Washington Irving - Rip Van Winkle

I both like and dislike this story.  I like this story because the character of Rip Van Winkle is an interesting being.  I like this story because it is a fictional story (finally, some work of fiction).  I like this story because of the fact it used an actual folk tale some Dutch Americans said at the time and made a whole story out of it.  I like this story because it used actual events (the Revolutionary War) as a background detail in the story.

I dislike this story because I feel it takes too long to get to the good stuff.  The good stuff I think is everything after Rip leaves to go up into hills/mountains with his dog.  It has too much exposition before the main events of the story start happening.  This could be because of my own personal tastes.  This could be because that's how I've been trained to think since a lot of movies have major events all throughout with background info sprinkled here and there throughout the story.  I could be wrong.  Maybe this style worked and was super intriguing back in the day.  Maybe a lot of people still like this style.  That's their prerogative.