The other day I mentioned that I needed to get back to reading old fairy and folk stories. reading them forces you to forget about rationalizing and explaining everything. There is an assumption that wonderful and fantastic things just are, they do not need a reason for being there. Forget naturalism, embrace the irrational, spontaneous, and magical and just ride along.Poking around, I refound a site that has the books of fairy stories edited by Andrew Lang online. These books were compiled in the late 19th century and contain stories from all kinds of different traditions. Each was bound with a different color cover, and they are titled after the color of the cover. You can find them in various formats, including each individual story online here. Go check them out.
I'd like to repeat the suggestion to read Lord Dunsany, I know some of his books are available through Google Books. In fact, like Lang, Dunsany is published by Dover, so you can bet, his works are in the public domain.
ReplyDeleteJack Vance's Lyonesse is another personal favorite which elegantly combines fairy tale and, what we consider, modern fantasy fiction.
Will take up reading this to my boy at bed time. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.
ReplyDeleteI've added Dunsany to my reading list as well. If I recall correctly, he was a big influence on Tolkien and CS Lewis, so I'm interested to see what his work is like. As for Lyonesse, I'll add that as well, but those may be a little harder for me to get. I keep looking for Vance books when I go to the bookstore, but they never seem to have anything. I'll be keeping an eye open at the con this week, but I suspect I'll have to order them when I get some spare money.
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ReplyDeleteLooks like blogger likes to double post from my phone. If that's the case, it's going to be a long week.
ReplyDeleteGood tips! I also find fairy tales inspiring for their non-rationalism, and personally love that kind of feeling in D&D.
ReplyDeleteDunsany and Lyonesse are firmly on my "to read" list... :)