The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss -- Review

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss is a fantasy tome. It is the first book in a series. The book is 653 pages long. The book is the story of Kvothe a singer and musician. It is a story which combones legends, naming, magic, and music in a somewhat traditional fantasy setting. The main character Kvothe is a musician and mage.

The book starts out slowly. A person comes to chronicle Kvoth's life, a wandering scholar. The account of Kvothe's life follows in a linear fashion. This book will be part of a series. On the title page are the words The Name of the Wind: The King Killer Chronicle Day One.

The story is a tragedy and the main character suffers. There are few happy endings. Kvothe leads a nice life until his family looks into the wrong tales and is killed. He is forced to live on the streets as an orphan. Using his wits and talents he gets into the Arcanum.

Kvothe is arrogant, impetuous, poor, and brilliant at a young age. This creates many enemies for him. He develops a variety of enemies at the universities including some of the teachers and a nobleman student. He is punished regularly for his actions and sometimes nasty wit. Characters develop deep passiona for and against him. Ironically, one of his teachers leaves him a copy of Rhetoric and Logic, a book which Kvothe hates which might have helped him out of many of the troubles that he is in.

Kvothe also takes incredible risks. In one part of the story he follows a firebreathing, tree eating dragon around. In another section, he sneaks into the archives at the risk of being expelled. He was caught with open flame earlier and banned from them.

The book is 653 pages long. Throughout the book there are short poems and songs:

"When the hearthfire turns to blue
What to do, What to do,
Run Outside, Run and hide"

People have more than one distinct nationality and there are snippets of foreign languages. Also there are religious legends that provide a backdrop to the story about good and evil, demons and angels.

This is a very well written book. It is quite harsh in places. It is not a swashbuckling tale, but a story of wits, music, cunning, and magic. I enjoyed the book and look forward to the next installment in the series.

The Wood Wife -- Terri Windling-- Review

I finished reading The Wood Wife by Terri Windling. This book is exceptionally well edited and designed. Terri Windling has won five world fantasy awards, has edited the anthology, The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy for years, and is possibly one of the best contemporary editors of fantasy writing. The three editors I most recognize are Terri Windling, Ellen Datlow, and Martin H. Greenberg for fantasy. Recently George R.R. Martin is on the rise as well.

The book is exceptionally well designed. I am not sure of the typeface, but I rather like the pagination, the high bond acid free paper, and the book cover. According to the author the book was originally to be a series of novellas to be published with the artist Brian Froud's fantasy art.

I am not going to go over the story, but rather certain points about style and design which are interesting. Terri Windling includes some excerpts from very high quality poets. She includes a few poems by Pablo Neruda, excerpts from "Ars Poetica" by Jorge Luis Borges, as well as the poem "Evening" by Rainier Maria Rilke. This adds to the quality of the poetry and images in the book.

In addition she brings in real life paintings as part of the descriptions. Frida Kahlo and other Mexican surrealist painters are described.

The opening quote by Goethe, "Who Wants to Understand the Poem Must Travel to the Land of Poetry." This very much goes to the essence of the book. Poetry, art, and music draw out archetypes and magic in the setting of the Southwestern Desert of Arizona. The archetypes drawn out are a seemless fusion of Scottish and Native American mythology. Coyote the trickster changes into many different forms for example; coyote, crow, and reinard the fox. Spine woman kisses Maggie Black's eyes and gives her site. The white stag runs in the foothills of Arizona. The wild hunt runs through the hills as packs of coyotes howl at the moon.

In addition to regular text, there are poems, quotes, and letters. One of my favorite letters is a made up letter between Davis Cooper who is made up and Henry Miller. There are numerous letters which go back and forth throughout the story giving a unique flavor to the book.

This book is a fantasy set in the modern context. It occurs in a poets house who has died, Davis Cooper. He has bequeathed the house to another poet, a Maggie Black. The house is at the edge of the wilderness in Arizona. A variety of interesting characters surround the house, a Mexican painter and his wife in a cabin, a Hopi car mechanic, and a retired forester. The setting seems to be very much a borderland between the wilderness of the other (fairyland and native lands) where magic occurs and the modern world is a few hours away by jeep.

I really enjoyed reading this book because of the quality of the writing. If you are looking for a very well written modern fantasy with literary qualities, this book is for you. This book was one of the Mythopoeic award winners.

Briar Rose by Jane Yolen-- Review

Briar Rose by Jane Yolen is a retelling of the story of Sleeping Beauty. It is a story of survival set in World War II poland. Becca has collected mementos from her jewish grandmothers death. There is very little known about her grandmother other than she came into the United States as a refugee. Her family even assumes that she came before World War II.

