Schlagwort: Collection

Ghostly Winter Tales: A Fourth Collection of Classic Ghost Stories for Christmas

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Author23 classical authors
PublisherBlack Heath Editions
EditorsB.M. Croker, Dick Donovan,
Fergus Hume, W.J. Wintle
Date11 November 2018
EditionKindle Edition
Pages235 (print version)
LanguageEnglish
ASINB07KFHWRL8

“It was about a fortnight before Christmas, when the days were at their shortest and darkest.” (Quotation page 129, from “Christmas Eve at Beach House” by Eliza Lynn Linton)

Content, Theme and Genre

This fourth collection of Classic Ghost Stories contains twenty-three stories by different authors, written in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. All stories take place during foggy winter days and dark winter nights around Christmas, where guests are invited to celebrate happy, festive Christmas days and New Years Eve in the beautiful manors and old country houses of their hosts. At this time of the year everything can happen, ghosts are to be seen, mostly unfriendly, and some of the invited guests might listen amused to the stories about haunted houses and rooms, definitely not believing in such supernatural things, and then may awake or not awake one morning, just having experienced otherwise, without any logical and possible explanation. “Much still remains obscure and cannot now be cleared up; for the only man who could perhaps throw further light on it is no longer with us.” (Quotation page 215, from “The Black Cat” by W. J. Wintle). Very interesting for me was the story “The Christmas Eve Vigil” by James Bowker, as I know the theme of the ghostly procession of figures towards a church, revealing the faces of the persons going to die during the following year, from a famous theatre play, “Der Müller und sein Kind”, written 1830 by the German writer Ernst Raupach.

Conclusion

A perfect collection for gripping, enjoyable reading hours during dark winter evenings.  

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Devotions, The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver

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AuthorMary Oliver
PublisherPenguin Books
Date10 October 2017
EditionKindle edition
Pages477 (print-version)
LanguageEnglish
ASINB01MZHR2P7

“Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life? / While the soul, after all, is only a window, / and the opening of the window no more difficult / than the wakening from a little sleep.” (Quotation from “Have you ever tried to enter the long black branches, pos. 2487)

Content

These more than two-hundred poems are a personal selection of her poems, selected by Mary Oliver herself. She begins with her latest collection, Felicity, 2015, followed by Blue Horses 2014, Dog Songs, 2013, A Thousand Mornings 2012, Swan, 2010, Evidence, 2009, The Truro Bear and Other Adventures, 2008, Red Bird, 2008, Thirst, 2006, New and Selected Poems, Volume Two, 2005, Blue Iris, 2004, Why I wake Early, 2004, Long Life, 2004, Owls and Other Fantasies, 2003, What do we know, 2002, The Leaf and the Cloud, 2000, West Wind, 1997, White Pine, 1994, New and Selected Poems: Volume One, 1992, House of Light, 1990, Dream Work, 1986, American Primitive, 1983, Three Rivers Poetry Journal, 1980, Twelve Moons, 1979, The River Styx, Ohio, 1972, and ends with her first poetry collection No Voyage and Other Poems, 1963 and 1965.

Theme and Writing

These poems are moments of observations and thoughts about nature, rivers, even stones, sun, snow, roses; we meet animals like foxes, horses, birds, especially herons, and her beloved dogs in her Dog Songs. Just simple moments, calm afternoons, evenings, sunny mornings in a quiet special surrounding of the beautiful nature and the poet wants to share these special moments, thoughts and feelings with us. Every single poem wants to show us the beauty of our world, to protect it and just enjoy every day of our life and be grateful for it.

Conclusion

“The poem is not the world. / It isn’t the first page of the world. / But the poem wants to flower, like a flower. / It knows that much. (Quotation from “Flare” 8., pos. 2361) These poems by Mary Oliver flower and touch our mind and souls.

Poetry, Reviews , , , ,

Spectres in the Snow: A Third Collection of Classic Ghost Stories for Christmas

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Author21 authors
PublisherBlack Heath Editions
Date9 September 2016
EditionKindle
Pages391 pages (print)
LanguageEnglish
ASINB01LW9TVHI

“Haunted or no, there was something so uncanny in the appearance of the old gables, fast rottering to ruin, that even in the crepuscular light and early evening, persons would hurry by it with a shudder, while later at night, many would go a long way round rather than pass its weather-worn walls.” (Quotation pos. 337 “The Phantom Riders” by Ernest R. Suffling)

Theme and Content

A collection of ghost stories set in the Victorian and Edwardian time. Written by different authors, these twenty-one old gothic tales too are multifaceted, but always gripping and spooky. The reader meets phantom riders, haunted houses and haunted rooms, the dead sexton, Mr. Morgan in Australia who always hurries home before it gets dark, and a friendly ghost who helps his descendants and real true stories about eerie appearances with no logical explanation. Mysterious things happen in these nights around Christmas, where the snow is falling and shadows might be not only shadows but also something else.  

Conclusion

This selection of traditional ghost stories, written in the poetic language of the olden times, is a perfect read for the dark winter nights around Christmas time.

