Today I started indulging in a new book I got in Penguin's new "Penguin Classic Horror" series....it's a 6 book series curated and edited by Guillermo Del Toro! I love Del Toro, so I'm all about this series! It's mostly classic horror books, but has one book that has a mix of short horror stories, edited by S.C. Joshi. They span from the very late 19th century up til today so I was really excited about this one! Today I sat outside and enjoyed the beautiful fall temperatures that we're getting here in Southern Louisiana (and yes, I'm calling mid-upper 70's fall) and read the first two stories in the collection, now bringing me up to a whole 5/1000 stories read for this goal :p
The first story was "The Adventure of the German Student" by Washington Irving. This was actually the first thing I've ever read by Irving and it was a fantastic introduction to him and fantastic opener to this collection. This is your classic ghost story and would be a wonderful story to tell around a campfire late on a halloween night :) It's the story of a student studying in Germany who's a bit fascinated by the surreal in life and fascinated by the female figure as well. But he lives a solitary existence and has no friends at all. While walking the streets of Paris one day (yes he's in Paris now), he finds a woman crumpled on the ground dressed all in black at the foot of a guillotine and can tell that she's distressed. He offers her company when he sees the sadness that she's in and these two solitary souls seemingly find solace in each other.....but as often happens in ghost stories, solace is often false...oh yes it is :p Truly enjoyed this one.
The second story in the collection was "Edward Randolph's Portrait" by Nathaniel Hawthorne and I just didn't like this story at all. Which was really disappointing because I really LIKE Hawthorne. I generally disliked most of what I was forced to read in high school and I've often thought looking back that it was BECAUSE I was forced to read something. But two of the few things that stand out from high school that I really enjoyed reading were Hawthorne's novel,
The Scarlet Letter and his wonderful short story, "Young Goodman Brown." This one though...nothing for me. It's the story of a painting from the past that is covered up and lost forever that reveals itself basically but the story is so caught up in elaborate writing that I was just never engaged. It also made me think about something that I've always thought...when you're putting together a short story collection, wouldn't you want to pick nothing but WOW stories???? That's what I would do! Of course, maybe it's just that I'm dumb and don't understand some of these things and of course everyone has different tastes too..so I guess that's also why you're never going to find a universally "perfect" short story collection. Though there are definitely some that are more universally loved than others. But if I was editing a collection, I would never just settle...and say..."well we have to have a Hawthorne story and 'Young Goodman Brown' is too well known, so I guess we'll go with this one" and I feel like that's what happened. Oh well.
Next up is "Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allan Poe and I've read that one quite a few times actually and I know for a fact I love that one, so looking forward to that ;)