Becca receives a wooden chest as part of her inheritance. In it are some papers and a gold ring with a black stone. She goes to investigate her past. She finds that her grandmother came in with very little information other than that she came from Kulmhof.

Throughout the book at the beginning of each chapter there is a bit of the sleeping beauty tale. However, there are some slight changes. the wicked fairy wears black boots and two silver eagles on her hat, and the thorns around the castle are sharp as iron. It is an interesting effect.

Eventually, Becca makes it to Poland where she travels to different places and eventually meets up with a different kind of prince, a prince who escaped Sachhausen and joined the partisans. He tells a tale of how her grandmother was saved by him during World War II and eventually escaped using his identity papers to get to America.

This is a different kind of novel. It mixes history with a fairytale to speak about and uncover thoughts that are hard to express in any medium. The story is quite interesting. We keep this book in the young adult section in our library. There is some fairly dark material in this book which is tastefully written about. This book is a Mythopoeic award winner. It is the third book which I have read from the Mythopoeic award winners list. It is very high quality myth fantasy.

The end of the book includes a list of recommended for lovers of high quality fairytales.

Thomas The Rhymer by Ellen Kushner-- Review

Thomas the Rhymer By Ellen Kushner is a novelization of the ballad Thomas The Rhymer. It is also a Mythopoeic award winner. The story begins when a wandering harper named Thomas stays with a shepherd family Gavin and Meg. Thomas spins tales with the old lady Meg. It is there he meets his first love Elspeth, who he sends favors to while he is travelling to the courts and fairs to harp.

In the second part of the novel, he is wandering through the hills near Gavin's home when he meets the Queen of Elfland. The Queen challenges him to kiss her and he takes up the challenge. In return for the kiss, the Queen of Elfland demands seven years of service and carries "True Thomas" to fairyland. In the book Meg sends the dogs to find him, but can find neither hide nor hair of him.

The novel describes elfland with beautiful flowery unreal descriptions. There is nothing earthly in elfland. It is a land of gardens of lilies and roses, bright green fields, and magical beauty. Still much is left to the imagination. The Queen of Elfland is more beautiful than any mortal woman. She demands that for seven years he may only speak to her, but he can sing to any of the elfen court who ask him to sing. He is also the Queens mortal lover.

During the sojourn there he saves the lost soul of a human woman by harping the answer to a riddle. At the end of his sojourn Thomas is given a boon for both answering the riddle and serving the queen. He is given the gift of truth-- the inability to lie and the ability to act as a seer or prophet.

He returns to the human world in a daze. Thomas's mind and body are mended by Meg and Gavin. He ends up marrying Elspeth. He prophecizes and sings his way to fame, ending his days in Ersylton tower.

There are poem versions of ballads like Tam Lin and the Lady of the lake throughout the book. They are short and sweet and easy to read. In addition there are riddle games in spots as well. Most of these are fairly simple. What is whiter than the milk and softer than the silk? Snow and down.

This novel is the story of a life, albeit, a magical one focused on poetry, music, and sensuality. There is a decent amount of sex and romance in the book, but none of it is pruriently described. If you want a fantasy story with music and poetry in it, this novel is for you.

This novel is not in the least bit violent and it has a lot of thought put into it with the descriptions of everyday life in the middle ages. It is a very much romanticized version of country life with fields, flowers, sheep, and meadows in the hills of Scotland. There is also a small bit of court life thrown in as well, mainly singing and feasting for the minor courts of Scotland.

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It was hard knocking out a review today, but I did it. Today was quite a busy day.

The Book of Ballads-- Charles Vess Illustrator with Neil Gaiman, Charles De Lint, Jane Yolen, Jeff Smith, Emma Bull, Sharyn McCrumb, and Others

Arthur Rackham illustration for the Twa Corbies.

The Book of Ballads , Charles Vess Illustrator, with Neil Gaiman, Charles De Lint, Jane Yolen, Jeff Smith, Emma Bull, Sharyn McCrumb and others is a collection of ballads translated into graphic stories. First the ballad is illustrated in comic book form, then it is written out as a poem. The ballads are of English, Irish, and Scottish origin and have a wonderful fanciful quality to them.

