anyhow, both of the collections include "Death of a Government Clerk," so I was able to compare the translations.    Here's the first paragraph from the version in A Night at the Cemetery, which is translated in this volume as Death of an Office Worker:


One wonderful evening, an office gofer, Mr. Ivan Dmitrievich Worm, sat in the second row of a theater, watching the play Bells of Cornville.  He watched the play and felt himself at the height of bliss.  But suddenly. . . . Many stories have that phrase, "but suddenly."  Authors are right: life is filled with unexpected turns of events.  But suddenly, he scowled, rolled his eyes upward, stopped breathing for a while, averted his gaze from his binoculars, bent his body, and, and then, "Achoo!" he sneezed, as you see. 

Now, here's the other version, from the Payne translation:

On a beautiful night the no less beautiful government clerk Ivan Dmitrich Chervyakov [a footnote explains Chervyakov means "worm"] sat in the second row of the stalls watching Les Cloches de Corneville through opera glasses.  He was watching the stage and thinking himself the most blessed among mortals when suddenly. . . (Very often in stories you come upon this word "suddenly," and all this is very proper, since authors must always concern themselves with the unexpectedness of life.)  Suddenly, then, his face puckered up, he rolled his eyes, his breathing stopped, the opera glasses fell from his eyes, he collapsed into his seat, and . . . at-choo!  As the reader has observed, he sneezed.


I freely admit I am no expert on Russian literature, and the only words in the Russian language I know are "nyet" and "glasnost."  But I find the second translation much more beautiful and interesting -- to me it seems like something someone would have actually said back in the 19th century.  Also, I occasionally found the translation a little jarring.  Some of the stories in this collection include modern vernacular English such as "wow" and "guys," and so on, which I found incongruous to the stories, since they were all published in the 1880s or 1890s.  Chekhov sometimes gave his characters names which were comical or unflattering, such as Mr. Worm or Inspector Schmuck, and in this translator changed them to English.  I would have preferred the original Russian names with a footnote, since it seemed so anachronistic.  And I'm pretty sure that 19th century Russians were not nicknamed Mike or Tim, which also appeared in one of the stories.   I understand the translator may have been trying to make it more accessible, but I just found it distracting.

And I was very annoyed to realize that the final story, The Drama at the Hunt, is actually a very abridged version of The Shooting Party, which was one of my other choices for this posting! AFTER I'd finished it, so I know how it ends!!  And it's abridged from 180 pages TO FORTY.   Now, I am the first to admit that some of the Russians could use some editing (Anna Karenina springs to mind) but seriously,  to cut out two thirds of the book?  I found that irritating.

But I can't blame my irritation on Chekhov, just the editor and publisher.  My advice:  if you're interested in Russian lit, but you're intimidated by the sheer volume of some of the works, I do recommend Chekhov's stories.  This is a pretty good introduction, though it contains hardly any of his most famous works.  However, skip the last story if you have even the slightest interest in reading The Shooting Party, or it will completely be spoiled for you.

Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman, one of my favorite authors; and short stories, which are great for summertime reading.  However, I do find them a little challenging to review, since I don't want to go into too much detail because I don't want any spoilers, yet I can't really explain the plot and characters as I would with a novel.  But here goes.

First, I must disclose that I'm not a huge fantasy/science fiction fan.  Maybe I am just lazy, but I have little patience for entire new worlds with an entirely new vocabulary -- I have enough trouble keeping multiple characters straight in a murder mystery, let alone having to learn new definitions of magical creatures/aliens/worlds/powers/locations, etc.  (This is why I prefer low fantasy, which are stories in which regular human characters are somehow placed in fantasy settings or situations.  See, I did learn something in my children's lit classes!).

This stories in this anthology have a great mix of styles.  I'd categorize them all as fantasy, generally, but tWe've got some horror, some sci-fi, and includes some retellings of classic myths and stories, recurring characters, and a great neo-Victorian mashup.  It starts out with a bang -- the first story, A Study in Emerald, is a great twist on Sherlock Holmes (the title had to be a giveaway, didn't it?).  I don't want to give too many details for fear of spoilers.  This book was a delight to me because it had so many surprises.

