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I read the first 8 (or 9?) stories from the ELF online version, mostly because I didn't want to buy another textbook when I'm in the midst of packing my room up to move out.  I'd known the premise of the book, but I had never heard any of the individual tales.

I was surprised at how short some of the stories are.  Given the premise, I was expecting to hear longer stories, so that she was only telling one story at a time.  Instead, I was surprised to find out that she was telling many stories within the context of a much longer story, and we ourselves are reading both of those within a much longer, better known story.

For me, what makes the tales so generically interesting is that at one point, they were clearly oral rather than recorded, but now we only know them as recorded stories.  I've never heard anyone tell me one of these stories just for the sake of telling a story.  Even as a child, all of the stories I heard were being read to me from a book, as a means of encouraging me to learn to read on my own.  The intention of the story was never to pass on a cultural history, it was merely an educational tool to help me learn to be more independent.  Whereas Scheherazade tells her stories precisely to reunite a kingdom, not separate its denizens.