Archives: Lord Dunsany Re-Read

Lord Dunsany Re-Read: “The Avenger of Perdóndaris”

 

Bill Ward and I are continuing with our Lord Dunsany re-read with a follow-up to one of Dunsany’s greatest, “Idle Days on the Yann.”  Here’s a link to the Gutenberg edition of Tales of Three Hemispheres, one of Lord Dunsany’s later (and to my mind weaker) collections. Towards the very end of the collection are  “The Avenger Of Perdóndaris,” which we discussed this week. As always, our rating system is simple. Any Dunsany story tends to be fabulous, so one star is a standout and two is something remarkable.

Lord Dunsany Re-read: A House on Go-by Street

Bill Ward and I are continuing with our Lord Dunsany re-read with a follow-up to one of Dunsany’s greatest, “Idle Days on the Yann.”  Here’s a link to the Gutenberg edition of Tales of Three Hemispheres, one of Lord Dunsany’s later (and to my mind weaker) collections. Towards the very end of the collection are  “A Shop in Go-By Street,” and “The Avenger Of Perdóndaris.” Next week we’ll be discussing “Avenger.” This week we read “Go-By Street.”

Howard: This was the first Lord Dunsany story I’ve read where I felt tension. I thought I’d read it before, but it seemed new to me, because I honestly was waiting, breathless, to see whether the narrator could get back to the Yann. There was less distance between the reader and the events this time than I’ve felt before in a Dunsany story, perhaps because I could relate so well to the narrator’s desperate search for a way back to the land of dreams and the magic he found there. And I exulted with him when he found the way, and I enjoyed with him the delights along his path and all the marvelous little Dusnany-esque asides, like the dreams of dead poets and the sleeping gods and how forlorn Time will be when the Gods are finally dead, and the fate of those who prophesy the word of dead gods.

Lord Dunsany: A Dreamer’s Tales Wrap Up

This Friday brings us the final installment of our read through of a Lord Dunsany short story collection, A Dreamer’s Tales. My friends Bill Ward and C.S.E. Cooney have joined me once again to share thoughts and look back on what we’ve read. Unfortunately, Claire was fending off a horde of Gibbelins this week, and had only time to drop by for a few moments. 

Lord Dunsany Re-Read: A Dreamer’s Tales, Part 5

This Friday brings us the fifth installment of our read through of a Lord Dunsany short story collection, A Dreamer’s Tales. My friends Bill Ward and C.S.E. Cooney have joined me once again to share thoughts. You can join in too — this book’s stories not only are quite short, they’re freely available as a Kindle download or through Project Gutenberg. It won’t take very long to catch up if you haven’t read them yet, so you might want to do so before you read any further.

This week we tackled the three final stories of the collection, “The Field,” “The Day of the Poll,” and “The Unhappy Body.” We have a pretty simple review scale. One star is a standout and two stars is truly great.

Lord Dunsany Re-Read: A Dreamer’s Tales, Part 4

This Friday brings us the fourth installment of our read through of a Lord Dunsany short story collection, A Dreamer’s Tales. My friends Bill Ward and C.S.E. Cooney have joined me once again to share thoughts. You can join in too — this book’s stories not only are quite short, they’re freely available as a Kindle download or through Project Gutenberg. It won’t take very long to catch up if you haven’t read them yet, so you might want to do so before you read any further.

This week we tackled only two stories, “Carcassonne” and “In Zaccarath.” We have a pretty simple review scale. One star is a standout and two stars is truly great.

Lord Dunsany Re-Read: A Dreamer’s Tales, Part 3

This Friday brings us the third installment of our read through of a Lord Dunsany short story collection, A Dreamer’s Tales. My friends Bill Ward and C.S.E. Cooney have joined me once again to share thoughts. You can join in too — this book’s stories not only are quite short, they’re freely available as a Kindle download or through Project Gutenberg. It won’t take very long to catch up if you haven’t read them yet, so you might want to do so before you read any further.

This week we tackled four stories, “The Idle City,” “The Hashish Man,” “Poor Old Bill,” and “The Beggars.” We have a pretty simple review scale. One star is a standout and two stars is truly great.

Lord Dunsany Re-Read: A Dreamer’s Tales, Part 2

This Friday brings us the second installment of our read through of a Lord Dunsany short story collection, A Dreamer’s Tales. My friends Bill Ward and C.S.E. Cooney have joined me once again to share thoughts. You can join in too — this book’s stories not only are quite short, they’re freely available as a Kindle download or through Project Gutenberg. It won’t take very long to catch up if you haven’t read them yet, so you might want to do so before you read any further.

This week we tackled only two stories, “Idle Days on the Yann,” and “The Sword and the Idol.” We have a pretty simple review scale. One star is a standout and two stars is truly great.

Lord Dunsany Re-Read: A Dreamer’s Tales, Part 1

This week launches the first instcallment of our read through of a Lord Dunsany short story collection, A Dreamer’s Tales. My friends Bill Ward and C.S.E. Cooney have been kind enough to join me in posting their thoughts. You can join in too — this book’s stories not only are quite short, they’re freely available as a Kindle download or through Project Gutenberg. It won’t take very long to catch up if you haven’t read them yet, so you might want to do so before you read any further. We began with  the first five of them.

We could have started the re-read with any of Lord Dunsany’s eight short-story collections, but I thought the opening entries in A Dreamer’s Tales were quite strong and hopefully would convince newcomers to stick with him.

Here’s how I rate them. One star is a standout. Two stars means it’s among Lord Dunsany’s very best.

The Big Lord Dunsany Re-Read

I don’t actually know how big it will be, because so far I have me and anyone else who wants to join in. Which means just me.

While prepping for the lecture I gave at the Big Read I started thinking about all of the great Lord Dunsany short stories I’ve enjoyed over the years and realized that there were a couple of collections I’d still only sampled from. I decided it was time to revisit that lyrical master of the fantastic.

I hope some of you will join in. For the next three or four Fridays I’ll be reading through A Dreamer’s Tales, and for the first week I’ll be reading: