SOUNDTRACK: hiatus
[READ: December 18, 2021] “The Travelling Companion”
This year, S. ordered me The Short Story Advent Calendar. This is my seventh time reading the Calendar. The 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar is a deluxe box set of individually bound short stories.
As always, each story is a surprise, so you won’t know what you’re getting until you crack the seal every morning starting December 1. Once you’ve read that day’s story, check this link where editor Alberto Manguel is providing daily commentary on each of the stories he selected for this year’s calendar.
I have mixed feelings about including a Hans Christian Andersen story here. On the one hand, I don’t think I have ever actually read an HCA story (of course I know many of them). So on the one hand it was interesting to do so. But, as with Homer, there was no from the last century and a half in Denmark worthy of inclusion here?
In this story a Poor John’s father dies immediately. So Poor John sets off with his few belongings to seek his fortune.
The first night he slept under the stars and in the morning gave some coins to a beggar. Later that night, he happened upon a church and made to sleep there for the night as the weather was worsening. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 