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I haven't read fairy tales since I was a kid but I loved them then. This collection has gotten me hooked again. Favorite stories in this one: Chanterelle; Rosie's Dance; The Cats of San Martino; Mr. Simonelli. I also rediscovered Charles de Lint here. The editors have 4 or 5 other collections like it that I plan to check out of the library next.
over the most part the stories were uniformly well written, a couple were uninteresting, despite their technical merits, and a couple really stood out. The book was engaging and easy to read, though no force on Earth can impel me to read Joyce Carol Oates, I enjoyed beauty queen Rapunzel, the golem, Sleeping Beauty and of course, Susanna Clarke's lovely tale of fairy mischief.
Fairy Tales were originally explorations of language, culture, traditions and superstitions. Fairy tales are supposed to be dark, intriguing, thought provoking and mysterious. They were also originally intended for adult audiences. With this series, editors Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling have revived that sentiment, piecing together a bunch of gems that will make you view the Brothers Grimm in a different way altogether. I highly rec this for fantasy fans and lovers of the original un-Disneyfie...
This is a collection of short stories by various different authors. All of the stories in this collection are based on fairy tales from different cultures, with the individual author's twist. The stories vary from Godilocks and the 3 Bears to Rapunzel, and a couple of stories I wasn't as familiar with. I honestly wasn't impressed with most of the stories here, there were only a handful that I really liked. Most of them didn't really do anything for me, for whatever reason. I felt like a lot of
I picked this up the other night to re-read and am as happy with it as I was the first time.This is the last volume of Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling's Fairy Tale series and I wish there were more.I find most collections to be hit or miss, but I enjoy everything in these collections. The stories that aren't my favorites are still good.I'm going to have to dig through my book piles to find the first five collections for more re-reading.
This is the last in the series. The introduction tells how the two editors grew up separately, but both had the love of fairy tales and that love brought them (and the writers) together. Each chapter tells about the author, and then after the story, there is a short explanation.(view spoiler)[A prince returning from war falls in love with a lovely orphaned girl. He spends so much time, and then she's pregnant. To bring her and his children back to the palace, he must concoct a story about her be...
"The thing is, we spend too much time looking outside ourselves for what we should really be trying to find inside. But we can’t seem to trust what we find inside ourselves – maybe because that’s where we find it."Rapunzel (based on Rapunzel): I like this version that explains how the fairytale could have been made up on purpose to cover the real story.The Crone (based on misc. fairytales): Short poemBig Hair (based on Rapunzel): Modern version.The King With Three Daughters (based on The Three P...
So glad I stuck it out with this anthology of reborn fairy tales. I LOVE fairy tales. Goodreads lists Andrew Lang as one of my favorite authors because I read ALL of the fairy tale collections he put together. I think that is when I first got my true LOVE for reading by reading all of the LANG books..RED, BLUE, PINK, GREEN.. and on and on. I think I love them because they make you ask... "Wouldn't it be great if...?"Well the first half of this book didn't make me ask that question once. I was ab...
This lovely book, Black Heart, Ivory Bones, is a collection of fantasy and horror tales edited by my two favorite ladies of their respective genres Ellen Datlow (horror) and Terri Windling (fantasy). This is one book in a series of six volumes of, as they call it, reconsidered fairy tales. These fairy tales are rewritten to change the focus of the originals or perhaps just to sharpen the point of them to showcase the sinister, the sensual, and the sometimes sadistic roots of our childhood fairy
I liked maybe half of the stories in this collection. I very much liked the final story, "Mr. Simonelli or the Fairy Widower", by Susanna Clarke. "The Cats of San Martino" by Ellen Steiber was terrific, right up my alley. I liked Tanith Lee's "Rapunzel" story (a good story about where fairy tales might come from), and Emma Hardesty's "Rosie's Dance"--that one had a good, gritty, believableness to it. Greg Costykan's "And Still She Sleeps" was great because it combined fairy tales with archaeolog...
I thought I'd read all of the "adult fairy tale" series, but it turns out I'd missed this one! Glad I read it; "the cats of san martino" stuck with me in particular, though none of them were even close to bad.
This is an anthology of fairy tales for adults. They are mostly short stories, with a bit of poetry thrown in for good measure. The tales are mostly on the darker side. I enjoyed reading these tales. They seemed to all work well together, with no one tale either outshining or lagging behind the others. There is also an extensive recommended reading list at the end of the book that gives readers great ideas for future reading.
I liked the idea behind this book: letting authors give their own spin to classic fairy tale stories and themes. And, not being an aficionado of fairy tales, I appreciated that each story was paired with a short explanation of the author and the story they were reinterpreting. As it goes with most anthologies this one has some hits and some misses, but such is life. Overall I enjoyed this collection of stories, for the most part they offered fun twists and new interpretation on some classic fair...
Fairy tale retellings usually go one of two ways. Either the authors tell the story in the original spirit, adding some details and a new moral here or there, or they decide to retell it in as brutal, realistic,and grim(m) a fashion as possible.This book is comprised of almost entirely the latter. So if you were looking for imaginative, creative, uplifting retellings, keep looking. This is a collection of short stories by multiple authors, so you might like one or two, but on the whole, this boo...
Hit and miss. As most anthologies are. I always love a retelling, though. I think Goldilocks as the reality TV famewhore was my favorite.
Excellent collection of short stories. I love fairy tales - I grew up reading all the Andrew Lang fairy tale books. I sometimes forget how much I enjoy fairy tales - these made me want to go back and read my old favorites.These were all rewrites. There were stories based on Rapunzel, Cinderella and other familiar tales - all good. I especially liked "The cats of San Mantino" which was based on a folk tale I had never heard before.I would recommend this to short story lovers; people interested in...
An interesting collection of fairy tales re-written for an older audience. Some of the stories were by well-known authors and some I had never heard of. All of the stories were wonderful in their own way and none of them were poorly written. I love these collections and will probably read them all.
*What I Learned From This Book or Here's My Retirement Major: Fairy Tales, Folklore, Mythology. Not that I plan to actually take classes anywhere, but if I *did,* it would be some sort of composite major with Medieval History and *this* gorgeous juicy stuff.I've always been more of a novel-reader, less of a short-story reader, but the stories in this collection, by the best of the best *Otherworld writers* including Charles de Lint, Tanith Lee, Neil Gaiman, Jane Yolen, and OMG, Susanna Clarke, w...
I thought this collection of stories would be a hit for me considering it is full of adaptations by such talented writers, but aside from a couple of stories, it left me flat. While the stories are well-written, the adaptations just didn't appeal to me.
I finally managed to finish this book after reading it for several weeks. :S I got distracted by other books and studies. It's the final volume of fairy-tale retellings/stories edited by Datlow and Windling and it's a good end. There were some stories that weren't among my better-liked ones, but the ones I liked a lot were "Rapunzel" by Tanith Lee, the poems "Briar Witch" and "Witch" by Debra Cash, "My Life As A Bird" by Charles de Lint, "The Red Boots" by Leah Cutter, "You, Little Match-girl" b...