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3.37 AVERAGE
3.37 AVERAGE
Well written and super interesting. I appreciate how Ortberg spins and weaves old tales into something new for our times. The voice is witty, irreverent, and creepy — an interesting blend. The feminist & queer lenses used are so important for understanding and rethinking the “harmless” tales we’ve been brought up with. I think a Women’s/Gender Studies course could have very interesting and lively discussions about these stories. However, by story #11 the “message” was predictable even with the plot wasn’t.
Could not get into the stories and didn't care for the writing style.
Some of the stories were a solid 5/5 (my favorite being the Frog and Toad/"The Fisherman and His Wife" bizarre but well-thought out mashup), but then others I thought were too difficult to follow or just didn't make a lot of sense.
1- The Daughter Cells: (4.5/5) A little mermaid retelling, it gave me chills. The way the little mermaid was "naive" was both chilling and realistic (in the story).
2- The Thankless Child (3/5): A weird Cinderella iteration but the ending was quite strange and... abrupt almost? Also the gender identifications and names and pronouns are really weird in this story.
3- Fear Not: An Incident Log (4.5/5): I kept thinking what fairytale or story this would be the iteration for but I gave up. Anyhow, I think this is my favorite tale so far, it's creepy and eerie, and I like when figures like "Death" are the narrators. (I don't think the narrator in this story is Death, but it's quite close to this concept).
4- The Six Boy-Coffins (4.5/5): A retelling of the six swans fairytale. I liked it a lot, and I liked the horrible twist added to it.
5- The Rabbit (5/5): It's an iteration of the Velveteen rabbit and it's my favorite so far. I think this kind of stories is what I expected going into this book. This kind of creepiness and magic.
6- The Merry Spinster (2.5/5): I didn't like this retelling of Beauty and the Beast, it was quite weird. Also, again with the weird pronouns. If "Sylvia" is a "daughter" why do they keep referring to her as a "he"? I just don't get it.
7- The Wedding Party (1/5): I don't even understand what I just read.
8- Some of us had been threatening our friend mr. Toad (1/5): The stories are getting worse, I skimmed through the second half of this story. I don't even know what that was.
9- Cast your Bread upon the Waters (1/5): that was disappointing...
10- The Frog's Princess (3.5/5): That was a creepy retelling, and I'm guessing it's nothing like the Disney film, but AGAIN with the weird pronouns. Why make them "daughters" if they're gonna be addressed as a "he"? why not jus make them sons?????
I give up on reading the last story, just because I feel done with this collection. I had higher hopes for this book, and though I liked a lot of the stories, the ones I didn't really really almost made me stop reading. I wish I had known that there was a section at the end for the inspirations behind each story, only found out about it after reading 9 of the 11 stories, but it's nice to see some of the things and references I missed.
The writing seemed choppy and the endings especially suffered the most. This book is called "tales of everyday horror", but at times I couldn't identify where the horror was. overall, it was a good collection, not horrible but not what I expected and wanted.
2- The Thankless Child (3/5): A weird Cinderella iteration but the ending was quite strange and... abrupt almost? Also the gender identifications and names and pronouns are really weird in this story.
3- Fear Not: An Incident Log (4.5/5): I kept thinking what fairytale or story this would be the iteration for but I gave up. Anyhow, I think this is my favorite tale so far, it's creepy and eerie, and I like when figures like "Death" are the narrators. (I don't think the narrator in this story is Death, but it's quite close to this concept).
4- The Six Boy-Coffins (4.5/5): A retelling of the six swans fairytale. I liked it a lot, and I liked the horrible twist added to it.
5- The Rabbit (5/5): It's an iteration of the Velveteen rabbit and it's my favorite so far. I think this kind of stories is what I expected going into this book. This kind of creepiness and magic.
6- The Merry Spinster (2.5/5): I didn't like this retelling of Beauty and the Beast, it was quite weird. Also, again with the weird pronouns. If "Sylvia" is a "daughter" why do they keep referring to her as a "he"? I just don't get it.
7- The Wedding Party (1/5): I don't even understand what I just read.
8- Some of us had been threatening our friend mr. Toad (1/5): The stories are getting worse, I skimmed through the second half of this story. I don't even know what that was.
9- Cast your Bread upon the Waters (1/5): that was disappointing...
10- The Frog's Princess (3.5/5): That was a creepy retelling, and I'm guessing it's nothing like the Disney film, but AGAIN with the weird pronouns. Why make them "daughters" if they're gonna be addressed as a "he"? why not jus make them sons?????
I give up on reading the last story, just because I feel done with this collection. I had higher hopes for this book, and though I liked a lot of the stories, the ones I didn't really really almost made me stop reading. I wish I had known that there was a section at the end for the inspirations behind each story, only found out about it after reading 9 of the 11 stories, but it's nice to see some of the things and references I missed.
The writing seemed choppy and the endings especially suffered the most. This book is called "tales of everyday horror", but at times I couldn't identify where the horror was. overall, it was a good collection, not horrible but not what I expected and wanted.
dark
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
As a fan of fairy tales and their iterations, I enjoyed this book a lot.
I enjoyed guessing which stories were which through out the book. The Rabbit and Good Fences Make Good Neighbors, were the stories that stuck around in my head a little longer than the rest (creepy and weird). The Daughter Cells, left me saying well damn lol. Good collection of dark retellings. There were some stories I clearly had never heard of before and I don't see myself looking for the original either. I like the way Mallory retold the stories.
Unique takes on classic tales; super-enjoyable short reads.
This book just wasn't my cup of tea. The tales were disturbing and the verses from the Bible mixed into the stories was especially jarring.
I really wanted to like this collection more than I did, but I was not super into it.
I did enjoy a couple of the stories and their grotesqueness, but not enough to bump my overall rating up.
The main thing that made this less enjoyable for me was that for many of the stories I had no idea what I read and google did not really help me. I like a bit of weirdness or confusion, or even not understanding, but I felt all out lost. That said, I was not entirely familiar with some of the works their stories were based off of, so I suspect I was missing some of the wit in their writing.
I generally liked the fantasy, I liked the darkness, I mostly liked the gender-pronoun fluidity. I just didn't like having no clue. With a readers companion, perhaps I would like more of the stories.
I did enjoy a couple of the stories and their grotesqueness, but not enough to bump my overall rating up.
The main thing that made this less enjoyable for me was that for many of the stories I had no idea what I read and google did not really help me. I like a bit of weirdness or confusion, or even not understanding, but I felt all out lost. That said, I was not entirely familiar with some of the works their stories were based off of, so I suspect I was missing some of the wit in their writing.
I generally liked the fantasy, I liked the darkness, I mostly liked the gender-pronoun fluidity. I just didn't like having no clue. With a readers companion, perhaps I would like more of the stories.