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Nov 09, 2011

Robert rated it:

I was a victim of marketing with this book: If it had been The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (the original title) on the cover I almost certainly would have passed it by. However, I could not miss out on the book holding Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, two stories whose fame outstrips that of their author by a few miles (at least in Britain).

It turns out that "Sketchbook" is appropriate, where-as "Stories" is only apt to a minority of the piec More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Nov 09, 2011

Nicole rated it:

It's been a long time since I had the pleasure of sitting down and reading pieces of literature written in a time before these last couple of decades, and this one did not disappoint. Mind you, while I'm reading this for my American Literature of the 19th Century class (English Major~ Who'd have guessed it~), it's a really delicious experience to be able to put down the more rampant outlandish stories that so often capture the minds of the youths today and read something that was trying to estab More...

18 comments like (2 people liked it)

Nov 09, 2011

Bookworm rated it:

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow starts off with the narrator describing the town of Sleepy Hollow. The mood is set perfectly, the small town is said to be haunted and the townspeople believe there is such a thing as the Headless Horseman.
Enter Ichabod Crane, who is a schoolteacher and arrives at Sleepy Hollow from Connecticut to teach the townchildren. Ichabod is described as being tall and lanky, with his clothes too large for his thin frame. He also enjoyed reading, singing and flirting with More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Nov 09, 2011

Josette rated it:

I enjoyed some of the stories in this collection of Washington Irving's short stories on audio CD. The first on the 4-disc set was "Rip Van Winkle," and the second "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" — the two I most wanted to hear/read. I had read both in junior high school and again in college, but apparently I either didn't pay attention well the first two times or didn't remember them correctly. "Sleepy Hollow" especially was nothing like how I remembered it, and perh More...

5 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 09, 2011

John rated it:

Masterworks from one of the pioneers of the American short story, including the classic "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." "Rip Van Winkle," along with several lesser known stories like "The Angler," have aged very well and are very readable literary fiction for something from almost two hundred years ago. Their themes, of cultural change and the people who are lost in it, are prescient today. "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" has bo More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 02, 2012

V rated it:

It has been a while since I saw the movie Sleepy Hollow but when I saw this book I had to get it as I seemed to remember I liked the movie, and the book is usually better than the movie.

Sleepy Hollow is the last story in the book, and so I had to read a lot of other ones before I got to it. They seemed to get more and more boring. The stories themselves wasn't necessarily boring, but the way they were written was. My mind started wandering in all of them and I had to re-read whole page More...

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Nov 09, 2011

Louize rated it:

"That's for kids", most people would say.
But more than that, this book is paranormally satisfying and inspiring.
It is surprisingly readable, witty, well-narrated, and unsoapy of dialogues.

I can't rightly say which of the stories is my favorite; one thing's for sure, Irving's stories were simply ahead of his time. And Arthur Rackham's illustrations were amazing.

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 09, 2011

Tonia rated it:

How have I not read anything of his before? I loved reading Sleepy Hollow and I never realized Rip Van Winkle only ever fell asleep for 20 years and that half the story is about escaping a nagging wife. Kind of funny. His sketches are well worded and I can feel my vocabulary increasing (yeah!) while still being amused.

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Jan 27, 2012

John rated it:

I had this collection, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Tales”, of ghost stories targeted to read for Halloween 2011, but never was able to start it until after Christmas. I have been on a classics kick and try, when possible, to read classics that align with the time of the year. This was my first exposure to Washington Irving’s short stories and was impressed with his unique characters such as Ichabod Crane, Rip Van Winkle, and Dolph Heyliger, his clear writing prose, and description of More...

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Jan 30, 2012

Paul rated it:

Washington Irving's Sketch Book is framed by two tales so resonant that it's forgivable if the sketches in between don't quite have the same power. Near the beginning is “Rip Van Winkle,” the immortal tale of a man who falls asleep as a British subject, sleeps through the entire American Revolution, and wakes up unaware that he is now a citizen of the United States. Near the end of The Sketch Book, one finds “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” an equally ageless tale of the feckless schoolmaster Ic More...