Gothic, Reviews, Short Stories , , ,

Winter Ghosts: Classic Ghost Stories for Christmas – Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell and others

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AuthorCharles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell and others
PublisherBlack Heath Editions
Date18 September 2014
EditionKindle
Pages378 (print version)
LanguageEnglish
ASINB00NQA0K1U

“As for me, I know very well that when I read him of a dark night, I am obliged to creep to bed without shutting ny book, and without daring to look behind me.” (Quotation from “The Dead Man’s Story”, pos. 1056)

“We talked on an extraordinary variety of subjects, I distinctly recollect a long argument on mushrooms-mushrooms, murders, racing, cholera; from cholera we came to sudden death, from sudden death to churchyards, and from churchyards, it was naturally but a step to ghosts.” (Quotation from “Number Ninety”, pos. 3878)

Content

The Phantom Coach by Amelia B Edwards

The Ghost of Christmas Eve by J.M. Barrie

The Governess’s Story by Amyas Northcote

The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton by Charles Dickens

The Dead Man’s Story by James Hain Friswell

Bone to His Bone by E.G. Swain

Jerry Bundler by W.W. Jacobs

The Old Nurse’s Story by Elizabeth Gaskell

Thurlow’s Christmas Story by John Kendrick Bangs

The Story of a Disappearance and an Appearance by M.R. James

The Real and the Counterfeit by Louisa Baldwin

Mustapha by S. Baring-Gould

Wolverden Tower by Grant Allen

Number Ninety by B.M. Croker

The Great Staircase at Landover Hall by Frank Stockton

A Strange Christmas Game by Charlotte Riddell

What Was He? by Theo Gift

The Brazen Cross by H.B. Marriott Watson

The Beeston Ghost by John Swaffield Orton

Theme and Genre

A collection of classic Victorian and Edwardian ghost stories about inexplicable, supernatural, spooky experiences, written by different authors.

Conclusion

A perfect collection for dark winter evenings, giving you spine-tingling feelings. Very different stories and different writing styles make this book a thrilling, enjoyable reading.

Gothic, Reviews, Short Stories , , ,

Unsent – Penelope Shuttle

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AuthorPenelope Shuttle
PublisherBLOODAXE BOOKS
Date1 October 2012
EditionPaperback
Pages270
LanguageEnglish
ISBN-13978-1852249502

„What is it with poets and their hearts? They leave them in the oddest places.” (Quotation from “Hearts”, page 241)

Content

This is a new collection of poems from nine of her published books, published between 1981 and 2010 and a new collection, “Unsent” from 2012.

Themes and Language

Thema und Genre TextThe poet has written poems about everything, everyday situations and feelings; nothing seems too simple, flowers, rain and roses, art, nature, Cornwall’s impressive landscape, dreams and magic, children, especially about herself as a mother and her daughter Zoe. We find poems about love and poems written about her love for her husband Peter Redgrove who had died in 2003 and how she still is missing him.

Penelope Shuttle has words for everything and embraced by her feelings between the words, her language paints beautiful pictures full of wisdom, wit, happiness and sadness.

The first poem by Penelope Shuttle, I had read, was “Outgrown” written for her daughter Zoe and it is still one of my favorite ones

“….. because just as I work out how to be a mother

       she stops being a child.” (Page 107)

Just a few words to describe everything about motherhood.

Conclusion

Unsent is a collection of poems, not of classical rhymes, but of a beautiful poetic language, with its own intonation and rhythm, sensitive, stunning and deeply impressing. They are experiences of life, to share with our own experiences.

Poetry, Reviews , ,

Poems to Live Your Life By – Chris Riddell

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AuthorChris Riddell
PublisherPan Macmillan London
Date20 September 2018
EditionHardcover
Pages208
LanguageEnglish
ISBN-13978-1509814374

„Tread softly because you tread on my dreams“ (Original quotation from a Poem by W.B. Yeats, page 64)

Content

This beautifully illustrated book is a collection of poems, some well-know, some known but forgotten, and others that might be new for the reader. The different poems are grouped together by topics: Musings, Youth, Family, Love, Imaginings, Nature, War, Endings.

I found my favorite poem by W.B. Yeats, as well as poems by Lord Byron and Dylan Thomas, together with song texts by Nick Care and Leonard Cohen. One of the poems that deeply impressed me is “Outgrown” by Penelope Shuttle.

Conclusion

This collection definitely are poems to live your life by, an enjoyable book that is not meant to be read and shelved, but to be taken whenever you need time to reflect and unwind.

Ein wunderschön illustriertes Buch, das eine Sammlung von Gedichten enthält, Gedichte, die man kennt, Gedichte, die man längst vergessen hatte und auch Gedichte, die man bisher nicht kannte. Die Werke sind nach Thema gruppiert, es geht um Jugend und Ende, Familie, Liebe, Krieg, Natur, Träumereien und Phantasiegestalten.

Hier fehlt auch mein Lieblingsgedicht von W.B. Yeats nicht, es ziert sogar als Auszug die Rückseite des Buches. Wir finden Lord Byron, Dylan Thomas, natürlich Klassiker wie William Shakespeare, aber auch Songtexte, zum Beispiel Nick Cave und Leonard Cohen. Doch es sei nicht zu viel verraten, es ist eine breit gefächerte Sammlung, es macht Spaß, sich überraschen zu lassen und Neues zu entdecken.

Sicher kein Buch, das man durchliest und dann ins Regal stellt, sondern ein Gedichtband, den man gerne immer wieder zur Hand nimmt, um nachzudenken und zu entspannen, oder einfach zum Vergnügen.

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