All of the illustrations are by Charles Vess. Vess has a beautiful black and white illustrative style. The style reminds me of a cross between P. Craig Russell and Hal Foster. There are hints of Virgil Finlay in the use of light and dark, and Aubrey Beardsley in the use of lines and some of the sensuality of the images. Charles Vess runs Greenman Press http://www.greenmanpress.com/

The book is a real delight to look at. Each ballad is scripted differently by each writer. There are 13 ballads. I will list them. The False Knight on the Road by Neil Gaiman, King Henry by Jane Yolen, Thomas the Rhymer by Sharyn McCrumb, Barbara Allen by Midori Snyder, The Three Lovers by Lee Smith, Tam Lin by Elaine Lee, The Daemon Lover by Delia Sherman, Two Corbies by Charles De Lint, Sovay by Charles De Lint, The Galtee Farmer by Jeff Smith, Alison Gross by Charles Vess, The Black Fox by Emma Bull, and The Great Selchie of Sule Kerry by Jane Yolen.

The contributors are some of the finest fantasy writers of myth fantasy around. Most of them take traditional myths and legends and translate them into fantasy novels.

I especially liked three of them. Thomas the Rhymer travels to Elfland with their queen where for seven years he remains silent and serves her in exchange for the gift of truth and site. He can predict the truth of what will happen to people.

Tam Lin is told differently than the other tales. It consists of one page of dialogue translated into modern english juxtaposed next to a single picture on the next page. It is quite striking to look at.

The Great Selchie of Sole Kerry by Jane Yolen is a classic fairy story of what happens when a mortal woman lays down with with a fae creature. It is tragic both for her husband son.

All of the stories have an air of magic, revenge, or trickery about them. Many are about fairy creatures and places. The ballads content is often bloodier, trickier, and more beautiful than many modern fantasy novels.

This graphic collection is an excellent read if you are interested in myth fantasy, folklore, legends, or fairytales. It will introduce you to a number of authors who write in these genres. It might not quite fit with people who like regular tales of sword and sorcery.

Speculative Fiction; The Many Names for Science Ficton and Fantasy

There is a wonderful name for fantastic fiction: Speculative Fiction. Supposedly this means any kind of fiction that speculates about the nature of reality. A big bite to chew off if I may say so.

I've always thought that this was a way to sneak in the literary minded fantastic. This is because speculative fiction is supposed to cover magical realism, science fiction, fantasy, horror, supernatural fiction, superhero fiction, and alternative history fiction.

I enjoy reading and I find the urge to say something has literary merit is pretentious. I think it is a way to preserve fiction that is only read by academics. Literary merit should be focused on the truly great books. It is often applied too widely.

Magical realism is a subset of speculative fiction. It was originally started in Latin America. The most famous proponent of magical realism is Gabriel Garcia Marquez who has written numerous books including One Hundred Years of Solitude. He stated that he always liked to blur the line between fantasy and reality. His books are great reading. Also Borges, Isabel Allende, Jorge Amado, and Yann Martel are considered magical realism. Yann Martel's Life of Pi, is very interesting it is about a young boy who spends seven months at sea with a tiger in a lifeboat trying to survive. The tiger is never found in the end. Pi also manages to practice Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism at the same time, a rather fantastic feat.

With this, I will switch to the idea of Alternative History. This genre is about where something different occurred in the past, and the present world is somehow different. Quite often it is things like the Ottoman empire never fell, or the nazis succeeded. The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick presents an America where the nazis have concurred it. Another famous series that is more recent and definitely science fiction is Harry Turtledove's World War Series. Alien reptiles invade during world war II and attempt to take over the world. It changes the course of history. A very entertaining series. A classic book in this genre is A Connectict Yankee In King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain, a satire where a man from Mark Twain's time travels back to the time of Camelot. For something very contemporary, you might try The Plot Against America about a place where Franklin Roosevelt didn't get elected for a third term, but Lindbergh did. It is about a slow slip into American fascism.

We are moving into the concept of science fiction or as it was originally called by Hugo Gernsback, scientifiction-- scientific fiction. Science fiction was not the original term for the genre. Now there are abbreviations for the genre sci-fi and sf. I think of abbreviations sometimes as being lazy. Science fiction, is most often fiction that speculates about future events usually focused on science and technology. It has been with us for a very long time.

Most people dismiss science fiction as about B.E.M.s, or Bug Eyed Monsters. I happen to really like bug eyed monsters. Aliens are fun to read about in their wide variety. There is nothing like reading about pip the minidragon in the Pip and Flinx series by Alan Dean Foster, or being terrorized by the Coeurla in The Voyage of the Space Beagle by A.E. Van Vogt.

