Maw Books » short stories

The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J.K. Rowling

Natasha Maw — Sun, 17 May 2009 17:50:14 +0000

I love Harry Potter. I do. I’ve only read the series once and listened to them once (I think I’m in love with Jim Dale too) but I am looking forward to the day when I can reread the entire series. And I LOVE the movies. I think they just get better and better. Harry Potter release day has been on the calender for awhile (and was really sad when it got pushed back six months!) and my husband knows I’ll be terribly upset if we don’t have a babysitter to go see it on the IMAX. Naturally, I was curious about The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J.K. Rowling and was thrilled when I won the book from Ruth at Bookish Ruth.

The Tales of Beedle the Bard are as stated by the introduction:

. . . a collection of stories written for young wizards and witches. They have been popular bedtime reading for centuries, with the result that the Hopping Pot and the Fountain of Fair Fortune are as familiar to many of the students of Hogwarts as Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty are to Muggle (non-magical) children.

. . . it was a surprise to discover a set of notes on The Tales of Beedle the Bard among the many papers that Dumbledore left in his will to the Hogwarts Archives. Whether this commentary was written for his own satisfaction or for future publication, we shall never know; however, we have been graciously granted permission by Professor Minerva McGonagall, now Headmistress of Hogwarts, to print Professor Dumbledore’s notes here, alongside a brand-new translation of the Tales by Hermione Granger.

The stories are definitely strange. A one footed hopping pot? A hairy heart locked away in a box? But they kept me entertained. My favorite was probably The Tale of Three Brothers (which if I’m not mistaken is not an original tale, I’ve heard of this before), where three brothers meet Death at a river crossing and Death gives each of them a gift of their asking.

Dumbledore’s commentary gave this book the extra something that this book needed. Without it I don’t think it would be as fun. Overall, a nice read for Harry Potter fans but I really missed Harry and his gang. Makes me want to go back and read about him instead.

Links of interest: J.K. Rowlings website. Harry Potter website. All net proceeds from the sale will be donated to The Children’s Voice campaign through The Children’s High Level Group.
Genre: Fantasy, ages 9-12
Publisher: Scholastic, December 4, 2008
Hardcover, 111 pages. ISBN: 9780545128285
The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J.K. Rowling is available from your local independent bookstore, Powell’s, Barnes and Noble, and Amazon.

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Down to a Sunless Sea by Mathias B. Freese

Natasha Maw — Sun, 03 May 2009 05:59:52 +0000

Down to a Sunless Sea by Mathias B. Freese is a collection of short stories that has been languishing in my book pile for far too long and I was determined to read it during Dewey’s 24 Hour Read-a-thon. I have heard a lot of mixed reviews for this one, from people really loving it to others disliking it. So I was curious to figure out where I would land on that scale. Sadly, I’ve discovered that the more short stories I read, the more I just can’t get into them. (I’ll give Deborah Ellis’ Lunch With Lenin a pass though, I did like that one.) Maybe I’m just not reading the right short stories. I am really glad to have explored this genre a little bit this past year, but I’m not going to be jumping up and down to read any more in the very near future.

Thinking back on this book, I really can not remember any of the stories. I vaguely remember something about a man looking in a mirror while he’s shaving and reminiscing about his body. Another about two best friends and one who continually pushes the other away. All the stories are very dark and troubling and dive deep into a psychoanalysis of the characters. Which given that the author is a psychotherapist isn’t very surprising. The writing itself was very difficult for me to get into. Half the time, I kept asking myself, “what did I just read?”

For example, the following paragraph is found in the short story entitled, “I’ll Make It. I Think”

Once, when I was younger, I made up a fable about my life. It was my own nipple and I sucked it dry. It’s worth repeating. Trouble is I still don’t understand it all, but if feels right, true to what I know about me and my destiny (?).

Maybe I’m just not a savvy reader, but I have no idea what any of that means. And sucking your own nipple dry not only thoroughly confuses me, but scares me a little too.

But there were passages of very poetic writing as well, as seen in this passage in “Echo,”

That feeling of terror, of being lost on a beach on a sea of strange blankets and bare bodies, that dumbstruck horror of feeling very much alone and torn off or away, as if one is dislocated, a fragment in a cruel time or place, a mons pubis disjointedly staring out of an oven in Auschwitz is what it is all about. It is a ligament tear of the very soul, a lifelong inflammation that no medicine will cure; one dies hobbles.

