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Title: Tales from the Arabian Nights

Author: Andrew Lang

Narrator: Tavia Gilbert

Format: Unabridged

Length: 1 hr and 7 mins

Language: English

Release date: 03-20-09

Publisher: Plain Tales, Inc.

Ratings: 3 of 5 out of 1 votes

Genres: Kids, Ages 0-4

Publisher's Summary:

Andrew Lang's masterful version of these ancient Middle Eastern folk tales will captivate listeners of all ages, just as they did when Scherazade was the storyteller.

Members Reviews:

You can't beat this old classic

I read the Arabian Nights when I was ten. The book was about three inches thick and after almost sixty years I still have it. I have re-read it from time to time over the years and I still love it. I got the free book on Kindle so I could have it at the ready for airplane trips or other times when I need something short to read. The Arabian Nights, of course is just a huge series of short stories.

Pure Adventure & Outgrowing Foolishness ...Outgrowing Fairytales

These stories are pure adventure with only superficial attempts at moralizing. They are fantastical and repeat themes of transportation to distant lands, magic infatuating lusts and power. The characters are revealed for you to be good or bad and relationships are intertwined with their worldly desires which focus on lavish gardens and palaces of competing grandeur, sweet water, and rich foods. Motives are simple and straight forward, all focused on love, money and social standing. The subject of physical beauty, infatuation, jealousy, greed is repeated throughout. Stories always resolve fully with the frequent ending being the assumption that peace, love and happiness is forever after.

The stories are told succinctly and occasionally abruptly with few attempts at building anticipation or develop the imagination although this may be in part due to the editor (admittedly) screening out the `dull' parts. Still, an attempt could have been made to soften transition points and somewhat engage the imagination. Because of their format, the tales read like a children's book; short and to the point, explaining needed details, leaving out intermediate parts of the stories so as to be able to jump to the next conclusion. Perhaps this is why I was annoyed with this book throughout. But more so was I annoyed because of the repeated themes of foolishness, lust, vanity, greed, arrogance and the abuse of power.

I believe a review should be, as they say, "Just the facts, Mam". Reviews are not the best place to express your purely emotional response to a story. Still, while reading these stories, I could not rid myself the feelings of irritation for the characters foolishness and abuses. Frequently these tales told of youth, spoiled children entitled and privileged by heredity, who viciously abused their servants, were compelled by their unbridled passions (infatuations & lusts) to undertake some adventure. Instead of their adventures leading them to some moral conclusion or change of character (for which I am accustomed), they eventually had their lusts fulfilled, their lives enriched and lived happily forever after. Perhaps this is why all the Chalifs (kings), really just the grown versions of their entitled spoiled and vicious children, were so eager to cut the heads off of their innocent victims. Could they not consider any other form of justice than death? But, beheadings is a cultural insult, a reference to which I am not wholly familiar.

Something distinct in these tales is the impression that the highest aspirations in life are that of power, riches and beauty. Moral imperatives, although insinuated slightly, are almost completely missing from these stories and always secondary and less than consequential to the plot.