CC Spin: Stories of Walter de la Mare

Short Stories, vol. 1, by Walter de la Mare

When will I learn not to read giant collections of short stories all at once?  I regret it every time.

Walter de la Mare sure wrote a whole lot of short stories.  They were for an adult audience and published in magazines at the turn of the century, when there was an endless demand for them.  Volume I covers 1895 - 1926, so a good bit more than just the turn of the century. 

These stories are mostly somewhat spooky.  They're not outright scary or horror; they're gently unsettling, or creepy, or disturbing, but they're not usually obvious about it. 

Some of them are rather thematic.  There were four or five stories in a row featuring characters inspecting gravestones for interesting, amusing, or pathetic epitaphs, which I sincerely hope were real epitaphs de la Mare had collected himself.

One story, one of the more obviously spooky ones called "The Riddle," had a detail that I believe may well have made its way into John Bellairs' The Mansion in the Mist.   

But, the trouble is that when I try to read an entire collection of short stories, I very soon get pretty tired of whatever the short stories are.  This is nearly 500 pages' worth of de la Mare being gently unsettling, and I just didn't want that much all at once.  So while I didn't finish the collection, I did get a good dose of de la Mare, and I believe I could spot one of his stories at 100 paces.  I'm going to call it good.

So that was a fairly successful Spin, I think.  I hope another one shows up soon -- and meanwhile, tomorrow is the start of 20 Books of Summer!

Comments

  1. I love short stories but never seem to make time to read them. And I find them difficult to blog about -- do you write about individual stories? As a whole? And I agree, it's hard to read a lot of them at once. I hadn't heard of de la Mare but I am intrigued, especially the reference to John Bellairs who was one of my favorite writers as a child, I loved The House with a Clock in Its Walls. Delightfully creepy!

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  2. Karen, I should have said who de la Mare was! He was an English writer and did a lot of stories and poetry for children, including collections of poetry in general. That's what he's most known for today.

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  3. Good job reading so many! I'm trying to think what I know La Mare from. I think maybe children's poetry.

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  4. I know what you mean about short story collections. I've been reading a collection of Guy du Maupassant's stories for Paris in July for 3 yrs now. I read 3-5 each year and will hopefully finish the book this year.
    I once tried to read William Trevor's complete short story collection as a regular book, by about the twentieth story I was feeling numb!! Took me years to pick it up again.

    Congrats on completing your (our) 20th ccspin :-)

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  5. That's what I should do, Brona! And congrats to you too ;)

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  6. Good effort! They were originally published in ways that were meant to be read once a month or week or so. Perhaps that's how they work best.

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  7. There are a few short story collections that I have read all at once, but they were all fairly short. Definitely not 500 pages!

    I have not done a CC Spin yet since joining the club last year. Maybe I will do the next one.

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  8. I hope so, Beth! Spins are my favorite. :)

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