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4.08 AVERAGE
4.08 AVERAGE
Grimm's Complete Fairy Tales was an adventure. It was over 100 fairy tales (some of them were either the same tale told differently or several different stories, but they were structured the same).
Honestly, I love fairy tales whether they are the original or the dolled up and gore downed Disney versions. Grimm's is the first entire collection I've read, and at some point I'll pick up my collection of Hans Christian Anderson.
Everything happens in 3s, or 7s, or 9s. Never go into the enchanted woods. Don't trust any travelling salespeople.
Also, I got pretty lucky in the stepmom department. Thanks for not bringing any stepsisters!
Honestly, I love fairy tales whether they are the original or the dolled up and gore downed Disney versions. Grimm's is the first entire collection I've read, and at some point I'll pick up my collection of Hans Christian Anderson.
Everything happens in 3s, or 7s, or 9s. Never go into the enchanted woods. Don't trust any travelling salespeople.
Also, I got pretty lucky in the stepmom department. Thanks for not bringing any stepsisters!
adventurous
dark
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
I read these for a course that I am taking and honestly would have put the book down long before finishing if not for that reason. Certainly not as dark as I imagined them to be before reading...in fact, I found them foolish. I will grant a handful of stories were engaging, good stories....the rest were just foolish. I shared with my daughter who laughed over the couple she read.
A favorite book from childhood, these fairy tales are not for the easily scared! Quite violent how people meet their ends in these classic tales of whimsy. These are as much fun for adults to read as they are for children.
Reviewing any book as seminal and classic as "Grimm's Fairy Tales" is probably a fool's errand. What can be said which reams of scholarship have not already said better? This particular edition collects about half of the tales which the Grimm's eventually published in their ever-morphing collection. They were drawn not just from folk sources, but from literary sources as well, then honed and polished by the authors. Thus, their value as pure ethnographic artifacts is dubious, although taken with a grain of salt, it can be argued that they still fulfill their stated purpose reasonably well. In addition to the more familiar stories, which, thanks to Disney and others, have become commonplace within our culture, there are dozens of more obscure, often bizarre, tales as well, many of which are of equal quality as the well-worn chestnuts.
When reading an entire collection of these tales from cover to cover, there is a tendency for them to all blur together, and this is because so many motifs, archetypal characters, and situations recur incessantly. These include the evil stepmother; the dwelling in the woods, frequently occupied by groups of robbers, or else by witches; the good Old Woman, whom we have come to recognize as the "fairy godmother;" the three sons who face a challenge which the elder two fail at, but the supposedly dim-witted youngest succeeds at; princes and princesses turned into animals by means of enchantment; one in a group of siblings escaping from some evil, common fate and later saving the rest of them from that fate; a princess who will only marry a suitor who masters some seemingly impossible challenge... the list runs long.
These stories were originally collected for adults, not children, and this gives us an important clue about their cultural significance. At some point anyone who has a vested interest in storytelling and, particularly, with the stories we tell within our culture, should probably read through a collection such as this.
When reading an entire collection of these tales from cover to cover, there is a tendency for them to all blur together, and this is because so many motifs, archetypal characters, and situations recur incessantly. These include the evil stepmother; the dwelling in the woods, frequently occupied by groups of robbers, or else by witches; the good Old Woman, whom we have come to recognize as the "fairy godmother;" the three sons who face a challenge which the elder two fail at, but the supposedly dim-witted youngest succeeds at; princes and princesses turned into animals by means of enchantment; one in a group of siblings escaping from some evil, common fate and later saving the rest of them from that fate; a princess who will only marry a suitor who masters some seemingly impossible challenge... the list runs long.
These stories were originally collected for adults, not children, and this gives us an important clue about their cultural significance. At some point anyone who has a vested interest in storytelling and, particularly, with the stories we tell within our culture, should probably read through a collection such as this.
Phew! Although, I had to take it in very small doses, I'm very glad to have found out what a really Grimm fairy tale is made of.
This is exactly what it declares itself, a collection of all the Grimm's fairy tales in a single volume that can be readily picked up and read at whatever pace you choose whether for research, pleasure, or to have on hand for a refresher read. This does mean it's also a bit drier than many of the fancier collections and you'll need to be careful about reading some of the stories included to younger audiences as some are as brutal and dark as the times I which they were born.
I enjoyed reading the various versions of well-known tales (as well as getting to read some lesser-known stories, too).
I got a kick out of the start to "The Little Magic Table, The Golden Donkey, and the Club in the Sack." The basic story: A shoemaker has 3 sons and a goat; one by one he casts the sons out of the house for failing to feed the goat. Here's the thing: The sons did feed the goat, but the goat totally acts like a goat and says it's still hungry —
[Later that evening...]
This is EXACTLY how my goats behave. LOL
I got a kick out of the start to "The Little Magic Table, The Golden Donkey, and the Club in the Sack." The basic story: A shoemaker has 3 sons and a goat; one by one he casts the sons out of the house for failing to feed the goat. Here's the thing: The sons did feed the goat, but the goat totally acts like a goat and says it's still hungry —
"Oh, my, I'm stuffed!
