Short stories

It takes real skill to compress into a few pages a story that could stretch for a mile. very few authors actually write decent short stories.

I recently read a bunch that were like a side-dish to the amazing "Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell" by Susanna Clarke called "The Ladies of Grace Adieu". A little creepy and quite amusing, t really gives depth to the world that she created.

Another set I read was Richard Adams' "Tales for Watership Down". When I picked it up I actually thought it was "Watership Down" itself, but it was instead a very readable set of short stories.

The best part of these stories is that, even not knowing the entire context, the stories make sense as stand-alones. They could easily be part of Aesop's fables, or an general anthology that doesn' belong to a particular fiction universe. The tales they tell are universal, they make as much sense in their world as they do is ours. (The same cannot be said of Beedle the Bard which is so unorigial its painful - but I won't go into that here).

I also read Robin McKinley's "Beauty" . I usually enjoy her work. Her characters are usually original as are her takes on the fairy tales. This one though, felt like it was simply a longer and slightly more boring version of Disney. She had a few interesting 'extras' on the set- but hey so did Disney!