What I've been reading

    Recently I’ve been reading Arabian Nights, Brother’s Grimm and Aesop’s Fables. I wanted to see what made them worth being recorded, what made them last. For two of these I can understand, but for one of them, with the exception of a few stories, I’m not really sure how it is even worth your time.

`    Let’s start with the first one I read, Arabian Nights. I really enjoyed these stories. They didn’t feel as alien as some people would have you believe middle eastern culture is, in fact, they felt very familiar. If it didn’t tell you a majority of the characters were Muslim, you probably wouldn’t even notice it. In some ways, I’d say it felt more familiar than when I read Le Morte D’Artur though that could be because many of the stories had been adapted and absorbed into western culture. I mean most people know Aladdin from the Disney movie, but many of the others have just sort of become background to many western tales, some of which are in Brother’s Grimm, but I’ll get to those later.

    Overall the Book was well done, all the stories were told and translated well, from the version I read. What helped it the most is probably that the whole book has a coherent narrative with a singular mythology behind the whole work. The works are held together with a singular world. There was no story, or part of a story, where the rules established within the world were broken. I believe that’s probably my favorite part of it, it felt like a singular work, a coherent collection of stories within a single world.

I cannot possibly recommend it enough. If you’re ever looking for a good collection of stories with memorable characters, and a lovable background cast, Arabian Nights is well worth your time.

    Now let’s skip Brothers Grimm for a bit and move onto Aesop.

    Aesop’s Fables are, well, exactly what they say they are; short stories with a moral. The moral is often summed up in the last sentence or two of every story. They’re roughly less than a page on average; so it’s actually quite easy to breeze through it. A few of the morals are outdated but most are still as true today as they were when they were written. Its morals are a bit like the works of Confucius.

An interesting sidenote, no one knows for sure if Aesop was a real person.

    Overall the works are rather entertaining and thought-provoking in their own right. The personification of animals and inanimate objects give it the right amount of charm. It is a book of fables, no more no less. There are morals in it that work well as food for thought. I’d say it’s worth your time if you’re interested in such a thing.

    Now onto the last and my definite least favorite part of this, The Brothers Grimm.

    Oh boy, where do I start here? Let’s start with some of the Good parts, or more specifically the parts everyone knows. Many of the Grimm Fairy Tales have been adapted by Disney, and many people point out the Grimm versions were darker, more violent. To get one thing out of the way, yes, they are more violent, but I don’t feel like they’re darker. You see, much of the dark parts of the stories are carried over into the Disney versions. In fact, I’d go so far as to say the Disney versions are much better than the Grimm versions. You see some of the violence in Brothers Grimm is made irrelevant with some of the Ex Machina endings the stories feature. Any violence suffered by the Heroes is often wiped away at the end, because reasons.

    So I’m going to say that most of the Grimm stories you’re familiar with are probably the most worthwhile ones in the entire set. However, I feel I want to get into the meat of what Grimm has.

    Let’s start with the theme, there is no overall theme for the whole collections, hell there’s not even a coherent mythology. In fact, I’d use Grimm as a show of how history is shaped by writers, by that I mean how many of the stories are the same story with mild changes to detail, and how many are clearly slapped with a Christian mythology brush.

    Okay, many of the stories in the Grimm Fairy Tales are the same story over and over again. I mean the Cinderella story itself has enough different versions that there is a male Cinderella in there somewhere. It gets to a point where it becomes dull and tedious to read them.

    Now what I mean with the Christian mythology brush, well many stories in Brothers Grimm clearly have Christian mythology hamfisted into the story with no real connection to the overall plot.The worst part is that much of it isn’t even consistent with the main Christian Mythos. In a few of the stories, the Devil, is a good guy. By that, I mean, he honestly helps people out who help him, like no betrayal, not lies, no backstabbing. Literally, if Brothers Grimm is to be taken seriously if you’re a good practicing Christian and the Devil asks you for help you should help him because he won’t endanger your soul, he’ll hold up his deal and give you whatever you want.

    The Devil’s Sooty Brother is the story that I’m going to use as the example here. In this story the devil asks a man if he will work for him for 7 years, and won’t cut his nails or his hair or wash himself during that time, the Devil will give him more money than he could ever want. The man agrees and the Devil takes him to hell to work for him. After the seven years are up the man gets to leave but the devil asks him to still not cut his hair or nails or wash. The man leaves with his gold, and goes to sleep at the first inn he finds, the innkeeper agrees because he has so much money. During the night, the innkeeper steals the man’s gold, and the man goes back to the devil, the devil cleans him up himself, and then gives him more money, and tells him to tell the innkeeper that if he doesn’t return the man’s gold the Devil will come and drag the innkeeper to hell. Of course, the innkeeper returns the gold in fear of his safety and the man leaves with twice as much gold as he had before.

    As you see the story works out for the main character, he helps the devil and winds up the better for it, and it’s not the only story in Brothers Grimm with pretty much that exact same premise. So yes, in Grimm the Devil is more often a good guy than a real villain.

    Now my biggest complaint with Grimm has to be the Ex Machina endings. A great many of the endings are oh God fixed everything or made everything better, or magic happened and now everything is better. In one of the stories there is literally a magic herb that can put someone’s head back on and make them alive again, and in many there’s magic that can do it, and in others, heads just go back on again because God. It makes many of the stories feel irrelevant like I wasted my time reading them since their endings made the journey seem pointless.

    Now I can’t really give an overall statement about the collection because the stories don’t feel connected. I mean some of them are good, some are okay, but many of them are not worth the time. A bunch of the stories are simple wordplay that doesn’t work anymore to the average person. So much of it feels just confusing and unintelligible.

    Personally, I got about 70% through Grimm before I just couldn’t put up with it anymore. So I’d say that for it to be worth your time you should have someone with patience tell you which parts are worth reading, there’s probably a list on the internet somewhere, I just couldn’t be bothered with it anymore.

    So, to rate my overall experience I’d say I mostly enjoyed it, as most of that time was spent reading Arabian Nights. Aesop’s was so short it never had time to outstay its welcome, unlike Grimm. If you’ve never read Arabian Nights and have any intention to, I can’t recommend it enough. It’s by far one of the better collections of works I’ve read in a long time. Aesop’s is charming and short, and Grimm is an unwieldy mess; some good, and some horribly awful or terribly confusing.

    So my Final words, pick up Arabian Nights if you want an enjoyable collection of stories with a fairy tale air. Read Aesop’s if you’d like some short fables for reading to your kids. Unless you go and find a list of what is worth the time of Grimm don’t bother.