Okay, first of all, whoever's in charge of organizing book entries around here needs to get their shit together, because there's something like half a dozen digital editions listed, each with their own incorrect number of pages and no ID number at all to tell you which is most useful.

The book itself is utterly delightful--if you're a big nerd like me, there's a nice combination of popular and obscure folklore to roll around in, plus a bunch of stories putting old classics in new situations or just making the monsters up whole cloth. There's no Krampus here, but that feels like a good choice: everybody knows about him now, but who knows about the schnabelperchten? Even the stories that felt weaker to me (I can only really think of one off-hand, but I don't want to single it out) were technically pretty solid, which was refreshing given some of the things I've read over the years. Wish I'd finished it a little sooner, to end 2023 with a bang, but I sure can't complain about it being my first book of 2024.