I also love how Gaiman interweaves some of his characters and themes from other works.  Shadow from American Gods (which begat Anansi Boys, one of my all-time favorite novels) makes an appearance in Monarch of the Glen, the final story; that story also includes Mr. Alice, a character in an earlier work in the collection.  The October in the Chair includes a story-within-a-story, and one of the characters reminded me strongly of Bod from The Graveyard Book (which is expanded from a story in M is for Magic).  I love watching how Gaiman's themes and characters have evolved.

Without giving a complete synopsis of every story, I'll just name a few of my favorites:  besides A Study in Emerald, my favorites included The Problem of Susan; Sunbird (about a group of gourmets who are on a quest for the rarest foods); and October in the Chair.  Some of them are really creepy and disturbing, like the story within the story of October. Two of the other creepy ones that have really stuck with me are Closing Time and Feeders and Eaters.

This collection includes 23 stories and 8 poems, but I have to admit I really only skimmed the poems.  Sadly, I'm just not a poetry fan.  They're mostly free verse, and I should really just get over myself and reread them and pretend they're just short stories printed oddly.

Other than the Sandman graphic novels, I think I've now read nearly everything by Gaiman.  His short stories are some of my favorites (for an alternate vision of Snow White, I highly recommend Snow, Glass, Apples from another of his short story collections, Smoke and Mirrors.  But please note that it is NOT for children!)  It never ceases to amaze me how Gaiman can successfully write brilliant novels, short stories, graphic novels, and great works for children, including juvenile novels and picture books.  I also like that Gaiman recognizes some of his best works are enjoyable to everyone -- several of his short stories, in this volume and in Smoke and Mirrors, make appearances in his juvenile-marketed story collection, M is for Magic.  Maybe the publisher just wanted a longer book, so they were filling with previously published materials; I prefer to think that they're just great stories and can be appreciated by all ages.

I read this volume in the traditional book form, but apparently it's also available in audio, narrated by Mr. Gaiman himself.  I've never listened to his narration but I've heard it's well worth it.  I may check this out from my library and listen to my favorites all over again, so I can hear the author's reading.  How cool is that?

Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories

Lately, I have been completely obsessed by short stories.  I can't explain it (and I hope it doesn't mean that my attention span is getting even shorter in this day and age of instant information).  Basically it started shortly before The Classics Circuit tour of Edith Wharton.  I couldn't decide which of her books to read and whilst perusing my library's catalog, I found that their collection included a delightful CD version of four of Wharton's short stories from Selected Shorts, the excellent NPR radio program.  By far, my favorite was Christina Pickles' brilliant reading of Xingu.  (You wouldn't think it, but Wharton's ironic streak is sometimes hilarious.  She completely knocks the stuffing out of society matrons in this story.) Roman Fever is pretty wonderful too.

But I digress. Because of my obsession with Wharton, I discovered Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories, as it includes a one of her short stories -- yes, Edith Wharton, the queen of New York society novels, also wrote ghost stories.  Good ones.  Some of them are included in her collections, but they're also available in a single volume, which is worth looking for.

 Roald Dahl is himself one of my favorite short story writers.  If you have only read his delightful children's books, please go directly to your bookstore or library, or start googling the shorts and READ THEM NOW, because they're brilliant.  He has a marvelously wicked sense of humor, and most of his stories end with jaw-dropping plot twists.  He personally selected this collection, after an ill-fated attempt in the 1960s to create a weekly television anthology of ghost stories (rather like the Twilight Zone).  Dahl researched and read hundreds of ghost stories in preparation, and apparently, most of them were lousy.  He found 24 that were worth filming for the series, and fourteen of those are included in this anthology.

The stories range in time period over 100 years, from The Ghost of a Hand, a classic by the gothic writer J. Sherdian Le Fanu, to the 1950s and 1960s.  All of the stories except one seem to be British -- a Danish story called Elias and the Draug, which is my least favorite of the collection.  Dahl himself admits in the introduction that it's much scarier in the original Danish, but since I'm limited to English I'll have to take his word for it.  My favorite was Harry by Rosemary Timperley, in which a woman begins to fear that her adopted daughter's imaginary playmate isn't so imaginary.  It still makes me shiver a little when I think about it.  Edith Wharton's Afterward is also good, though it starts off a little slowly (typical of Wharton) but the payoff is excellent.  And the final story, The Upper Berth, would make me think twice about crossing the Atlantic by ship if I actually had the means to do so.  The collection also includes tales by British writers E. F. Benson, who wrote the Mapp & Lucia series (still on my to-read list) and L. P. Hartley.