It’s this type of writing that makes me step back and read really slowly, so I don’t miss anything. While I do like this particular passage, I have no clue what mons pubis really means but I can probably take a wild guess. (Just did the Wikipedia thing – who really uses that term in a conversation? AND I had no clue that this book review would go this direction. What in the world am I doing? I normally don’t talk about nipples and mons pubis’s!)

This wasn’t the book for me. If you like deep, dark, character driven short stories you may find it worth the read, but personally it’s not a book that I would recommend. The upside is that it only took about an hour or so to read.

I’m going to go ahead and pass on my copy of Down to a Sunless Sea to somebody else if they’d like to give it a try. Let me know if interested and I’ll choose a recipient.

Genre: Short stories
Published: Wheatmark Books, November 2007.
Paperback, 148 pages. ISBN: 9781587367335
Down to a Sunless Sea is available from independent bookstores, Powells and Amazon.
(Wondering what kind of info you’d like in this space, as I might start doing this. Consider this my test run.)

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The Mechanics of Falling and Other Stories by Catherine Brady

Natasha Maw — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 07:36:21 +0000

The Mechanics of Falling and Other Stories by Catherine Brady is a collection of eleven short stories set mainly in the San Francisco area and are an intimate portrayal of the characters relationships with each other and how those relationships are tested when faced with dilemma’s, change, discontent, responsibility, despair, self-doubt, and faith.

From the book jacket:

The characters – including a college student waitressing in a remote resort in the Sierra Nevada, a devout Christam man working in a shelter for the homeless, a privileged young woman seeking someone to blame for her inexplicable discontent – share a fundamental predicament, the struggle to name and embrace some faith that can break their fall. In equal measure, they hunger for and resist this elusive possibility and what it demads of them. What one is willing to reisk for the sake of transormation or the right to refuse it is a particularly tough dilemma for the women in these stories.

Two of my favorite stories were Wait for Instructions in which a woman struggles to care for her aging parents and abusive father and Slender Little Thing, a story of a nanny who works long hours as a nanny taking care of other children while her own daughter is put in daycare, so she can provide a better life for them both. I was struck with these two stories because one, the way in which they were told, and two, because I’m still sitting here wondering what happened to these characters. What happened to the wife whose husband was controlling. Is she all right? How could she put up with a monster of a husband? And the other ended so strangely, frankly, I’m not sure what to think.

Catherine Brady has a gift for fleshing out the characters in such a short amount of time and her writing style if distinct and memorable. But I must admit that I had a really hard time getting into the flow of the writing. Once I got over the fact that there are no apostrophes when people speak I was able to appreciate how the lack of them propelled the stories in a way that would have been hindered with them. But maybe this just shows my lack of expertise in being well read in short stories, a genre that I don’t read that often but am often curious to their appeal. Will I be running out to read more short stories? Maybe not, but I appreciate Brady’s story telling and excellent writing. Each story was so distinct and memorable from one another, a mark of a truly talented writer.

Catherine Brady’s website and you can follow Catherine Brady while she’s on tour with TLC book tours.

Do you read a lot of short stories? What is the mark of a great short story?

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Lunch with Lenin and Other Stories by Deborah Ellis

Natasha Maw — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 16:26:56 +0000

After discovering Deborah Ellis after reading The Breadwinner series, I soon realized that I wanted to read everything that she’s written. I’ve got a ways to go. This prolific author has more than a dozen books under her belt. Lunch with Lenin and Other Stories is one of her newest books published this past fall.

Like the title suggests, Lunch with Lenin, is an anthology of ten short stories connected by how the lives of teens are affected directory or indirectly by drugs. It’s a worldwide problem and as such Ellis takes us from the Philippines, where young Ramon is just trying to take care of his mother and siblings, to Afghanistan, where for Tahmina, harvesting opium is their families only livelihood, to the United States where a babysitter must protect the children from their with out of control alcoholic parents. The stories are engaging and thought provoking but not preachy. Ellis just presents the facts as they are and leaves us to ponder upon the choices that each character has made.

Deborah Ellis has proven yet again that she’s a writer for young readers who can always be relied upon to give us stories where are attention is most needed. Deborah Ellis’ page on the Fitzhenry and Whiteside site. Other books I’ve reviewed by Deborah Ellis: The Breadwinner, Parvana’s Journey, Mud City (a series), and The Heaven Shop.

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A Midnight Clear, Selected Family Christmas Stories by Katherine Paterson

Natasha Maw — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 00:38:55 +0000

A Midnight Clear, Selected Family Christmas Stories by Newbery author Katherine Paterson writes a collection of short stories for young readers. The copy that I read has five selected Christmas stories, I believe that there are a total of twelve, so I’d like to track the other ones down. Katherine’s husband John is a pastor, and each Christmas Eve he would read a original story to his congregation written by Katherine.