There are many subgenres of science fiction. Hard Science Fiction is fiction which focuses on using real science to predict the future. Jack McDevitt is a wonderful example of a contemporary hard science fiction writer. Also Kim Stanley Robinson when he wrote about the terraforming of mars is writing hard science fiction.

The opposite is soft science fiction. Science fiction about social issues. Ursula Leguin is the quintessential soft science fiction writer. One of the books I have read, The Margarets by Sherri S. Tepper is a good example of soft science fiction. Sherri S. Tepper also wrote The Gate To A Womans Country, a good example of both soft science fiction and feminist fiction. For something more accessible to the every day reader, there is The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood. This was made into a wonderful film that is quite scary.

On this note we have utopian or dystopian science fiction. This focuses on popular fear. 1984 by George Orwell is the ultimate dystopian novel. It is required reading in high school. Remember "Big Brother Is Watching You." Another subgenre of utopian fiction is Ecotopian fiction. The most famous of this type of fiction is Ecotopia by Ernest Callenbach. More recently there is the Ecolitan series by L.E. Modesitt.

Then there is the concept of cyberpunk, or combining computers with a punk reality. The most famous of these books and some say the first novel in this genre is John Brunner's Shockwave Rider. Cyberpunk has almost become real today. Bruce Sterling who writes science fiction, wrote a book about Kevin Mitnick, The Hacker Crackdown, which reads very much like a cyberpunk novel.

On a side note some of the modern science fiction writers are introducing something that rides the boundaries of science fiction and contemporary thrillers. I call it the near future thriller. William Gibson recently wrote Spook Country which has elements of cyberpunk in it, even though it is considered a mainstream bestselling novel. Also Charles Stross recently wrote a novel called Halting State where police are called in to solve a crime inside an online roleplaying game.

A digression from cyberpunk is steam punk, or victorian era science fiction written by present authors. Alan Moore in his graphic novel sequence, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen revives all of the characters of 19th century science fiction and turns them into superheroes in an odd alternate Victorian england. This is an example of both Superhero fiction and steampunk. Another example of steampunk is The Difference Engine by Bruce Sterling. In this world, a secret society controls a babbage machine which they use as a supercomputer and have been using since Victorian times.

David Drake is one of my favorite writers. A series that is loved by many military people is Hammer's Slammers a story about future tank warfare. This is military science fiction. Another example of military science fiction that deals with tanks is Bolo by Keith Laumer. Baen books is the leading publisher of military science fiction today. I rather like their books. They are very entertaining. Jerry Pournelle who wrote the nonfiction book The Strategy of Technology, also created the Codominium universe where Russia and the United States ally to create a bleak future history. The codominium setting is mostly military science fiction.

Of course if you are thinking of military science fiction, you also are thinking of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction as well. Quite honestly, I don't read much apocalyptic fiction. The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard is about as far as I get with this kind of thing. I like to think I have a positive vision of the future. However, if you want a really good well written accessible book about the death and rebirth of civilization, read A Canticle For Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr.

There are two major acknowledged ages in Science Fiction, The Golden Age, and The New Wave. The golden age of science fiction is mostly the 1930s and 1940s. It is the age of John W. Campbell, editor of Astounding magazine. This is when the major writers and artists of the genre began to be established. Virgil Finlay and FrankR. Paul are the two major artists that came from this time period. Isaac Asimov and others helped turned science fiction more mainstream at this time. The New Wave happened in the 1960's. It is a turn towards soft science fiction or social commentary. During the new wave, Harlan Ellison, Samuel R. Delany, and Michael Moorcock expanded the boundaries of science fition.

What most people see as science fiction is really Space Opera, romantic future adventure stories. The real foundation of space opera started with Flash Gordon who was always fighting Ming the Merciless. Today we see two main space operas, Star Trek, and Star Wars. Star Trek is far more romantic than many people realize. The theme song shows this. Captain Kirk is always getting a new woman.
Star Trek Lyrics:

Beyond the rim of the starlight,
my love is wandering in star flight.
I know he'll find
In star clustered reaches
Love, strange love
A star woman teaches.
I know his journey ends never.
His Star Trek will go on forever.
But tell him while
He wanders his starry sea,
Remember,
Remember me.

Star Wars was originally meant to be a comedy when it was first released. It turned into a movie empire. It is what people think of when someone mentions science fiction. There are very strong elements of fantasy with the jedi knights in Star Wars. I think of it as more science fantasy than science fiction.