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Nov 09, 2011

Kyle rated it:

The book that I chose to read was “The Sketch Book” written Washington Irving. In “The Sketch Book,” there are 34 separate stories. Some of the stories were easy to follow, some were a little bit harder. The main story that I liked from the book was “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”
This story was one of the main reasons I chose to read the book because it was a story that I knew very well to begin with. Yet I could still read it over and over again. In “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” there More...

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Nov 09, 2011

Nemesis rated it:

Stesso discorso per questo romanzo.
L’ho comperato per curiosità, dopo aver ammirato il bel film di Tim Burton, ma devo dire che, anche in questo caso, le mie aspettative sono state deluse, altro caso(e siamo a quota quattro per quanto mi riguarda) in cui il film supera di molto il libro, un romanzo anche questa volta scritto molto bene, con uno stile lineare, non troppo pesante o difficoltoso, ma i contenuti sono davvero poveri, la sedicente leggenda del cavaliere dalla testa mozzata occu More...

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Nov 09, 2011

Steffi rated it:

The edition I own is published in the 'Collection of British Authors". That's really funny because Sketches of the American(!) about England are often not very kind. He attends to English people a 'literary animosity daily growing up' and writes about English travellers:

It has also been the peculiar lot of our country to be visited by the worst kind of English travellers.

and

They miss some of the snug conveniences and petty comforts which belong to an old, highly-finished, and over-populo

More...

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Nov 09, 2011

Bryan rated it:

I have always been fascinated by, and loved, the ghost story of Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman. Since childhood, I loved everything I had seen about the tale on TV, in the Disney animated version, in children's novel adaptations. But I had never read the original source material of Washington Irving's story.

Irving's tale-- part of a larger work "Sketchbook"-- has everything one could want for a pastoral, autumnal work of the small town tale, fable and ghost story. More...

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Nov 09, 2011

Hassan rated it:

I came around to reading The Legend of Sleepy Hollow because of my history book. It reads that Irving was the first popular American writer in both America and Britain. I began to wonder what could be so great about this guy’s books from 190 years ago. Among the many short stories in this consequently short story genre book, is The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Its protagonist is the lanky schoolmaster of Sleepy Hollow, Ichabod Crane. The place of Sleepy Hollow is somewhere in New York, a predom More...

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Nov 09, 2011

Andrea rated it:

I read the Great Illustrated Classics version of this and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip VAN wINKLE APPEAR TO BE 2 SEPERATE STORIES. bUT FOR SOME WEIRD REASON THERE WERE 3,NOT 2, STORIES IN THE BOOK.(Oh sorry about Caps Lock, I didn't wanna type that all over again. Sooo...
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is about a schoolteacher dude who believes in the legend of sleepy hollow. The legend is that a headless guy looks for his head every night at sleepy hollow. The sad thing is that the sc More...

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Nov 09, 2011

Alicia rated it:

I love this book and have read it at least 3 times. My favorites are "The Wife", "English Writers on America" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" but I also like "The Author's Account of Himself" and "Rip Van Winkle." This book really gives you an idea of what American writers were thinking in the 19th Century. I have been to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery to see where Iriving is buried. It is also the site of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" an More...

1 comment like

Nov 09, 2011

Emily rated it:

OK, 2 confessions right off the bat: this is not the same edition I read, so this version may not contain all the same stories. Also, I didn't actually read the whole thing. So that 4 stars only applies to a portion of the book. Short stories are not my thing. But I wanted to read The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, since I never had, and it turns out it's a FABULOUS story! Loved it! Raced right over to Rip Van Winkle (didn't even know that was by Irving! You learn something new every day!) Also More...

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Nov 09, 2011

Denmark rated it:

Because these are short stories, this review will also be very short. That’s also the reason it took me all day to read them, I don’t do well with short stories.

I decided to read The Legend of Sleepy Hollow because it played a major part in the series I recently finished, The Hollow by Jessica Verday. It was interesting, but I felt bad for poor Icabod, Katrina sure played him.

I only read Rip Van Winkle because it was included in the book. That was certainly a different story, More...

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Nov 09, 2011

Dave/Maggie rated it:

Yeah, I know -- You’ve all seen the Disney version of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." There’s more to Irving than silly cartoons, though. In his day, Irving was one of America’s most celebrated authors – and with good reason. At his best, his prose simply sings. Where other writers beat description to death (e.g., Tolkien’s irritatingly detailed accounts of Middle Earth’s scenery), Iriving uses it to accent his pieces tastefully, and to create genuine atmosphere. His descriptions of Dut More...

