The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales

Went in thinking “meh,” came out cackling. Grimm’s tales are unhinged: frogs hit walls and turn into husbands, beans laugh themselves to death, and orphans die in open graves.

Best ones feel like chaotic D&D quests (Two Brothers, Brother Lustig), others are just delightfully weird (The Straw, the Coal, and the Bean).

Dark, funny, and completely bonkers.

Always a classic. Easy listen and more interesting imo than more modern fairytales in a way since the Grimm stories are a bit darker.

I started reading this in late November. It took me about three months to get through all of it, with breaks to read other books to cleanse the palate. I feel like an albatross has been lifted from my neck. I think this is probably better as a reference book rather than a book to read straight through, front to back, because there's a lot, lot, lot of repetition. That's just how folklore is, of course, different tale types, Aarne-Thompson and all that, but it does get old reading the fourth or fifth story in a row about a guy trying to rescue a princess by performing impossible tasks, but the princess does it all for him with magic, or about tailors coercing princesses into marrying them, or about how blissfully stupid guys named Hans are. There are a lot of good stories, a few great stories, a few very weird and silly stories, and a lot of forgettable ones. I'm glad I've read it all but again, I'd recommend it as a reference rather than a straight-up read.

What a fun trip down memory lane, reading these translated stories. I love how some are totally differnt to how I was told them as a child, and others are just slightly "messier" than how I was told them.

Favorites: Sleeping Beauty, The Frog Prince, Rapunzel, Hansel and Gretel, Little Red-Cap, Rumpelstiltskin, Cinderella, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs & Snow-White and Rose-Red.