Space Western is not a category which I know much about. I haven't seen too many of this kind of thing. I am guessing it is high noon in space, or the lone ranger in space. The movie Outland starring Sean Connery is about a lawman coming to clean up a space station. It is definitely a space western.

When I think of science fantasy, I think of Darkover written by Marion Zimmer Bradley with its psychic leroni, or Witch World by Andre Norton with its psionic witches. Both of these books posit a kind of psychic super science in a medieval setting. They set this "science" against modern day explorers who are trying to take the planet for themselves. Both Andre Norton and Marion Zimmer Bradley are writing in the boundaries of science fiction and fantasy.

You can also categorize the Darkover novels as Romantic Fantasy, because there is a strong element of love and intrigue in the novels.

Sword and Sorcery is a very commen theme in fantasy literature. It is a form of low fantasy. Conan the Barbarian is the most famous of low fantasy characters. Robert E. Howard didn't write most of the Conan novels. L. Sprague De Camp basically expanded the series into what we know as Conan. Now there are innumerable spinoffs from Conan. Faffhrd and Grey Mouser are two excellent fantasy characters created by Fritz Leiber. I think of sword and sorcery as have sword will travel.

The first thing which people think of when they think of fantasy is The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien this is high fantasy at its best. The Hobbit regularly gets assigned as standard reading for junior high and high school in American schools. It is very well written writing.

The best fantasy has strong mythic overtones. The Queen of Elflands Daughter by Lord Dunsany is an example of well written myth fantasy drawn from myths and legends surrounding Ireland and England. Some more modern examples of myth fantasy are American Gods and Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman. These are both set in the modern day.

You could almost call them urban fantasy. Urban fantasy is putting mythic elements into a modern setting. Charles De Lint does this wonderfully. I'll probably pick up his new book Little Grrrl Lost about a six inch tall girl and her friendship with a big person in a modern urban setting. There is something always interesting in fairytales or fantasies about little people. I always liked to watch the Lilliputians in the movie of Gulliver's Travels.

There is still the regular fantastic literature to consider. I still read things like Erik Stevenson's Malazan Book of Fallen, or George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire.

Something which I don't often read is Horror which is considered part of speculative fiction. I am not big on being scared. I have read Cujo by Stephen King about a rabid dog, that is about as scary as I want to get. There is some relation between science fiction and fantasy. Dean R. Koontz, the bestselling author started out writing science fiction then later switched to writing horror. Dan Simmons writes both science fiction and horror. His Endymion series is quite interesting.

In horror, vampires, werewolves, and zombies seem to define the genre. Anne Rice's vampire novels are more slightly erotic adventure stories than terrifying novels. Also, World War Z by Max Brooks is more of an adventure and survival story about surviving zombie attacks than a true horror novel. Max Brooks other book, The Zombie Survival Guide is more humor than horror. I prefer my monsters to be more humorous than terrifying. You Suck: A Vampire Love Story by Christopher Moore is an excellent example of a humorous vampire novel. Again, I prefer my lycanthropes to be more adventurous than scary. The Werewolves of London by Brian Stableford is more of an adventure story than anything else.

I also actually like H.P. Lovecraft and people who write adventure pastiches on the Cthulhu mythos. Once again, stories like At The Mountain of Madness are not particularly scary, they are more strange than anything else. I don't have a Cthulhu doll like many people, but am thinking of getting one. I might get a shoggoth doll instead.

I don't read many superhero novels. Somehow superheros belong in comic books more than they belong in novels. Nevertheless, now you can buy novelizations of Vampire Hunter D, Batman, Superman, the X-Men and many other characters. I actually enjoyed the Dark Horse comics novelization of Vampire Hunter D by Hideyuki Kikuchi. It is no longer in print. The manga of course are much better. There is a certain woodenness in many superhero characters. Of couse, sometimes, if the person creates an original hero for a superhero novel, it can be entertaining. Count Geiger's Blues by Michael Bishop parodies and at the same time tells the story of superhero Count Geiger.

The other type of fantasy not yet mentioned is the pulp heroes, The Spider Master of Men, Doc Savage, and The Shadow. As they say, "The Shadow Knows." Baen has reprinted the Spider Master of Men and is distributing it as a paperback. The original pulp heroes crossed the detective with the superman. Doc Savage is a self made superman, stronger, faster, and more intelligent than the peopel surrounding him. An interesting take off of Doc Savage is a fantasy novel called Doc Sidhe by Aaron Alston. Doc Sidhe is a kind of an alternative Doc Savage sent in an elfen art deco 1930s. There is magic, intrigue, and a very pulpy setting.

