Heiðarvíga saga or The Story of the Heath-Slayings is one of the Icelanders' sagas. It is badly preserved; 12 leaves of the only surviving manuscript were destroyed along with their only copy in the fire of Copenhagen in 1728. The content of that part is only known through a summary written from memory by Jón Grunnvíkingur who had made the lost copy. The saga is written in a quaint and clumsy style, which some scholars have taken as indication that it is among the oldest Icelanders' sagas.
The Eyrbyggja saga is one of the Icelanders' sagas. The name means the saga of the inhabitants of Eyrr, which is a farm on Snæfellsnes on Iceland. The name is slightly misleading as it deals also with the clans of Þórsnes and Alptafjörðr. The central character who should have given his name to the saga is Snorri Þorgrímsson or Snorri goði, as he is better known.
Originally written in Icelandic, sometime in the 13th Century A.D. Author unknown. The saga deals with the process of blood feuds in the Icelandic Commonwealth, showing how the requirements of honor could lead to minor slights spiralling into destructive and prolonged bloodshed. Insults where a character's manhood is called into question are especially prominent and may reflect an author critical of an overly restrictive ideal of masculinity. Another characteristic of the narrative is the presence of omens and prophetic dreams. It is disputed whether this reflects a fatalistic outlook on part of the author.
Added by: math man | Karma: 198.35 | Audiobooks | 1 March 2011
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The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories
Here's a Mark Twain story that's very unlike those he became famous for, but when I read it back in Catholic high school, it left a deep impression. It concerns the deeply religious residents of a small village in Austria during the late sixteenth century, and what happened to several of them when a strange man began to visit their insulated homeland. There's little of Twain's humor here; this is a horror story, a parable. . . and a warning. (Summary by Ted Delorme)
Young love, unbelievable wealth, greed, cruelty and adventure are the themes Fitzgerald brilliantly combines to create a highly unusual story with a surprise ending that no reader will be able to put down. In this story the great Fitzgerald reveals a bizarre segment of the rich and careless American society of the 1920s, which he often criticized and yet belonged to.
