The Best of Roald Dahl

Collection of short stories written by Roald Dahl.

These were really good. It was nice that it was in chronological order so you could see how he evolved as a writer. These were all the short stories, with a quick description so there’s spoilers ahead. I’ve starred the ones that I particularly enjoyed:

• Madame Rosette, about how some pilots from the army rescue prostitutes who are being manipulated.
• ⭐️ Man from the South, about a man who makes a bet that someone can’t light their lighter 10 times, betting a sports car for their pinky finger.
• The Sound Machine, about a man who invents a machine that lets him hear sounds outside the range of ordinary hearing, and discovers that plants and trees scream when you chop them.
• ⭐️ Taste, about a gourmet who ends up betting that he can identify wine, betting his house for the daughter of the host’s hand in marriage.
• Dip in the Pool, about a man who takes some drastic measures in order to win a competition to see who can most accurately guess how far the ship will travel in a day.
• Skin, about how someone used to know this great artist who tattooed his back when they were younger, and ends up walking into a exhibition of his art.
• Edward the Conqueror, about a strange cat that maybe was a famous composer.
• Lamb to the Slaughter, about a woman who murders her husband after he tries to divorce her.
• Galloping Foxley, about someone who meets their ex-bully on a train journey home and remembers all the horrible details of what they used to do.
• The Way Up to Heaven, about a woman whose husband teases her a lot by making them deliberately late, and how she takes her revenge.
• Parson’s Pleasure, about a man who finds expensive furniture to sell by conning people in the country into selling it for substantially less than it was worth.
• ⭐️ The Landlady, about a young man who is travelling to Bath and needs somewhere to stay the night, and ends up staying in a spooky B&B rather than a hotel.
• William and Mary, about the wife of a man who gets his brain preserved after he dies so he can still be concious.
• Mrs Bixby and the Colonel’s Coat, a story about how a woman tries to justify being given a really expensive coat by her secret lover to her husband.
• ⭐️ Royal Jelly, about a man who’s crazy about bees finding a strange solution to the fact that their newborn baby isn’t drinking enough milk.
• ⭐️ Georgy Porgy, about a local vicar who dislikes any physical contact with women because of something that happened in his past having a bit of a breakdown.
• Genesis and Catastrophe, about how Hitler was born.
• ⭐️ Pig, about an orphan who grows up in the countryside with his vegetarian aunt, and then when she dies gets to learns about the real world.
• ⭐️ The Visitor, frame narrative consisting of an uncle’s diaries, in this one he ends up stuck in the desert but is thankfully rescued by a wealthy person from the local area, and then how he tries to seduce both his daughter and his wife.
• Claud’s Dog, a mini-collection of stories all involving Claud, a man from the country who seems to be trying to get rich.
  • The Ratcatcher, about a very strange ratcatcher.
  • Rummins, about an unexpected thing in a hayrick.
  • Mr Hoddy, about Claud trying to impress his wife’s father by convincing him of his latest business venture, a maggot farm.
  • ⭐️ Mr Feasey, about Claud and someone called Gordon trying to make loads of money by swapping a really bad greyhound for a really good one, at odds 25-1, but then all the bookies don’t pay out.
  • ⭐️ The Champion of the World, about Claud and Gordon discovering a secret way to capture pheasants by giving them sleeping pills but then they all escape in the morning when they wake up.