The stories illustrates the true meaning of Christmas. In one a girl scout is assigned a service project to visit a woman at the retirement home, and she finds that she’s not anything like she expected. In another, a little girl is sent to live with her disinterested grandmother. The farmhand gives her a little lamb that ends up being the star at the local nativity play. And in yet another, a father learns the true meaning of Christmas when he stays home while his family goes to Christmas Eve mass.

I enjoyed these Christmas stories, they would be great for young readers who may feel like they are now to old for Christmas picture books. I’ll try to track down the others for Christmas next year.

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Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris

Natasha Maw — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 16:00:13 +0000

I had really, really high expectations for Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris. I knew it was either a love or hate it type book, but people were leaning more towards the LOVE it scale. Plus, I’ve never read anything by Sedaris and he’s been on my radar for awhile because people can’t stop raving about him. So I was kind of bummed when I just didn’t get it. I don’t know what I was expecting. Maybe rolling around on the floor with stitches in my side? Yeah, that didn’t happen. I understand that you have to have this certain kind of sense of humor and appreciate the irony of his stories. I got it. I just didn’t think it was funny. In fact, I can see the tight line that Sedaris walks between being humorous or being offensive.

In twelve Christmas essays David Sedaris covers everything from being a Santa elf, neighbor competition, explaining the Easter Bunny to the French, and even murder. Luckily, it’s a fast read. Is this destined to be a Christmas classic? Yes. But probably not at my house.

I still want to try another one of his books to see if this was just a fluke. Which one should I read first?

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Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, Collected from Folklore and Retold by Alvin Schwartz (and a Scary Story of My Own!)

Natasha Maw — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 19:52:04 +0000

Seriously, who has not read Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, Collected from Folklore and Retold by Alvin Schwartz? I have very vivid memories of reading this book in elementary school and it scared me half to death! The story that I remember most clearly is the story of the young couple who go park up above the city when a prisoner is on the loose. The radio says he has a hook for a hand and the girl gets scared when she hears scratching on her door. She begs her date to take her home and when he goes around to open her door, the hook is on the handle. That story has never left me.

I could not help revisiting this book in Halloween spirit and it was great fun. I think the illustrations by Stephen Gammell freaked me out more than the stories. They were just plain creepy. That illustration shown here is enough to give you nightmares. Alvin Scwartz divides the stories into “jump” stories, ghost stories, scary stories about all kinds of things, more recent scary stories, and scary stories meant to make you laugh.

I thought the more recent scary stories were the scariest because they involved the possibility that it could actually happen to you. Who remembers the story of the babysitter who kept getting calls saying “I’m going to come and get you” only to find out that the calls were being placed from upstairs? Believe me, I remembered that story especially when I was babysitting late at night.

Or the story of the girl in the car who was being followed by a truck who kept clicking on and off on his high beams? She drives home scared and frantic only to find out that there was a man in her back seat with a knife and every time he tried to unknowingly overpower her the driver would flash his beams. Writing that just gave me the chills. Maybe if it wasn’t so late at night and dark while I was typing this all out.

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is a fun and scary book meant to scare kids of all ages. A great resource for the next time you need a great story to tell. Maybe next year for Halloween I’ll read More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.

What is your favorite scary story? Or scarier still, one that you believe to be true?

I’ll start off by sharing a story that happened to my older siblings before I was born, completely true. I’ll let my older sister, Leisa, tell you the story. Here is the beginning of that story, click over to her blog to read the rest of the story!

My parents had gone out for the evening. My friend and I were co-babysitting by younger brothers and sister. We were sitting in the basement, watching the Miss America pageant. We had one set of stairs, and at the top of those stairs was a door that opened to the garage.

Suddenly, we heard the door from the garage open and then close. We heard someone walk through the kitchen to the living room, down the hall, and into my parent’s bedroom. We heard them open the drawers and begin rummaging through them.

My friend and I glanced fearful glances at each other, but didn’t want to alarm my siblings. But they heard it as well. David, my younger brother,said, “Leisa, someone’s upstairs.”

. . . . CLICK TO READ MORE!

My thoughts: my siblings always told me that the police searched the entire house except the attic (easily accessed by a stairwell in the garage). The entire time that we lived in that house I was terrified of the attic when it was dark. I was positive he was still up there ready to get me. I hated to walk by that stairwell. And to think that I wasn’t even born yet and this story scared the dickens out of me!

How about you, do have a scary story?