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There is no one for weirdness like Joan Aiken, NOBODY. I love her so much.

The Monkey's Wedding And Other Stories is a posthumous Joan Aiken collection that I picked up as part of a book bundle, and includes:

A Mermaid Too Many: in which a sailor brings home a mermaid, is COMPLETELY MYSTIFIED why his wife is not thrilled by this, and then has to figure out what to do with her
Reading in Bed: a weird dream about a meeting with the Devil, not too notable
Model Wife: which felt like one of those Katharine Hepburn rom-coms about a Feisty Woman who gets herself into a Scrape by being Too Proud (For A Man) -- you know, those movies you enjoy because they're charmingly presented AND YET
Second Thoughts: about the saintly vicar who reincarnates as the most asshole of asshole cats, scandalizing all the pious ladies of the village; unsurprisingly A DELIGHT
Girl in a Whirl: another Katharine Hepburn rom-com but about 10x weirder than the first & featuring several death-defying motorcycle stunts
Hair: a young man meets his dead wife's mother; very creepy and very sad
Red-Hot Favorite: SUPER ADORABLE rom-com in which a magazine illustrator accidentally gets his profile printed as an Eligible Bachelor in the magazine and has to run away to the country to avoid getting constantly hit upon, where he promptly breaks his glasses and spends the rest of the story mostly blind, confused by everything, and accidentally involved in a racing-horse heist
Spur of the Moment: another cute rom-com but not quite as cute as 'Red-Hot Favorite'
The Paper Queen: someone is trying to Modernize the Quaint Seaside Town, which Our Hero Will Not Stand For, but then there are a series of random events and a ghost and actually everything's fine
Octopi in the Sky: a sad young man who works in advertising is about to be forced into a dynastic marriage which he does not want, but is (probably rightfully) more concerned about the fact that he's constantly haunted by hallucinogenic stout-drinking octopi
The Magnesia Tree: a famous author dies, leaving behind a potentially-supernatural magic writing tree which HATED HIM
Honeymaroon: a typist is shipwrecked on an island of talking revolutionary mice who won't stop asking about nationalizing the means of production; POSSIBLY my favorite story in the collection
Harp Music: young man gets stuck as the babysitter in someone else's divorce-remarriage Katharine Hepburn rom-com
The Sale of Midsummer: reporters interview various townsfolk about the story behind why their town is said to only appear three days out of the year; weird and lovely
The Helper: quietly creepy story about a grieving father, the French family that he blames for the death of his daughter, and a robot
The Monkey's Wedding: psychological story about an artist who never actually appears onscreen, his elderly mother, his long-lost painting, his long-lost past, and a burglary
Wee Robin: castle ghost story/legend, cheerfully ruthless
The Fluttering Thing: very short dark piece about a prisoner, a forced march, and a thing that grants wishes
Water of Youth: man pops up in town selling water of immortality, wistful hijinks ensue

Some stories definitely have more heft to them than others, but, I mean. Would be worth it for the revolutionary socialist mice alone, and there is much more in here than just the revolutionary socialist mice.

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a weird dream about a meeting with the Devil

I had one of those the other night!

SUPER ADORABLE rom-com in which a magazine illustrator accidentally gets his profile printed as an Eligible Bachelor in the magazine and has to run away to the country to avoid getting constantly hit upon, where he promptly breaks his glasses and spends the rest of the story mostly blind, confused by everything, and accidentally involved in a racing-horse heist

That sounds excellent; please film it.

(I have not read this collection, I think mostly due to it coming out in a year when I did not have a lot of money for books, but I imprinted on Joan Aiken when young and I've never seen any reason for that to go away.)

Yours was better!

The story would have made an amazing 40's rom-com. I mean it would make a great rom-com today too but I'm a bit sad it missed its window. (The rom bit of the rom-com comes in when our short-sighted, romance-avoiding hero has a perfectly understandable misunderstanding about his short-haired riding instructor.)

Speaking of 40's films, or in this case 50's I suppose, are we still on for the double feature tomorrow night?

The story would have made an amazing 40's rom-com. I mean it would make a great rom-com today too but I'm a bit sad it missed its window.

Hah: I originally wrote "please film it c. 1945," but then thought I might have mistaken the correct period for a glases-broken racing-horse heist.

Speaking of 40's films, or in this case 50's I suppose, are we still on for the double feature tomorrow night?

Not as such, because they canceled half of it, but I'll be at the 5 PM screening of Macao (1952) with

rushthatspeaks and possibly

gaudior tomorrow night anyway!

Excellent, so shall I be then!

So I am totally going to read this collection if only for Red-Hot Favorite (spoiler I will read all of them) but I have to say that as soon as I read "Octopi in the Sky" my brain immediately went:

"Octopi in the sky/I can get twice as high/Take a drink/it all goes pink/vodka drinking!"

I AM SO SORRY, LEVAR BURTON, PLEASE DON'T BE DISAPPOINTED IN ME

I mean, as a commercial jingle promoting octopus-themed alcohol it's really not half-bad!

Okay, I am probably going to track this down for the socialist mice, that sounds delightful.

THEY'RE ADORABLE. A little bit murderous. But in a very adorable fashion.

I have this bundle and am now reprioritising my intended reading order due to the revolutionary socialist mice.

It was the very first thing from the bundle I've read and I do not regret a single decision.

As I have not read these stories, I scrolled past the list with little interest except that I saw "Octopi in the Sky" and now my brain is singing Reading Rainbow.

You are not the only one! We can ALL get twice as high with Cobbleigh's Cream Stout.

OH THANK GOD I'm not alone.

Do we dare speculate about the fanfic in which Aiken's revolutionary socialist mice meet the religiously obsessed Aeslin mice from Seanan McGuire's InCryptid novels?

I've not read InCryptid, but from my understanding it seems the meeting would be RATHER MEMORABLE.

Mermaid story! ^_^

Is the bundle this is/was in still available?

Alas, no! But it's been replaced with a bundle of LGBTQ fiction, which I am sure is also delightful.

Bought it on the strength of your recommendation. Some of them are a bit slight, but the mice are delightful.

Yeah, there's definitely a few in the 'I just jotted down three pages of whatever came into my head and threw it into an empty magazine slot' vein. And others that seem to want to be more/longer, but don't quite make it there.