Enough's enough.
Meh! Meh!"
[Later that evening...]
"How can I have eaten enough?
I just jumped over mounds real rough.
Didn't find one blade of grass 'cause the ground was tough.
Meh! Meh!"
This is EXACTLY how my goats behave. LOL
I checked out Grimms' Fairy Tales from my neighborhood public library when I was 14 years old. I got the unabridged version and proceeded to be horrified. Up to that point, I had basically gotten the disneyfied version of fairy tales and Grimms' is indeed grim. Glad I read it. Don't plan to read it again.
The Grimm brothers' fairy tales are some of the most famous in the world: they're certainly the most popular. I found as I read this, though, that an edited collection would be more worthwhile reading than the complete collection.
This is repetitive. There are clusters of basically the same story, told in slightly different ways, but obviously having the same root. The Grimms were so famous for editing their stories (sometimes in ways that made no sense or were abrupt - "The Frog King" is the perfect example), and they couldn't condense all the repeated versions into one story? I do appreciate the attempt to collect authentic versions from different tellers and different parts of Germany, but the repetition becomes a little tiresome when it's three or four stories together that are basically the same.
There are a lot of very silly, nonsensical stories here, which don't really add any weight to the collection, and some of the stories about inanimate objects being able to move and talk seem particularly strange to an adult reader, though Bruno Bettelheim has an explanation in The Uses of Enchantment - children view everything as having a soul, and it's for children that the Grimms ultimately refined and edited these stories.
One thing I was quite confused about was how religion and magic intermingle in a lot of these stories. God is more present in these stories than I'd expect in fairy tales. I found that a bit strange, because religion doesn't seem to me to have any place in fairy tales, but, given when the Grimms were compiling and editing these, it's perhaps not surprising that God has a presence alongside the dwarfs and witches and talking animals and magical objects.
There is racism in these stories, which, again, is not surprising given when they were compiled and edited. It's not surprising, though, that many of these stories would have fallen out of favour in current times. Some of these stories, I'd never encountered as a child in my Grimm's story collection.
I was a little surprised to see that the translation of my version changed some of the titles to align more with the Perault titles. I remember the Grimm's version of the Cinderella story being "Aschenputtel", not "Cinderella", and "Sleeping Beauty" was "Briar Rose". Translators, don't change the titles! Readers are quite capable of understanding that Aschenputtel is just Cinderella by another name.
For all my complaints, though, this does get four stars, because it's one of those sentimental reminders of my childhood, and some of these stories have spawned so many wonderful reimaginings that I love (without "Rumpelstiltskin" there would not be one of my favourite TV characters ever). The Grimms brought so many fantastic stories to the world, stories that I grew up on and have never forgotten. There's nothing quite like a fairy tale to spark a child's imagination, and, reading this, I was strongly reminded of that feeling.
This is repetitive. There are clusters of basically the same story, told in slightly different ways, but obviously having the same root. The Grimms were so famous for editing their stories (sometimes in ways that made no sense or were abrupt - "The Frog King" is the perfect example), and they couldn't condense all the repeated versions into one story? I do appreciate the attempt to collect authentic versions from different tellers and different parts of Germany, but the repetition becomes a little tiresome when it's three or four stories together that are basically the same.
There are a lot of very silly, nonsensical stories here, which don't really add any weight to the collection, and some of the stories about inanimate objects being able to move and talk seem particularly strange to an adult reader, though Bruno Bettelheim has an explanation in The Uses of Enchantment - children view everything as having a soul, and it's for children that the Grimms ultimately refined and edited these stories.
One thing I was quite confused about was how religion and magic intermingle in a lot of these stories. God is more present in these stories than I'd expect in fairy tales. I found that a bit strange, because religion doesn't seem to me to have any place in fairy tales, but, given when the Grimms were compiling and editing these, it's perhaps not surprising that God has a presence alongside the dwarfs and witches and talking animals and magical objects.
There is racism in these stories, which, again, is not surprising given when they were compiled and edited. It's not surprising, though, that many of these stories would have fallen out of favour in current times. Some of these stories, I'd never encountered as a child in my Grimm's story collection.
I was a little surprised to see that the translation of my version changed some of the titles to align more with the Perault titles. I remember the Grimm's version of the Cinderella story being "Aschenputtel", not "Cinderella", and "Sleeping Beauty" was "Briar Rose". Translators, don't change the titles! Readers are quite capable of understanding that Aschenputtel is just Cinderella by another name.
For all my complaints, though, this does get four stars, because it's one of those sentimental reminders of my childhood, and some of these stories have spawned so many wonderful reimaginings that I love (without "Rumpelstiltskin" there would not be one of my favourite TV characters ever). The Grimms brought so many fantastic stories to the world, stories that I grew up on and have never forgotten. There's nothing quite like a fairy tale to spark a child's imagination, and, reading this, I was strongly reminded of that feeling.