Latest read, The Little Peasant (1812) from Grimm's Complete Fairy Tales; a poor peasant repeatedly tricks his gullible neighbors, leading them to their death & himself to riches.
Life seems cheaper in the era of the Brothers Grimm, callous and morbid :)
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Latest read, The Enchanted Head (1904) by Andrew Lang, from The Brown Fairy Book (Fairy Tales from Around the World); based on an Arabic tale, a bodiless magician wins over a Sultan & his daughter.
A fable about seeing beyond appearances.
Illustration by HJ Ford.

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Latest read, The Snow Queen (1845) by Hans Christian Andersen. This fairy tale is also an 'epic fantasy miniature' as Gerda meets many characters, befriends crow and reindeer, and travels far to rescue Kai from the Snow Queen.

The idea of an icy Troll-crafted mirror, shattering into a billion pieces, and the splinters entering the eyes and hearts of people, turning them pessimistic, is poetic, great.

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Latest read, Daemon (1946) from The Best of C.L. Moore; a simple-minded man, who can see souls, is forced into servitude on a cruel Captain's ship. The Captain cannot bear the man's gaze or his pity & strands him on a desert isle.
Creative, engaging.
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Latest read, Love in a Colder Climate (1989) by J.G. Ballard; in a future of severe population loss, sex is compulsory, young men and women must have intercourse with a new partner every other day, and love is illegal.
Smart, dark, terrific.
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Latest read, Eyes of the Overworld (1966) by Jack Vance, from Tales of the Dying Earth. This novel features Cugel the Clever in his first adventures. A rogue and a scoundrel, these are wry, peculiar fantasies.
D&D owes it much of its weirder qualities.
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Latest read, Charmides (1881) by Oscar Wilde; an epic poem of a Grecian lad who drowns but is washed ashore & admired by a dryad. Artemis slays the dryad but Venus takes pity on the would-be lovers & convinces Hades to let them reunite in the Underworld.

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Latest read, The Light Princess (1871) by George MacDonald, from The Complete Fairy Tales. A Princess is cursed to be physically as light as a feather but also has too much lightness of heart, alien to the sorrow of others.
MacDonald was a major influence on Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, and it's very clear that they sought the same 'knowing' but humorous, grandfatherly voice in their narration.
Magical, charming.

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Latest read, The Last Guest (1929) by Jean Ray, from Cruise of Shadows; a sea-side innkeeper describes a terrifying night in the off-season when a manifestation of Death arrives.
Jean Ray was considered the Belgium Poe (though M.R. James or William Hope Hodgson might be more accurate).
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Latest read, The Dream of a Summer Day (1895) by Lafcadio Hearn from Japanese Ghost Stories; a fisherman is trapped 400 years in the future, a woodcutter's wife drinks to much from the fountain of youth and becomes a helpless babe. Interlinked tales of husbands & wives magically separated by time.
Poetic, lovely.
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Latest read, Moment of Truth (1989) by Gerry Levinson, from Witches and Warlocks; a brief tale of a witch who betrays her coven but, in turn, is betrayed by her black cat-familiar.
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Latest read, Tlon, Uqbar, and Orbis Tertius (1941) by Jorge Luis Borges from Book of Fantasy. Cognoscenti, as a joke, fake encyclopedia entries of a country and, eventually, a planet.
But then artifacts from their made-up planet are found.
Sly, cerebral
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Latest read, Great Lost Discoveries, Parts I, II, and III (1961) by Fredric Brown from Nightmares and Geezenstacks; concise accounts of the discoveries of invisibility, invulnerability, and immortality.
Each has a humorous twist-ending.
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Latest read, Slow Cold Chick (1999) by Nalo Hopkinson, from Skin Folk; While cooking in her kitchen, Blaise unwittingly unleashes a cockatrice from an odd egg. The cockatrice has a voracious appetite and quickly grows to the size of a Rottweiler.
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Latest read, The City Born Great (2016) by N.K. Jemisin from How Long 'Til Black Future Month?; a young woman, attuned to New York, aides it against Lovecraftian evil as the city begins to achieve consciousness.
Energetic with a cadence like Spoken Word.
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Latest read, Neighbors (2013) by Megan Lindholm, from Dangerous Women 1; in this novelette, a woman with early Alzheimer's discovers a misty other-world where other Alzheimer's sufferers have gone.
Light enough on fantasy to be considered magic-realism.
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Latest read, A !Tangled Web (1981) by Joe Haldeman, from Dealing in Futures; a multi-lingual trader is sent to the alien world of the !Tang, and must compete with an unethical rival.
Dealing with the !Tang, the agents have to be extremely humble:
"I die. I breathe in & breathe in and cannot exhale. I explode all over my friends. They forget my name and pretend it is dung. They wash off in the square & the well becomes polluted. All die. O the embarrassment."
Fun
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Latest read, The Crystal Cave (1970) by Mary Stewart. The story of Merlin's youth to the cukolding of Gorlois, as Uther and Igraine conceive the future King Arthur.
It's not an extravagant novel, rather reserved-- and that has added to its timelessness.
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Latest read, The Sadness of the Executioner (1973) by Fritz Leiber, from Swords & Ice Magic; Death comes for Fafhrd & Gray Mouser in the form of a berserker & a tattooed female blacksmith

Should he slay Fafhrd & the Mouser direct? No, they had somehow outwitted him which ought in all justice (if there be any such thing) give them immunity for a space. Besides it would smack of resentment. And after his fashion, despite occasional cheating, Death was a sportsman

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Latest read, Frozen (2009) by Angela Slatter, from The Girl With No Hands; a boy left to freeze to death by a negligent mother gradually returns through a crack in reality.
Fast and forlorn dark fantasy.
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