The Penguin Book of Christmas Stories cover art

The Penguin Book of Christmas Stories

From Hans Christian Andersen to Angela Carter

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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

Truman Capote makes whisky-soaked fruitcake in Alabama; Laurie Lee slides across a frozen pond in Gloucestershire; and Shirley Jackson is outwitted by a wily Santa Claus at the bank. Ghosts haunt the Christmases of Muriel Spark and Elizabeth Bowen, while Dostoyevsky, Daphne du Maurier and Italo Calvino take a cynical view of the season and Selma Lagerlof and Angela Carter celebrate its miracles. Ranging from Cork to Lagos to the Wild West and from Paris to San Paolo to outer space, this is Christmas as imagined by some of the greatest short-story writers of all time.

©2020 Jessica Harrison (P)2020 Penguin Audio Anthologies Anthologies & Short Stories Classics Fiction Genre Fiction Holidays Short Stories Winter Christmas Haunted Ghost
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It is almost impossible to listen to this tape due to the poor reader who stops and starts when reading every story. This interrupts the flow of each story and is extremely annoying. The delivery is broken into very short sections which destroys the progression of the tale. The pronunciation is also very laboured and lacking in expression so any humour or atmosphere is completely lacking, such a disappointment as the story selection is good. Don’t buy this tape without listening very carefully first!

Poor inexperienced reader spoils this Compilation

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Odd stories, and I really don’t think much of the person reading it. Poor acting so every story sounds the same.

Unusual Stories

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Not really engaging. The narrator is perhaps not the best for this work. Also, there is an audio editing error in the final story Ghost Ships by Carter at around 3 min 45 sec, in which the audio overlaps and repeats.

Largely forgettable collection of short stories

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