If there was any job that needed doing, it was always the elder son who had to do it. But there was one thing the elder son wouldn't do: if his father asked him to get something as night was falling, or when it was completely dark, and if his way took him through the graveyard or some creepy place like that, he'd say, 'Oh, no, father, I won't go there, it gives me the shivers.'This is a selection of stories taken from the Grimm Brothers' collections of the nineteenth century, reinterpreted with some critical apparatus by Philip Pullman. It includes a lot of the classics - Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, Cinderella, The Musicians of Bremen - and lot of others, many of which have justly been forgotten. Pullman supplies a list of alternate sources for each story, along with a short analysis/critique. Still, I was left wondering a little why he had bothered.
Grimm Tales for Young and Old was my top unread book acquired in 2018 and my top unread sf book. You can get it here. Next on those piles respectively are How To Be Both, by Ali Smith, and A Local Habitation, by Seanan McGuire.
