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Sunday, February 26, 2017

BW9: Fairy Tales aren't just for Children




I have a special guest post for you this week.  Robyn (Crstarlette) from the Well Trained Mind 52 Books group, is here to talk about Fairy tales that aren't just for children and entice us into joining her in reading From the Beast to the Blonde by Marina Warner.


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We all know that fairy tales are not just for children. In Once Upon a Time: A Short History of Fairy Tales, Marina Warner says of the Grimm Brothers and their tales:

In 1812, the first edition of their anthology, comprising eighty-six stories, came out in an edition of 600, with an apparatus of notes running to hundreds of pages. It was not really intended to be read for pleasure at all by the children and households of its title; it was a learned work setting out to reconfigure the cultural history of Germany along lines that would emancipate it from the monopoly of classical and French superiority.

Earlier, in the seventeenth century, upper-class women gathered in French salons and retold folk tales, each trying to make the tale sound as if the teller were just making it up in the moment and, through the tale, commenting on and critiquing their conditions. In Fairy Tale as Myth/Myth as Fairy Tale, Jack Zipes says:

Up through 1700, there was no literary fairy tale for children. On the contrary, children like their parents heard oral tales from their governesses, servants, and peers. The institiltionalizing of the literary fairy tale, begun in the salons during the seventeenth century, was for adults and arose out of a need by aristocratic women to elaborate and conceive other alternatives in society than those prescribed for them by men.

The term “fairy tale” comes from the title of a book published by one of these women of the French salons: Les Contes de Fees by Madame d’Aulnoy.

Zipes later says, “With regard to the origins of the fairy tale for children, it is practically impossible to give an exact date,” but importantly, though people did start writing fairy tales for children, using them for entertainment and as moral instruction, they were taken back and returned to adults, and they continue to be written, revised and retold and used as inspiration for novels and short stories in all sections of the library.

In addition to many retellings and fairy-tale inspired works in the children’s section, you’ll find Angela Carter and Margaret Atwood in the adult literary fiction section, Robin McKinley and Jane Yolen in the YA section and Neil Gaiman everywhere. Some of us have recently enjoyed The Bear and the Nightingale, which in my library, is in the adult SF/F section, and Marissa Meyer’s Lunar Chronicles is a SF fairy tale YA tetralogy. The magic and tone of fairy tales is carried over in the magical realism of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Italo Calvino.

The non-fiction section has more than just anthologies. There are fairy tales retold in the poems of Anne Sexton, Catherynne M. Valente and Theodora Goss. Fairy tale scholars, such as Marina Warner, Jack Zipes and Maria Tatar have given us essays, histories and interpretations. At the end of Once Upon a Time: A Short History of Fairy Tales, there is a recommended reading list 128 books long. For a literary magazine, you can subscribe to The Fairy Tale Review. And on the Internet you can read the archives of The Journal of Mythic Arts (where you will also find adult, YA, nonfiction and poetry recommended reading lists).


Marina Warner included her book From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers on her own recommended reading list (in Once Upon a Time), but it’s also on the nonfiction list at the JoMA site and it comes with some pretty good reviews on Goodreads, and that is what we’re beginning this week. 

For myself, I’m hoping to read two chapters a week to finish the book in about three months, so am planning on the introduction and chapter one this week. Others might choose a more leisurely pace.


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Please link to your specific  post and not your general blog link. In the Your Name field, type in your name and the name of the book in parenthesis. In Your URL field link to your specific post. If you don't have a blog, leave a comment telling us what you have been reading.   Every week I will put up Mr. Linky which will close at the end of each book week.  No matter what book you are reading or reviewing at the time, whether it be # 1 or # 5 or so on, link to the current week's post.




