Diana Secker TesdellAnmeldelser

A very solid collection of short stories from the 19th/20th centuries that all have something to do with the sea. I particularly enjoyed Jack London's "The House of Mapuhi" and Stephen Crane's "The Open Sea", which read like a watercolour painting; I didn't get on with Patricia Highsmith's "One for the Islands" or the last story, Mark Halprin's "Sail Shining in White" (smug; wildly unconvincing dialogue). Definitely one to dip into if you've got a thematic interest in the sea or seafaring.

A pleasant mix of stories but nothing that really made my brain zing. I think I liked the Conrad and Butler stories best.

Personal highlights include the evocative, atmospheric tales by Bradbury, Poe, Stevenson, Crane, and Ballard; and the rich character studies of Lessing, Updike, Conrad, and Dinesen.

Stories that I quite enjoyed: "Young Goodman Brown" (Hawthorne); "Troll Bridge" ( Gaiman); "The Poacher" (Le Guin); "The Bottle Imp" (Stevenson); "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"—perhaps my faviourite of the bunch (Bierce); "The Country of the Blind" (Wells); "The Tiger's Bride" (Carter); and "The Dancing Dwarf" (Murakami).

But I can't say I found any of the stories to be truly captivating, while some felt positively ponderous. Hence, three stars for the book overall.

‘’The last day before Christmas had passed. A wintry, clear night came. The stars peeped out. The crescent moon rose majestically in the sky to give light to good people and all the world, so that everyone could merrily go carolling and glorify Christ.’’

Twenty marvellous stories transport us to Christmas past and present. To customs and traditions. To the joys and sorrows that become much more powerful during the holidays. To the course of human relationships that change in mysterious ways as the festivities of Christmas unfold…

Goblins try to full a sexton and a little devil creates havoc in a Russian village. A hypochondriac husband and his saint of a wife try to spend their holidays in France and our favourite detective aka. Sherlock Holmes has a goose of a problem to solve. A cobbler sees Christ in the faces of those in need and a burglar is saved by the presence of his mother. An elderly woman organises a party that goes horribly wrong and an elevator operator warms the hearts of a poor family. A Jewish girl sings the Christmas Carols and performs in the Nativity Play, a young boy reminisces of his much older cousin and her fruitcakes while the Turkey Season provides the chance for utter opposites to find one another.

From Charles Dickens to Anthony Trollope, from Gogol to Tolstoy, Chekhov and Nabokov, from Willa Carther to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Evelyn Waugh and Elizabeth Bowen, from Truman Capote to Muriel Spark, Grace Paley and Alice Munro. What more could you possibly want?

P.S.Let the Christmas collections overload begin!

‘’This time of the year is spent in good cheer,
And neighbours together do meet,
To sit by the fire with friendly desire,
Each other in love to greet,
Old grudges forgot are put in the pot,
All sorrows aside they lay;
The old and the young doth carol this song,
To drive the cold winter away.’’

My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.wordpress.com/

Fitzgerald, in his brilliant book The Great Gatsby, wrote about New York: "[I was] simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life." I believe this collection of short stories on the eponymous city reflects this sentiment in spades. Be it a school boy, professional woman, gambler, dreamer, or even a writer, these stories display life in the most popular city in the world without any sign of vanity.

The book was passed to me with some stories recommended.
I intended to read a very few before the book went back to the library but actually read quite a lot. One story 5 star (Jack London) and others all the way to 1 star - but a good collection to dip into.

Updike's 'Cruise' was very good. I feel sure I must have read a book by Updike a long time ago but none of the titles sound familiar, I've never heard of the Rabbit series and I didn't realise he wrote the 'Witches of Eastwick'. Has a similar langourous tone to Liz Williams 'Century to Starboard' which also features a cruise.
Kipling's 'A Matter of Fact' was not recommended but I still loved it. Had read it years ago when I was reading lots of Kipling. It's dated since he wrote it, but has a marvelous sense of the deep sea and ends with an interesting take on the media.
There's something wrong with Doris Lessing's 'Through the Tunnel'. Might be well written but to me the vignette is like a description of a painting. The attempt to enter the mind of a boy rings very false to me and the other people who appear are 2 dimensional. Nice descriptions of sand.
Saki's 'The Treasure Ship' Unnecessarily wordy. Shan't bother with anything else he has written.
J. G. Ballard's 'Now Wakes The Sea' - loved it, even if the rich wife's character was treated unfairly. Might have read one of his books back in my teens but none of the titles sound familiar. Shall look out for one in the library.
Mark Helprin's 'Sail Shining in White' is more about aging and death than about the sea. The writing engaged me but not the content - and perhaps all the stories are really about something else than the sea.
Kurt Vonnegut's 'The Cruise of the Jolly Roger' an illustrated lecture - not of much interest to me.
Conrad's 'Youth' was very good. Captivating. Have read this before.
Patricia Highsmith's 'One for the Islands' was wiffle waffle. Good job it was short.
Jack London's 'The House of Mapuhi' was absolutely the best so far. A riveting physical description of a hurricane and a host of interesting characters. I'm in love with Mapuhi's mum [spoiler] who survives on coconuts, reconstructs a broken canoe, nearly paddles it home and swims the rest of the way, fighting off a fifteen foot shark as she goes. A whole book in just a few pages!
Isak Dinesen's The Young Man With The Carnation' DNF.

