[Glelas]

This may belong in the General fiction section but I figured most myth/folklore/fairytales have elements of the fantastic in them.

I have been pleasantly surprised by Orson Scott Card's retelling of Sleeping Beauty called Enchantment. I really never had an interest in the origins of mythology, folklore, and fairytales (MFF) and their effects on culture, everyday life, and literature on a particular region. This book for some reason opened up a whole wealth of fiction and non-fiction I have been missing out on. I guess I have been taking MFF for granted all these years. Except of course for the Aeneid, Iliad, etc...I have neglected this "angle" of fantasy.

I figured several members here would be well versed in what I am looking for...

Anyone have recommendations for good non-fiction books about MFF? Russian? Norse? Celtic? German? European? Indian? Asian? etc...doesn't neccessarily have to be a collection of translations of the actual fairytales etc...it can be more of a cultural study if you take my meaning. Of course a good book chock full of MFF is fine.

Oh and any other fictional retellings are fine also.

[Andols]

American Gods by Neil Gaiman has a varied mix.

[Cranky Hamster]

Robin McKinley has done several fairy-tale retellings that have garnered recommendations from this board. I've only read her Sunshine (and less than a hundred pages of it, at that; not really my kind of book), so I can't add any firsthand thoughts.

Catherynne Valente does both fairy-tale retellings from a broad range of cultures and "new" fairy tales -- that is, short stories drawn from her own imagination but conceived with the same sort of mystical "dream logic" and written in very dense, rich language. She does a better job of evoking the wondrous, creepy mood of old fairy tales than any other writer I've read, although her work is so rich that it's best taken in small bites (IMO) and there is often not much that actually happens, as opposed to the wealth of implied, but static, ideas that pack the pages). Very much prose-poems, with all the good and bad that entails.

[Hellsfire]

Funny you should bring this up. I just bought a book this weekend that has to do with folk tales.

It's called Favorite Folktales From Around the World edited by Jane Yolen. I haven't gotten too much into it since I just bought it and there's a rather long introduction. It has folktales from around the world (hence the title) and it's broken up by type of folktale.

It's pretty good. the stories are short and enjoyable. The problem is some of the names, places, and gods are hard to pronounce

[Trinuviel]

John Connolly's The Book of Lost Things incorporate re-tellings of several different well-known fairy tales into a story about a young boy coming to terms with the death of his mother. It also has a good appendix that outlines the history and variations of the different tales.

[Erfael]

If you're looking for study of mythology, Joseph Campbell is a great place to start. His "The Power of Myth" interviews with Bill Moyers are great. They're transcripts of a series he did for PBS. The other two works of his that are great are The Hero With a Thousand Faces, which studies connections of myths across the world, and The Masks of God, which is four volumes dealing with myths from various cultures -- Primitive, Eastern, Western, and Creative.

There's also a quarterly publication called Parabola which can be found in most book stores that examines a topic (Home, Restraint, Web of Life, etc.) through the lens of various mythologies and spiritual thinkers. I find it pretty excellent.

[blake06]

I don't have any recommendations to provide, but I wanted to chime in and say that I also really enjoyed Enchantment back when I read it. I've recently thought about trying to convince my wife to read it to try and get her interested fantasy, as I think it might be a book that she would enjoy.

[Severn]

http://www.sffworld.com/forums/showthread.php?t=18625

This thread might be of interest to you. :)

[algernoninc]

the book that made me interested in dismantling and analyzing myths was "The Citadel" by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. It'd like The Little Prince for grown-ups : the interaction between the sacred and the profane, the hidden wheels and pulleys behind beliefs, applied to a desert tribe. I used to read 4 or 5 pages and then go back and read them again, slower, translating the author theories from Sahara to the Balkans...

For an academic study of myths my reference author is Mircea Eliade - he has a lot of English studies from the period he was at the Chicago University. You will find the list on amazon, pick any one you like but be aware they are a little hard to digest.

[Jeroen]

Try Joseph Campbell's The Power of Myth and Hero with a Thousand Faces, if you want background information about myths.