With the 200th anniversary today of the first publication of "Die Kinder und Hausmärchen (Children's and Household Tales)", folk stories collated and retold by The Grimm brothers, its perhaps opportune to re-open The Book Club thread and offer a link to a free eBook download of Grimm's Fairy Tales by Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm via the Gutenberg Press, available in several formats possibly the best choice if reading from a PC would be the PDF version which includes the original illustrations.



If you're thinking of reading them to your children at bedtime then have a read through first as some of them are quite dark

, being folk tales they weren't necessarily written for children in their original format.



The one that I wanted to be in there (but isn't) is the tale entitled "How Children Played Butcher With Each Other" in which a whole family butchers itself, shame its not there





Download the book from here :

[urlhttp://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2591[/url

Radio 4 have been presenting a series each day this week, looking at the Grimm "Fairy" Tales and yes, most of them were very red in blood & claw. Apparently all they did was collate, embellish and write down traditional folk tales, many of the used to scare children to be obedient.



Mind you, I'm sure I once spen a drunken night of debauchery with Rumpelstiltsken's ugly sister

I had an old book of Dutch childhood tales - Shock-headed Peter or something like that. Still haunts my dreams. It was graphically violent.

need some advice from the reading dept lol....love reading political /terrorist /thriller type books especially terrence strong, anyone have any recommended authors to try next along similar lines

Have you read The Girl With The Dragon Tatoo trilogy?? A bit of everything you've mentioned in them.

I would suggest anything from the Sigma series written by James Rollins [urlhttp://www.jamesrollins.com/books/view/34[/url

My reading in the last few months has been pretty slow, but I'm currently about half way through [iSimplicissimus[/i by Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen.



Originally published in 1668, it's been described as a sort of German [iDon Quixote[/i, and tells the story of the eponymous simple character and his adventures during the Thirty Years War.



Translated by Mike Mitchell, it's raw, earthy, rabelaisian and really accessible. A really enjoyable read.

By way of solidarity with a friend who has to read it as part of something she's doing at university, I've agreed to read Ulysses.

Must want my head testing

Meant to say – you can follow @gutenbooks on Twitter and there are loads of notifications of what they're making available.

Watched the Swedish sub-titled versions on telly, thought they were good.

Me too. I did get a bit confused at the third one which didn't stay as true to the books as the first and second, but all in all I really enjoyed them.

I've just undertaken the entire Culture Series by Iain M Banks, one after t'other; I only started out intending to read The Player of Games again, but I'm a bit obsessive like that.



If you're a sci-fi fan I'd say they're pretty much a must-read, and whilst they do fluctuate in quality (and ability to comprehend what the hell is going on) they are overall a very rewarding read.



I'm just zipping through The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi - any other sci-fi nuts care to suggest where to go next?