‘’The houses across the street were silent and perhaps unoccupied at this time of day; she let her eyes move with the rhythm of the tune, from window to window along one floor. By gliding quickly across two windows, she could make one line of the tune fit one floor of windows, and then a quick breath and a drop down to the next floor; it had the same number of windows and the tune had the same number of beats and then th next floor and the next. She stopped suddenly when it seemed to her that the windowsill she had just passed had soundlessly crumpled and fallen into fine sand; when she looked back it was there as before but then it seemed to be the windowsill above and to the right, and finally a corner of the roof.’’
Shirley Jackson, Pillar of Salt

New York. Forget about the city that never sleeps, the lights, the socialites, the glorious hotels and skyscrapers and whatnot. New York is the people that populate it, the stories that characterise every corner of the metropolis, the amalgamation of feelings and experiences that have created its atmosphere, its breath, its aura and the way it fascinates us. This is the heart of the beautiful collection dedicated to New York.

New York Nite Club by Jack Kerouac: The unique atmosphere of a New York club.

The Making of a New Yorker by O.Henry: The aspirations of a poet in the city of modern Art.

O City of Broken Dreams by John Cheever: A married couple travels to New York, prompted by a job opportunity. But the Big Apple has decided differently.

Pillar of Salt by Shirley Jackson: A young couple goes to New York for a two-week vacation. The experience appears exciting at first but soon, it becomes more and more uncanny, chaotic and claustrophobic. A masterpiece by Jackson.

Paul’s Case by Willa Carther: The troubles of a high-school student.

Master Misery by Truman Capote: A young woman has come to New York to follow her dream. She meets a sympathetic clown and realises that her happiness depends on a strange figure that thwarts your dreams. A deeply sad allegory by a master of the Short Story.

A Cup of Gold by Edith Wharton: A story of fateful meetings, love, propriety. Many of us first ‘’met’’ the literary New York through Wharton’s novel The Age of Innocence and this one is a bright example of her unique style.

The Magic Barrell by Bernard Malamud: A young rabbi wants to marry and only the ideal woman will do. But this is a rather difficult task.

Social Error by Damon Rinyan: A story straight out the Guys and Dolls universe and a unique era in the history of the city.

Theft by Katherine Anne Porter: Prompted by a simple theft, the heroine of the story realises all she has lost. Loves, journeys, wasted moments, words left unsaid.

The Thistles in Sweden by William Maxwell: A beautiful, peaceful story about the daily life of a neighbourhood of brownstones and quirky families.

A Snowy Night on West Forty-Ninth Street by Maeve Brennan: The unique atmosphere of Broadway lights on a winter’s night as a woman becomes our guide to the strange, vacant would-be members of the high-class society and the nightly New York that watches silently.

Sonny’s Blues by James Baldwin: A moving story of the rift between two brothers, the loss of a child, the daily fight in an unforgiving world.

Children Are Bored on Sunday by Jean Stafford: A tender story of Art, feud and young love.

It’s Six A.M. Do You Know Where You Are by Jay McInerney: An enigmatic story about a man stranded in a bar at an unlikely hour. A tale of confusion, trauma and disillusionment.

New York Day Women by Edwidge Danticat: A story about motherly rules and the very complex relationship between a family and a ferocious city.

Reference #388475848 - 5 by Amy Hempel: A letter of protest over a parking ticket becomes the means for a woman to pour out her soul and give voice to her repressed thoughts.

Negocios by Junot Diaz: The tumultuous story of an immigrant through the eyes of his son.

‘’I want what is fair. I don’t want a fight. But the truth is I’m shaking - right now, writing this letter. My hand is shaking while I write. It’s saying what I can’t say - this is the way I say it.’’

My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.wordpress.com/

Almost any collection of stories spanning more than 70 years might be able to cough up some gems. But there is something about stories set in New York that bring out the best in many writers. And certainly there are many very, very good stories here. A fair number in this collection are absolute classics. Think of Damon Runyan’s “Social Error”, or O. Henry’s “The Making of a New Yorker”, or James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues”. From those titles alone you can see that this collection runs the gamut. Almost every story is in a different style, a different mode. Indeed, what stands out most from such a collection is the sheer versatility of the short story form. Since these are stories of New York, they tend to focus on making it or failing to make it, high hopes and utter despair, and especially newcomers. Is everyone in New York from away? Or does everyone merely feel like they are from away until they make it?

I’m loathe to pick one story over another from such a fine collection. But a few either surprised me or forced me to rethink their authors, to want to look again. Bernard Malamud’s “The Magic Barrel” was one of those as was, in a different way, Truman Capote’s “Master Misery”. I loved the ironic play of John Cheever’s “O City of Broken Dreams”, and William Maxwell’s tone painting in “The Thistles in Sweden”. You’ll find your own favourites.

Recommended.

