Welcome back to the Nerdy Friends Book Club! Just a quick reminder that if you want to join in the conversation about the first two short stories, you can do so here. Just scroll down to the comments.
This month we will be reading the next two stories in our selected book, Unnatural Creatures with stories selected by Neil Gaiman. First up, we have The Griffon and the Minor Canon, by Frank R. Stockton. Stockton was a contemporary of Mark Twain, and was best known for a series of children’s fairy tales popular in the late 19th century and none of which I had heard of. I regret this, because his Wikipedia page describes his children’s tales as poking fun at greed, violence, abuse of power, and other human foibles. Much better than kids hiking through the woods only to get eaten by a wicked witch!
Our second story is Ozioma The Wicked by Nnedi Okorafor. Nnedi is a contemporary writer, and winner of the Hugo, Nebula, Eisner, and World Fantasy awards, and frankly needs to be added to my TBR list!
By the way, both of these stories are under 20 pages long and based on my reading of the first two, they will each take maybe 15-30 mins to read, depending on your reading speed.
Last thought: Erin had a great recommendation after reading the first two shorts, which is to skip Gaiman’s intro until after you’ve read the stories, as his comments can be a bit spoiler-ish (or anti-spoiler-ish, in one particular case).
With that, let’s read! Please feel free to post your spoiler-filled thoughts in the comments starting April 23.
Okay, my phone fumbled. I am trying to get through a few other books first ….
I will reply late.
Hello Friends!
Another interesting pair of stories, and I admit that I had a harder time figuring out a deeper meaning in these.
In The Griffin and the Minor Canon, I had some expectations of a villager uprising of the Frankenstein or Hunchback of Notre Dame variety. After a griffin “monster” comes to town to gaze upon its likeness on the roof of a church, the villagers fear they will be eaten during an equinox ritual – so far, so good for the uprising theme. However, the griffin befriends the church’s minor canon, and instead of gathering in a raging mob, the villagers simply banish the minor canon hoping the griffin will follow. Even more unexpectedly, when the griffin discovers what they did, he insists on the return of the minor canon and that the villagers must “put him in the highest place among you”. I’m not really sure if the villagers learned any lessons here?
I really enjoyed Ozioma The Wicked for this particular reason: Ozioma has a skill (or power) of speaking to snakes which the townspeople don’t understand so they fear her and ostracize her as a witch. (Women with power are so scary, am I right?!) That is, until a huge snake appears and – surprise – they want her help. Townspeople are the same everywhere, even in Nigeria.
When I was young, we had a huge book of fairy tales. It had very few illustrations, and was probably meant to be read to children…or maybe not. They were not Disney fantasies about romance and princesses, but involved starvation, suffering, survival, grief, cruel and senseless magic spells, the occasional dismemberment and even death. There was mystery, a few talking animals, and each story conveyed a strong moral lesson, like “don’t have too much fun dancing or your feet will get cut off”. I read every story in that book multiple times and while it was escapist and mind-bending at it’s best, I didn’t always feel like I fully understand what the author was trying to say.
I feel similar about this book of fairy tales for adults. I liked the second story, although I kept trying to understand if the wasps represented colonialism (overthinking!). I absolutely loved the third story with it’s quiet hero and a narcissistic griffin. I look forward to starting the fourth…
Did this book originate from the same cultural background as your delightful SinterKlaas stories? 🙂
Is it just me or did the griffin story feel familiar? I kept wondering if I’d read it in school or if it just had a very fairy tale feel to it. I also think my church background affected how I interpreted this story…no the villagers didn’t turn into a raging mob, but they were quite willing to kick the minor canon out of town in order to be safe themselves (not exactly equality, justice, and compassion there). Yes, the minor canon was a quiet hero but the villagers were poops.
The snake story was a great feminist tale 🙂 It reminded me of another short story book called “Furies” edited by Sandi Toksvig. A bunch of authors each writing a story titled with a name that women have been called (furies, harpies, etc.) It’s a great collection.
The setting and descriptions of the second story reminded me of Ghana, from the trees to the weather to the people. And another quiet hero(ine).
I had no familiarity with the Griffin story, so maybe is does come from the church background, being as my church background was almost zero? I did find it depressingly realistic that the villagers were willing to kick out a solid and positive member of their community to save themselves … sigh …
Thank you for making me laugh!
I never thought of that before, but perhaps there was a Northern European cross-cultural influence there…