Roald Dahl didn't write any of the stories in the anthology.  Though his work is sometimes macabre, his short works aren't actually ghost stories.  Howeve, he did write the introduction, which is great -- he writes about the nature of ghost stories, female writers versus male (lots of great ghost stories by women, surprisingly), and about the writing of children's fiction.  It's worth reading or even buying the book just for the introduction.

And now that I'm all into the short stories, I've decided to sign up for a challenge -- one that I may actually be able to achieve! Yes! It's The Short Story Challenge.  I'm going to try and read at least five short story collections this year -- I don't think I'll count Dahl's collection, since I read it before I signed up (that smacks of cheating) -- but there are lots of other authors I haven't read with great short works.  On my to-read bookshelf I've already got collections by Chekhov, Hemingway, Garcia Marquez (which is turning brown since I've owned it so long) and Haruki Murakami.  Here are some of my favorite short stories, in no particular order.  I've added links when available if you can't wait and want to read them immediately.

• The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant
• Roman Fever by Edith Wharton
• Xingu by Edith Wharton
• Chivalry by Neil Gaiman
• Snow, Glass, Apples by Neil Gaiman (recommended by Nymeth at Things Mean A Lot).
• The Interlopers by Saki
• The Occasional Garden by Saki
• The Way Up to Heaven by Roald Dahl
• Lamb to the Slaughter by Roald Dahl
• The Man Who Loved Dickens by Evelyn Waugh
• The Faery Handbag by Kelly Link (from Magic for Beginners).  Another recommendation from Nymeth (read her review here).
  

 I'm always looking for suggestions -- any favorites in the blogosphere? Please let me know in the comments section.

Portugese Irregular Verbs by Alexander McCall Smith

Lately, I'm feeling really overwhelmed by my to-read lists.  And all the unread books sitting on my shelves, making me feel guilty by their mere presence.  And of course, all the thousands of books that tempt me every time I go volunteer at my local library branch.  I love helping out, but every time I go in the stacks to shelve or search for books, it's as if there are thousands of tiny little voices saying, "Pick me! Pick me!"  And of course, I can't help myself, sometimes I impulsively check out books that -- gasp! -- aren't on the list.

A couple of weeks ago I was searching in the audiobooks aisle and two ladies were discussing this book and how funny it was.  I've read quite a bit of McCall Smith's works, but never gotten around to these (I love the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, but I'm indifferent to the Isobel Dalhousie and 44 Scotland Street series). If nothing else, I've always been amused by McCall Smith's witty titles -- the other books in series are The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs and At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances; my favorite titles in his other series include Morality for Beautiful Girls and Tea Time for the Traditionally Built.

This book is a nice, light read, a welcome respite between weightier works.  There's not even a real plot, just a series of vignettes about the life of Dr. Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld, a rather pretentious, self-absorbed professor of philology (I admit, I had to look that up -- it's another word for linguistics).  His claim to fame is the seminal work on Portugese irregular verbs, and one story about the book is a good example of Dr. von Igelfeld's ridiculousness.  Although almost a thousand copies of this tome have been printed, the publishers have sold only 200, and at the current rate they won't sell out for more than 100 years.  The publishers then contact Dr. von Igelfeld, suggesting that they sell the books to an interior decorating firm, who would like to use the books (with a slight change in the title) as fodder for their clients' bookshelves -- basically, turning this academic achievement into mere furniture.  He is of course outraged, and decides to suss out his friends to see if they've actually purchased his book.  The results are both amusing and a little touching. 

The book contains eight short stories (all numbered in German) about Dr. von Igelfeld and his slightly ridiculous colleagues, and it's illustrated with charming woodcuts which give it a vaguely European feel.  Some of the stories are funny (like when the three colleagues attempt to learn how to play tennis from an instruction book), and some I found a little pointless. The best thing about this book is McCall Smith's great sense of irony.  None of the stories are particularly related to one another, and this makes it easy to pick up now and then.  I wouldn't call it laugh out loud funny, but I smiled, I smirked, and I even snorted once or twice, so I would call it worth reading, if you need a little change from your usual books.