MagnoliaSouth
20 de junio de 2015
Grimm stories are great, editions not so much.
I think we are all well aware of what the stories are basically about. These are not Disney versions, of course. They don't necessarily live "happily ever after" and many of the stories are downright cruel and frightening. That said, I've been in search of the ultimate version of this book. As of the date of the writing of this review, I have not yet found that. Because I collected a number of popular Kindle versions (all of these reviews are based on Kindle versions), I thought I'd compare them here so you can choose which one best fits your needs.A few of things to know first.1. I view illustrated books on my desktop, so when I talk about illustrations, imagine them being much larger than on a tablet.2. When I refer to an "ATOC" I mean an active table of contents. That is, a TOC (table of contents) that has clickable links so you can go directly to a title story (or chapter) in the book. To me, that is crucial in any Kindle edition.3. Why am I linking to each one and not saying which one is the edition you're looking at right now? I realized that some editions contained reviews that had the exact same link as other reviews in some books. In the comments of this review, I will provide a link to illustrate what I mean. In any case, the point is that you can see the link for the exact edition I was speaking of so it's very clear.4. I rated the book 5 stars and that's because of the original text of the Grimm brothers' writing. Each edition would get a different rating, which is listed in it's comparison review.---Grimm's Fairy Tales (Illustrated)This edition has an intro, biographies of the brothers and illustrations. It has 4 main issues that detract from its usefulness:1. It contains only 62 of the original 211 stories which is unacceptable, at least for me.2. The images are very washed out so they are not clear at all. In fact, I'd say most are unclear. They are also not as large as one would expect. I would imagine them being near-useless on a tablet.3. There is neither an ATOC nor TOC. The best you have is a list of stories it contains (without page numbers) and that is all.4. Finally, paragraphs are only single spaced without indentations. For this reason they run together. That does not mean that the book is one large paragraph, it's just that there is only a single line break and not a double. For sentences that end at the left side of the page, it will look like one long paragraph.This one gets 3-stars at best. Its best feature is that it appears to not have many spelling or grammatical typos, which run rampant in Kindle editions. This could be a better book if they would simply reformat it and make an active TOC.Grimm's Fairy TalesThis edition has an ATOC but no other special features such as an intro, biographies nor any illustrations. It is simply bare bones prose.This version is similar to the one above in that it has single spaced paragraphs, but thankfully each paragraph has an indentation so it is easy to spot new paragraphs. I do like the text formatting better than the one above. It highlights rhymes very well.It's main downfall is that it too only contains 62 of the original 211 stories.This one also only gets 3-stars. There is no feature here that is all that worthy. You're missing most of the stories and you get no extras.Grimm's (Complete) Fairy Tales (Annotated)This edition has an ATOC, introduction and biographies of the brothers. It however does not have any illustrations, sadly. That would make it near perfect, except for the annotated thing, which I'll come back to.This edition is the most exhaustive of the three. It has 210 of the original 211 stories, which means if you want all the stories, this is the book for you. Most of its text formatting is better than the others as well. Paragraphs are double spaced, but the thing I don't like about it is that it doesn't highlight rhymes like the previous version.The one very serious problem I have with it is its claim of being annotated, when it very clearly is not. There's not a single annotation throughout the book. I'm not sure why they claim it to be so. Perhaps the print edition is annotated? In any case, I can say with the utmost authority that the Kindle edition is definitely not. What a disappointment!This one gets 4-stars simply because it does contain all of the stories. It looks like one story may be missing (I'm not going to go through all 211 to see which it is, but it could be that one was combined or a number was missed. Either way, it's the most complete version.---All in all the one I find most useful (so far), even if it's lacking, is the so-called "annotated" version. If you're wanting illustrations, then I would get both that one and the first one. The second one is, in my opinion, the least useful.The truth is that at the time of this writing there is not yet a perfect edition in Kindle. Perhaps one day. If you find one (that is low priced) let me know in the comments and I'll take a look at it.Hopefully this helped you in your choice. If not, please let me know how I can improve it.Ver másVer menos
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