A review by marasaxer
The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm by Jacob Grimm, Wilhelm Grimm

4.0

This was...weird. I enjoyed a lot of the stories. Some are very familiar, some are vaguely familiar but a little altered, and some I don't know at all. Usually the unfamiliar ones are the more batshit ones, guess it's harder to make the truly nutty ones palatable to the masses. I feel like I would have gotten more out of this if I'd been reading it with an accompanying class or set of notes on the symbolism and meanings of the stories. There are a lot of repeated themes, to the point that I'd call them tropes, and some of those left me very confused. There are also many that read like morality tales, which isn't surprising because that's actually what a lot of storytelling is intended for, but that moral is lost on me. Sometimes I think I'm getting the moral, but it seems like such a ridiculous lesson that I must be misunderstanding. Either that or times truly have changed (which is quite probable, I'm sure my modern ethical code varies greatly from that of the Grimms' time). The material is presented very raw, which is interesting in light of having read later editions with their additional polish, but still, difficult to digest.