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Most of these stories are very old, and even the translation dates from 1909. I can forgive the (in modern terms) lack of character development and somewhat weak plotting in most of them. The glimpses into the early modern Arab world are occasionally fascinating (Sinbad was particularly interesting for me the discussion of trade and ancient Iraqi cities). The lack of interesting women characters is probably no worse than more recent "prince rescues princess" genre fiction.The casual violence and questionable morality is occasionally a bit shocking, but I guess one can make an argument for that as "thought provoking". I don't think I can excuse the occasional antisemitism and pervasive anti-black racism in the same way. Eventually it just dominated my experience of the book, which is kindof ick.

The story of Sinbad the Voyager is probably the most interesting in the volume, although it is not without problematic levels of racism.

Finished Codadad and his Brothers. The plot is moderately amusing, but the racism is really turned up to 11. The villainous giant is called simply "The Black".

I enjoyed Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

The story is free to read, what could possibly go wrong?

I know nothing about this book but the author.

(That turns out to be because there a duplicate books; search by author to find reviews).

Finished two more stories, both of which I thought more interesting than Aladdin. The store of the Prince Agib and the Story of the the City of Brass are both allegories about greed. The City of Brass has one character who succeeds because he is devout and learned, which makes a change from just lucky.

I also happened to look at a few of the illustrations (by Maxfield Parrish) in the print edition, and they definitely add to the stories.

Finished Aladdin. Our plucky hero triumphs in the end. Sadly the princess does nothing very interesting.

In order that my comments not be entirely negative, I should note that at least Aladdin does not promote the inherent nobility of the ruling classes, unlike some of the earlier stories in the volume.

It remains to be seen if "object" is an awkward word choice, or a fair description of the Princess's role in the story.

Oh dear. The "cunning Jew" is a rather standard antisemetic trope.

Started to listen to Aladdin. It is worth linking to www.criticalmuslim.io/the-dark-side-of-the-arabian-nights/ for discussion of the racism in the Arabian nights. Here "African" definitely means bad, although it's less obviously anti-black racism (to this non-expert) than some of the other stories.