James-A-Day: Number 13

By -
"Number 13" is a particular favorite of mine, partly because it's set in Denmark, which just makes me happy --I lived there once. 

This time the ghost is a room that appears only at night.  I like how the story gives you two parallel tracks that are clearly related, but MRJ never tells you that they are.  Anderson is unwittingly discovering the history of the haunted room even before he figures out that there is something really weird going on in his hotel.

This is another example, by the way, of a Reformation-era witch trial; Denmark converted to Lutheranism in 1536 and we can see that Bishop Friis and Rasmus Nielsen were having their argument over the troldmand Mag. Franken right about then.  (Bishop Jørgen Friis was a real person but Nielsen appears to be fictitious.)

How did you like the occupant of room 13?  I like how we mostly only get shadows and sounds, with barely more than one sentence about the ghost's appearance: "...the door opened, and an arm came out and clawed at his shoulder. It was clad in ragged, yellowish linen, and the bare skin, where it could be seen, had long grey hair upon it."  
If you're doing the Udolpho readalong, did you laugh when MRJ referred to Emily's poetic habits?

Comments

  1. missyOctober 8, 2012 at 6:25 AM

    Yes, I did think that was very coincidental about Udolpho! I have had this cold and have only read the first chapter, but decided I must go back and read the poetry later because I couldn't handle it at the time :-)

    Very interesting that you lived in Denmark. I like how James has us traveling! I've enjoyed all of his tales so far. This was the last one I have read, so I will try to catch up. I do like his writing. It has the perfect atmosphere and today, it actually FEELS like fall where I live. Cool front coming on!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

The Four Ages of Poetry

By -
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of...
Read more

A few short stories in Urdu

By -
Image
 Back in August, I got hold of a book of Urdu short stories translated into English.  It's a large book, so I wanted to read just the women authors for WIT, and that would still be a good amount.  August got away from me, and I only read one or two stories back then, but I've continued reading them since.  I've now finished all the short stories in the book that were written by women (luckily for me, there are short biographies in an appendix, since I could only tell from the name about half the time).  I'll just highlight a couple: "The Wagon," by Khalida Asghar, is a hallucinatory, apocalyptic story.  The narrator meets three strange men who are watching the evening sky and point out that it has become red.  No one had noticed until they said so, but the sky is now strangely red.  Then a smell arrives, so offensive and sickening that it causes real pain -- but only once it's pointed out.  And finally, a mysterious wagon, which may be the s...
Read more

Faerie Queen Readalong I: Redcrosse, the Knight of Holiness

By -
Image
I did it, I read all of Book I!  My minimum requirement was two cantos a day, but I managed three a couple of times.  I'm hoping to read ahead, because I'll be gone for two weeks in the middle of this event and I'd like to be able to prep a post ahead of time...but the schedule is already pretty demanding.  The reading is not terribly difficult, but it is slow.  I keep thinking that I've read a large chunk, only to look back and realize that in fact I have read six verses.  So here we go with analysis... Each book in the Faerie Queene features a knight, and a story, about a particular virtue.  The Redcrosse Knight, to be known as St. George after he accomplishes his feats, is all about Holinesse .  This does not mean that Redcrosse already exemplifies holiness; he doesn't.  Holiness is what he's working towards and struggling with.  His foes symbolize various forms of unholiness, and he falls into their clutches at least as often as he ...
Read more