I bought this collection of New York-related short stories at the Strand Book Store on a visit to NYC. I've been dipping into it bit by bit. I enjoyed stories by classic authors - like Willa Cather's "Paul's Case" - and some by current writers as well - like Edwidge Danticat's New York Day Women. Not every story was a winner, but overall, this is a strong collection.½

Part of the ‘Everyman’s Pocket Classics’ series of themed volumes, ‘Shaken and Stirred’ is a collection of stories about drinking. The volume features authors of the last two centuries, and includes Dickens, Twain, P.G. Wodehouse (my favorite in the book), F. Scott Fitzgerald, Vladimir Nabokov and many more. Some stories are light and funny, but, as can happen in real life, alcohol leads to sorrow- or at least, unhappiness- in many of them. Because of this, I found it hard to read the book for very long at a time; the unhappy circumstances of many of the characters got to me. I know too many people in real life who have had their lives made miserable by alcohol. I was expecting something more light-hearted, in the vein of Wodehouse’s Jeeves entry. A good book, but read it in small doses. It’s a lovely little volume, with a delightful cover illustration and a ribbon bound in for keeping one’s place.

Another excellent collection of short stories from Everyman's Pocket Classics (I previously read their Detective Stories and have on-and-off been reading Ghost Stories and Stories of the Sea).

Don't be mislead by the title, these are not gentle, innocuous stories to put you to bed. Instead, Bedtime Stories weave in and out of dreams, the real, the unreal and the surreal, often with unclear boundaries between them. Some are psychological, some magical, some a combination of both.

The book has a number of old stand-by's that were good to re-read (including Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown", Stevenson's "The Bottle Imp" and Wells' "The Country of the Blind"). Particularly good was A.S. Byatt's "The Thing in the Forest" which will send me running to read the rest of the collection that came from, LeGuin's "The Poacher" and Nabokov's "The Dragon", which showed yet another side of that author. Steven Millhauser's "A Visit," a seemingly realistic story that includes a character's dream (described as such and clearly delineated from the waking) takes on a new aspect when read in juxtaposition to a collection like this. And many others.

Most of these stories are based on fairy tales, but the original tales are manipulated to such a wide extant as to elicit the grossly bizarre. The best story in the book iss Washinton Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," both for its content as well as Irving's writing style The only supernatural aspect of this story is in the imaginations of its characters. For most of the stories though, magic, or the unexplained, plays a starring role. Death is also a favorite theme. If you like bizarre stories, you'll probably like this book.

What we have here is a collection by an incredible array of authors that, because it has taken the theme of focusing on stories of New York, appears to have not allowed those authors to be at their best. Let’s start with the incredible array. There is Kerouac and O. Henry and Cheever and Jackson and Cather and Capote and Runyan and, heck, I give up - almost every one in it is a name you know (if you know even a little about literature.) But let’s talk about the limitations. Many of these authors are noted for their writing about New York. But, whether because of the limitations of specific focus on New York or because of an unstated desire to go with the path/stories less travelled, it contains good works, but few that are actually knock-you-off-your stool great.

That is not to say the collection is not worth reading. Most of these authors, even on their worst days, are better than much of what you might be reading today. So, even when not at the top of their game, they are worth the time.

The stories, in spite of the theme (maybe because of it) are not trapped within one interpretation of the city. New York is as multi-faceted (if not more multi-faceted) as any town in the States can be. The stories are similarly multi-focused. In some, New York is star – a state of mind that any would be proud to maintain. In others, New York is the enemy – a city that will destroy the unprepared. Some stories are slices of life in this town taking glimpses of the downtrodden, the people on top, and many in between. While the range of New York cannot be duplicated in 400 pages, the editor has made as good an attempt as is possible.

In other words, this collection succeeds in its attempt to provide the multi-facetedness of New York. Where it fails (and it is a minor failure) is in providing us the absolute best of this start-studded collection of authors. But to have failed in such a small way means that readers will still enjoy most of the entries, and it may present a good introduction to the writings of these luminaries for those who have not yet had the experience.½

Another excellent collection of short stories from Everyman's Pocket Classics (I previously read their Detective Stories and have on-and-off been reading Ghost Stories and Stories of the Sea).

Don't be mislead by the title, these are not gentle, innocuous stories to put you to bed. Instead, Bedtime Stories weave in and out of dreams, the real, the unreal and the surreal, often with unclear boundaries between them. Some are psychological, some magical, some a combination of both.

The book has a number of old stand-by's that were good to re-read (including Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown", Stevenson's "The Bottle Imp" and Wells' "The Country of the Blind"). Particularly good was A.S. Byatt's "The Thing in the Forest" which will send me running to read the rest of the collection that came from, LeGuin's "The Poacher" and Nabokov's "The Dragon", which showed yet another side of that author. Steven Millhauser's "A Visit," a seemingly realistic story that includes a character's dream (described as such and clearly delineated from the waking) takes on a new aspect when read in juxtaposition to a collection like this. And many others.

This was the first Pocket Classics Anthology I read. What a great series. The books are well made and just the right size. If you like anthologies, and short stories, these are great books to read at short intervals. I made sure to get more in this series because they were so much fun to read. Great selection of stories and authors. -KA