Some mystery novels have a fantastic twist to them. There are mysteries set in ancient rome, cat detectives, fantasy detectives, and others. One of the most hated mystery novels by science fiction fans is Bimbos of the Death Sun by Sharyn McCrumb. It successfully lampoons science fiction writers and fans. There is even a followup, Zombies of the Gene Pool. Isaac Asimov wrote numerous mystery novels.

If you are following the mysterious, somehow supernatural fiction also got mixed in with speculative fiction. I honestly don't know that much about supernatural fiction. Reading about hauntings and ghosts unless they are in The Weekly World News doesn't fascinate me that much. I cannot get myself to read The Amityville Horror, or the Haunting of Hell House by Richard Matheson. The one short story which I can recommend is "Pigeons From Hell" by Robert E. Howard.

By the way, Richard Matheson's I Am Legend is being reproduced for theaters soon. I wish they had done the Incredible Shrinking Man first. It is a much better story.

Myth Fantasy, Urban Folklore, Fairytales, A Free Life by Ha Jin

Puss In Boots

Today, I decided to write a bit about Myth Fantasy, or novels which retell old fairytales or use old gods and legends and legends as their basis. One of the most prominent writers of this type of tale is Neil Gaiman who is a truly prolific writer. He recently wrote the screenplay of Beowulf which is in theaters now. It is a fantastic version of the Beowulf story. I'll wait for it to come to video. Another video which I will be waiting for from him is Stardust which is a film based on the graphic novel he wrote.

Two novels which he wrote are both based on myth and fantasy, the first is American Gods which sets the Norse pantheon in modern America. There are also cameos by the Egyptian gods and a few folk heros. Another novel called Anansi Boys tells a modern story of Anansi in contemporary America. This is full of the trickster tales of Anansi which are very entertaining.

I like when people use mythic characters as centerpieces in their novels. Jane Yolen wrote Briar Rose, a retelling of the snow white story during the holocaust. Also, Christopher Moore, who writes humorous fantasy used Coyote as a central figure in his novel Coyote Blue.

This may all seem a bit unusual. We all create our own myths everyday. This is why I read http://www.snopes.com/ a nice collection of shaggy dog stories, urban folktales, and news of the weird. People do amazingly stupid things and it is often hard to tell if they are telling the truth or just making it up.

The Choking Doberman: And Other Urban Legends by Jan Harold Brunvand is an excellent book if you are interested in this kind of thing. She also wrote part of the graphic novel called The Big Book of Urban Legends which is quite entertaining. It is a comic book with all sorts of urban myths which are often passed off as being true.

Quite a few writers use myth as the basis for their novels. If you think about it, the story of Gilgamesh is the first novel. Then the Ramayana. This is followed by the Odyssey and the Iliad, then Beowulf. These are the true basis for most of the fantasy novels being written. At some level most fantasy novels being written have some of the characterization from these books. The Icelandic Eddas are also a rich source for fantasy novelists to draw from.

There are trickster figures from all over the world to draw from, the Monkey King, Coyote, Tom Thumb, Jack, Brer Rabbit, Sis' Roach, Anansi, Puss N' Boots (one of my favorite of all characters), Iron Heinrich, and any number of characters which are written into todays childrens fairytales.

We see in them in some of our favorite movies, I really liked Shrek, which is a near perfect "fractured fairytale", or retelling of a fairytale with a different twisted ending. Jon Sciezka does an excellent job of creating fractured fairytales for children with his books, The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs , and The Stinky Cheeseman and Other Fairly Stupid Tales.

If you are interested in the morbid, sometimes which is both disgusting and funny. The Darwin Awards, http://www.darwinawards.com/ is a site which lists incredibly stupid examples of people dying. It is also a book.

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I started reading A Free Life by Ha Jin. It is about a Chinese family escaping the Tiananmien massacre and moving to America. I like the accuracy of the conversations and the accents. They seem to be excellent descriptions. The description of the immigrant experience is very engrossing so far. They move into a rich persons house where they keep the house in order. During the day, the father works in a series of menial security guard jobs and dreams of being a poet and novelist. The main character is originally here to get a Ph.D. in Political Science but now is very disaffected with the Chinese communists.

This book was on the New York Times 100 Best Books of 2007. I promise when I write about the books I am reading, I will not give you little stars or dry literary appraisals. This novel immediately starts tackling important issues like green cards, passports, and other every day things which happen when a new family moves into the country. If you want really good anecdotal descriptions they are here. It also shows how incredibly greedy and materialistic a lot of Americans are.

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