Letters from James Book

OH BOY, OH BOY, PEOPLE I HAVE A NEW FAVOURITE!

This edition came with two stories, "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" and "The Bottle Imp," and they were both awesome let's talk about them. I'm so excited I can't contain myself.

Jekyll:
- So. Well. Crafted. From beginning to end the story was engaging and the themes where quite straightforward, but I really love that in writing (see: George Orwell is my favourite author). I like it when authors aren't bogging their messages down in unneeded subtleties.
- Some of these sentences, I swear to god! One of my favourite ones: "I slept after the prostration of the day, with a stringent and profound slumber which not even the nightmares that wrung me could avail to break." The context doesn't even matter. It's solid gold.
- My only distress with this story comes not from anything Stevenson did, but from the fact that it's so famous (*spoiler alert*): I wish I didn't know Jekyll and Hyde are the same person! Gosh darn it. The story is solid enough that it doesn't matter if you know or not, (which is important: if one spoiler can ruin your story you don't have a very good story), but it would have been so wickedly fun not to know. Stevenson did such a good job of hiding it!
- The ideas of evil vs good in humans were great. And the idea that Jekyll didn't hate Hyde.. GOSH DARNIT THIS WAS GREAT.
- That ending though. That ending. THAT ENDING, JESUS.

Bottle:
- I had no idea what the heck this was, which made it so much fun. What a story! Stevenson has an awesome imagination. To avoid spoilers I'll keep this brief.
- This story was so stressful. Oh man I felt legitimate anxiety. My heart, it was not happy. WHICH IS GREAT. It's amazing when a piece of writing can make you feel real dread.
- Why was it set in Hawaii? When talking to a friend (who is Scottish. and so is Stevenson. so I trust her on this subject) she explained to me that Stevenson was known for being a world traveller, so maybe he just wanted to explore something new. It was interesting, I'd like to look more into the significance of the Hawaii setting.. definitely something to do with being an island?
- I wanted this to end more sadly. Gosh it was so set up for a sad ending, and I was dreading dreading dreading that it would end badly but sometimes these things can't end well! I think, ultimately, the ending didn't feel too bad. It could have been done worse, I think the "saviour" situation that happened had legitimate merit, but still. I think this would have been better if it had ended horribly.

Go read this, seriously people.