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It’s hard to rate this for a few reasons.
(1) I DNF’ed it. It’s a 760page book— I sat and read the first half but it all started to blend together so I needed to Marie Kondo it and put it down. I never DNF so it was wild.
(2) there are so many tales. It’s crazy because while I liked reading the most famous ones (aka the ones that turned into modern movies and shows— see HBO’s Happy Ever After: fairytales for every child for reference), most of them are actually religious parables that focused on two key redeeming qualities of humans: beauty and piousness. The morals of these stories is highly questionable and while it makes sense in historical context, it is not great today.
(3) most of the stories seem to propagate problematic things e.g. racism, anti-semitism (very Shakespearean with the stories of Jewish thieves etc.), sexism…
(4) this edition is quite good… in the sense that the illustrations are fun and the translation is quite readable. Also it has a lot of bonus stories for the original 210…. 210!! And that’s not including the bonus stories.
Basically this book has inspired me to only read books that bring me joy…guess I’m adding that to my 2024 reading goals.
It’s also a fun reminder that I no longer have to read things to completion like I did at university. I’m sure there are lots of fun academic analyses of the historical relevance of these tales but I think I’ll stick with my Disney movies instead.
(1) I DNF’ed it. It’s a 760page book— I sat and read the first half but it all started to blend together so I needed to Marie Kondo it and put it down. I never DNF so it was wild.
(2) there are so many tales. It’s crazy because while I liked reading the most famous ones (aka the ones that turned into modern movies and shows— see HBO’s Happy Ever After: fairytales for every child for reference), most of them are actually religious parables that focused on two key redeeming qualities of humans: beauty and piousness. The morals of these stories is highly questionable and while it makes sense in historical context, it is not great today.
(3) most of the stories seem to propagate problematic things e.g. racism, anti-semitism (very Shakespearean with the stories of Jewish thieves etc.), sexism…
(4) this edition is quite good… in the sense that the illustrations are fun and the translation is quite readable. Also it has a lot of bonus stories for the original 210…. 210!! And that’s not including the bonus stories.
Basically this book has inspired me to only read books that bring me joy…guess I’m adding that to my 2024 reading goals.
It’s also a fun reminder that I no longer have to read things to completion like I did at university. I’m sure there are lots of fun academic analyses of the historical relevance of these tales but I think I’ll stick with my Disney movies instead.