Customer Reviews

Aesop's Fables; a new translation

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The stories are fine and there are a lot of them in this book. They don't capitalize any letters in the stories and it makes it a bit difficult to read. I didn't enjoy it like I thought I would because of that. This might not bother others like it does me.

It is delightful to have Aesop's fables in such a handy, readable format. And the $1.05 version with the linked TOC (table of contents) is great. From reading another review I thought it would he hard to navigate, but the table of contents takes you to whichever story you want. The only problem is that you cannot access the table of contents from inside the book, but that is not really serious -- you can always jump back to the beginning.

"This is the immortal justification of the Fable: that we could not teach the plainest truths so simply without turning men into chessmen. We cannot talk of such simple things without using animals that do not talk at all." So says G. K. Chesterton in the introduction.

This is a translation of Aesop, published in 2009. The Fables are brief, but they are telling. The first one--"The Fox and the Grapes." A hungry fox saw some grapes on a high trellis. He tried to reach and eat them by jumping, but he could not jump high enough. So, he concludes (Page 1): ""I thought those grapes were ripe, but I see now they are quite sour." Interesting take on how people will downgrade things that they cannot accomplish by denigrating those very things.

There are 284 pages of Fables, each brief, many familiar to all of us, and many with insightful conclusions. Others? I learned some Fables that I do not recall having read as a kid. For instance, "The Mice in Council." Mice agree that to be protected against cats, they should put a bell around the cat's neck so that they know of the cat's presence. One wise mouse observed (page6): ". . . may I ask who is going to bell the cat?" And so on and so on and so on. A lot of wisdom in these brief stories. . . .

A nice version of this classic.

Whooee this book is a lot more fun than I remember. I purchased the "AESOP'S FABLES: A NEW TRANSLATION (UPDATED w/LINKED TOC)" for the kindle. However, I have not figured out how to make it work yet. Just a note each Fable is preceded by a hand drawn pictograph of the tale.

There is a great introduction by G.K. Chesterton, which is worth the purchase in its self. He compares and contrasts fables and fairy tales both in theory and detail. Then he compares and contrasts Uncle Remus and the Brothers Grim to Aesop. When you are finished, you have an insight or a different view of fables in general.

Then you hit the deck running. "The fox and the grapes "etc. Well this is where I am a little disappointed as the fables are saying the same thing but the wording is different. I am just too used to the old way and this seems a little two mellow.

There are very few fables that I did not hear and I did not realize there were so many different versions of "The Slave and the Lion". Most of my fable history came from a part of the "Rocky and Bullwinkle "show, "Aesop and Son"

In any event, no library or culturally literate person is complete without these fables.

This is the $1.25 (12/19/10) version and it is well formatted and the Table of Contents IS clickable. It has a commentary by G. K. Chesterton, but no other comments. I gave the book 4 stars because I would enjoy some comment on each fable, but that's just me.

I remember these fables from my childhood, but had no idea there were so many! The table of contents, as displayed on my Kindle 3 (6" screen) is about 12 pages with about 24 items on each page. That's a lot of fables.