One Good Story, That One - Thomas King

Another side to Thomas King's writing.  He has spent time with traditional native stories, and this is him playing with the form and bringing in other modern concerns and observations.  Interesting, but for me, not as enjoyable, as deep, as his novels.

The Mighty Dead: Why Homer Matters - Adam Nicolson

Full of interesting bits:

"Of about three thousand languages spoken today, seventy-eight have a written literature.  The rest exist in the mind and the mouth.  Language - man - is essentially oral."  p. 68

Homer can be seen as a remembering of the culture and life of the bronze age warriors.  This links him to the semi-pastoral tribes of the first Indo-Europeans who tamed the horse, first used wagons, and moved outwards as warrior bands from their traditional homeland to establish all the large european language groups of today.

It is an interesting read and personal engagement with Homer's work, especially the Odyssey.  Nicolson presents some interesting evaluations and personal reactions to the work.  A good introduction for actually reading the poems.



To find:
1) Milman Parry - important Homer scholar exploring pre-written storytelling tradition

2) Duncan Macdonald - storyteller from Hebrides, South Uist (The Man of the Habit - one story)

3) Homer - Odyssey - trans. Robert Fagles
    Homer - The Iliad - trans. Robert Fagles

4) The Making of Homeric Verse: The Collected Papers of Milman Parry - Adam Parry

5) The Singer of Tales - Albert Lord

6) Indo-European Language and Culture:  An Introduction - Benjamin W. Anthony

7) The Making of Bronze Age Eurasia - Philip L. Kohl

8) Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World - J.P. Mallory
     and D.Q. Adams

9) Symbols and Warriors:  Images of the European Bronze Age - Richard J. Harrison

10) The Rise of Bronze Age Society - Kristian Kristiansen and Thomas B. Larsson

11) The Poetics of Space - Gaston Bachelard

12) European Societies in the Bronze Age - Anthony F. Harding

Cosmicomiche: vecchie et nuove - Italo Calvino

A great book by that most quirky of authors, Italo Calvino.  Social observations, philosophical ramblings, witty observations, all in the context of the Precambrian period.  The narrator is a fish newly emerged onto land, who describes, analyses and speculates on his relatives and the other early earth-based life forms he encounters.
A very enjoyable, thoughtful read.  An interesting take on the parable concept, though it isn't written in parable style.

A Tranquil Star - Primo Levi

I love some of the quirky premises Levi builds his short stories on.  Entertaining and clever, absurd and biting, insightful and critical - also capable of great wonder.  His stories are built on politics, history, social observation, even cosmology...

The Lion and the Throne 31761069705192 Rob

A beautiful retell of some of the early stories in the Shahname.  Prose retell.  Reproductions of old miniatures from old editions of the book.

To find again.
Source for storytelling.

A Thousand and One Arabian Nights - Geraldine McCaughrean

- from TPL
Well-written.  A good source for a variety of arabic stories.

Princess Peacok - Tales from the Other Peoples of China

- from TPL

Some interesting folk tales from several islamic peoples of China, some Turkic speakers, mostly in the Xinjiang area.
Good resource.