2011 Reading #30: The Collected Jorkens, Volume Two by Lord Dunsany
Books 1-10.
Books 11-20.
21. The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. Le Guin.
22. Rebellion at Christiana by Margaret Hope Bacon.
23. American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang.
24. This Sweet Sickness by Patricia Highsmith.
25. Sandstorm: A Forgotten Realms Novel by Christopher Rowe.
26. The St. Paul Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald, edited by Patricia Hampl and Dave Page.
27. Thor: The Mighty Avenger Volume 2 by Roger Langridge, Chris Samnee, and Matt Wilson.
28. A Brood of Foxes by Kristin Livdahl.
29. The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. Le Guin.
30. The Collected Jorkens, Volume Two by Lord Dunsany. I swear that I wrote about the first volume of these stories on here somewhere, but I can't find the entry; bad tagging on my part, I guess. Anyway, I really like the way that Nightshade did these collections; the bindings and the paper are beautiful. The stories themselves are for the most part quite different from Dunsany's The King of Elfland's Daughter and The Charwoman's Shadow. These are club stories, a tad more cynical in tone and significantly moreso in context; namely, in that it's never quite clear whether Jorkens is an outrageous liar or not. The structure of them can feel a bit dated, since many of them are twist or punch-line stories in the O. Henry vein. It does get repetitive at times, and some of the stories are pretty forgettable, but I suspect that it's still better to read them in a collection; on their own I don't know that they would have much impact, whereas the character of Jorkens really comes through in the concatenation of tales. Some of my fave stories here are: "The Neapolitan Ice," "The Lion and the Unicorn," and "The Sultan, the Monkey, and the Banana."
Books 11-20.
21. The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. Le Guin.
22. Rebellion at Christiana by Margaret Hope Bacon.
23. American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang.
24. This Sweet Sickness by Patricia Highsmith.
25. Sandstorm: A Forgotten Realms Novel by Christopher Rowe.
26. The St. Paul Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald, edited by Patricia Hampl and Dave Page.
27. Thor: The Mighty Avenger Volume 2 by Roger Langridge, Chris Samnee, and Matt Wilson.
28. A Brood of Foxes by Kristin Livdahl.
29. The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. Le Guin.
30. The Collected Jorkens, Volume Two by Lord Dunsany. I swear that I wrote about the first volume of these stories on here somewhere, but I can't find the entry; bad tagging on my part, I guess. Anyway, I really like the way that Nightshade did these collections; the bindings and the paper are beautiful. The stories themselves are for the most part quite different from Dunsany's The King of Elfland's Daughter and The Charwoman's Shadow. These are club stories, a tad more cynical in tone and significantly moreso in context; namely, in that it's never quite clear whether Jorkens is an outrageous liar or not. The structure of them can feel a bit dated, since many of them are twist or punch-line stories in the O. Henry vein. It does get repetitive at times, and some of the stories are pretty forgettable, but I suspect that it's still better to read them in a collection; on their own I don't know that they would have much impact, whereas the character of Jorkens really comes through in the concatenation of tales. Some of my fave stories here are: "The Neapolitan Ice," "The Lion and the Unicorn," and "The Sultan, the Monkey, and the Banana."