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Nov 09, 2011

Maud rated it:

I bought this book after I have seen the movie of Sleepy Hollow almost a thousand times, I absolutely love the movie and I really wanted to have the book. This book contains more then just the story of Sleepy Hollow, and I can honestly say that I enjoyed them all. There were fun little stories, and all of them contained something about Dutch colonists (I'm Dutch) which I enjoyed. The way Irving wrote about them was fun, with some typical stereotype views. All of the stories also had some kind of More...

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Nov 09, 2011

Elijah rated it:

Legend of Sleepy Hollow:

This book is about a school master named Ichabod Crane, who moves to the small village of Sleepy Hollow, in the Hudson River Valley of Upstate, NY. In this small village, he falls in love with the beautiful Katrina Van Tassel. In this small quiet town, legends have been created over the past years, of a so called "Headless Horseman" who haunts the village graveyard looking for his missing head lost in the American Revolution.

I can connect More...

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Nov 09, 2011

diana rated it:

I really enjoy Washington Irving's writing; what I don't always enjoy are his topics. His stories (esp. "The Specter Bridegroom") are great - humorous, well-paced, entertaining. His essays are good if you care about the topic he's treating. I would recommend going through this book without the intention of reading the whole thing - just see what grabs your attention and read that. My suggestions: "The Specter Bridegroom," "The Mutability of Literature," "Sleepy More...

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Nov 09, 2011

Sharell rated it:

I bought this book solely for "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow", which is, naturally, at the end of the book, and I'm the kind of person that finds it hard to skip around. So read the entire book I must.

Having done so, I found I actually prefer Irving's essays to his short stories: although "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" was pretty much exactly what I expected, "Rip Van Winkle" was a bit of a disappointment-I thought it lacked drama and resolved too quickly. More...

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Dec 27, 2011

Sandi rated it:

Ok, I enjoyed the Disney animated version of Sleepy Hollow the best. I did learn that the the horses' name is Gunpowder :)

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Nov 18, 2011

Theresa rated it:

I didn't realize there would be so many short stories in this compilation. I also didn't realize that Sleepy Hollow would have so few pages. Well I enjoyed the Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip van Winkle. I also enjoyed some of the other ghost/supernatural stories. but there were a few too many stories with virtually no point or that were supposed to be funny but really weren't. I think an ok rating is pretty accurate.

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Nov 09, 2011

Monica rated it:

I have a love/hate relationship with this book. I loved the language and detail the author provided the audience even though at times it became a little bit tedious. I hated the ending because when I decided to read The Legend of Sleepy Hollow I thought it was one of the first of its kind- as in one of the earliest American "horror" classics. But, as it turns out, the story wasn't any scarier then any fairy tale by the Grimm Brothers.

Rip Van Winkle, was everything I hoped it' More...

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Nov 09, 2011

Deborah added it

I found this book to be boring and simplistic. I have enjoyed the Disney movie for years and found the book to be a disappointment. The story itself is easy to read and quite scary, however, it is the buildup that gets old fast. I agree with an earlier review that it is the "story of a very hungry skinny man"; Mr. Irving spent more time describing the food in the book than he did the actual climax of the story. By the time I got to the exciting part, I had almost decided to give up More...

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Nov 09, 2011

Amy rated it:

I finally read the original version over the summer. Of course, I was familiar with the story from the Disney animated version that I grew up with, but the writing in the story is incredible. It is so descriptive. I felt like I was walking through those wild wood of another time. Writers had to work harder to build the images with words before there were pictures and movies. The humor was charming and subtle. The story is suspenseful, but not too scary for kids.

This month I'm going rea More...

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Nov 09, 2011

Hp added it

I tried. I really did try. But I couldn't get past like, 5 stories. The writing style, the language used, they're pretty oldish and very slow for me. Perhaps in the sense it was very literaturish but it just wasn't for me. I was only reading it because I had a sudden urge to read Rip Van Winkle's story again. It was nice reading the original (relative term here) version of the story, but otherwise, school and other commitments would not allow me to finish this book. Not with my lack of interest More...

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