Sunday, February 19, 2017

BW8: Book Festivals and birthdays


Time for a round of book festival news and bookish birthdays as I'm still traipsing around South America and hiking with Mark Adam's in Turn Right at Machu Picchu,  There are quite a few historical books about the Incas that sound intriguing including Kim McQuarries The Last Days of the Incas, and  Hugh Thomson's The White Rock,  If you haven't checked out Historicalnovels.com, they have a great selection set in precolumbian era and the Spanish conquest, 17th-20th century as well as mysteries. Fiction wise, check out goodreads list of Aztec, Maya and and Inca reads.

We may have missed the Hay Festival Cartagena 2017 in January, but there are plenty of links to all the authors involved and will most likely will be next year as well. However, start preparing yourself for the Paraty International Literary Festival which will take place late July in Brazil.

The Literary Women Festival is coming up the first weekend in March as well as the Festival Leue Literature in New York highlighting German language books. To check out festivals coming up in your area, go to the Book and Literary Festivals calendar on Everfest.




Authors celebrating birthdays this week are:


February 19:  Colombian poet and novelist José Eustasio Rivera and American writer Amy Tan

February 20:  South African novelist Alex La Guma and French novelist Georges Bernanos as well as Japanese novelist Shiga Naoya

February 21:  Humorist Erma Bombeck and novelist Anaïs Nin as well as poet W.H. Auden

February 22:  Author Edward Gorey and Australian poet John Shaw Neilson as well as Nobel prize winner and Greek novelist Giorgos Seferis

February 23:  English diarist Samuel Pepys and poet Haki R. Madhubuti 

February 24:  German author Wilhelm Carl Grimm and Polish novelist Juliusz Kaden-Bandrowski

February 25:  English author Anthony Burgess and Journalist George Schuyler

Have fun following rabbit trails! 


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Please link to your specific  post and not your general blog link. In the Your Name field, type in your name and the name of the book in parenthesis. In Your URL field link to your specific post. If you don't have a blog, leave a comment telling us what you have been reading.   Every week I will put up Mr. Linky which will close at the end of each book week.  No matter what book you are reading or reviewing at the time, whether it be # 1 or # 5 or so on, link to the current week's post.







Sunday, February 12, 2017

BW7: Happy Valentine's Week

Unicorn Kiss by Josephine Wall


Happy Valentine's Week! Cheers to candy hearts and chocolate wishes, champagne and diamond dishes, and lots of mushy kisses for the mister and the missus.  Whether you are  into the grey, hunting for  light, caught in the dark, or perhaps searching for the unknown, may you find the book you seek for this lovely week.



Laughing Song

by

William Blake


When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy,
And the dimpling stream runs laughing by;
When the air does laugh with our merry wit,
And the green hill laughs with the noise of it;

When the meadows laugh with lively green,
And the grasshopper laughs in the merry scene,
When Mary and Susan and Emily
With their sweet round mouths sing “Ha, Ha, He!”

When the painted birds laugh in the shade,
Where our table with cherries and nuts is spread,
Come live & be merry, and join with me,
To sing the sweet chorus of “Ha, Ha, He!”


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Please link to your specific  post and not your general blog link. In the Your Name field, type in your name and the name of the book in parenthesis. In Your URL field link to your specific post. If you don't have a blog, leave a comment telling us what you have been reading.   Every week I will put up Mr. Linky which will close at the end of each book week.  No matter what book you are reading or reviewing at the time, whether it be # 1 or # 5 or so on, link to the current week's post.







Sunday, February 5, 2017

BW6: Pick a book by the cover



Time for a mini challenge!  A few years ago I joined a challenge in which one of the tasks was to pick a book by its cover. The hard part - don't read the blurb and find out what it is about beforehand.    Easier said than done. The temptation is just too much.  Especially in person - however it is a bit easy to do when on line.  Since then I have chosen books a few times using this method and usually end up with something excellent.  Also, I couldn't pick books by authors I've already read. In the past I've utilized Amazon and wandered through the new releases.   This time, I  googled book covers 2016 and viewed images. I selected books with both covers and titles that caught my eye and intrigued me the most. 
















What do you think?  Which one should I read?  I dare you to try picking out a book based on its cover alone and see what you end up with.   Of course, you have to share. 


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Please link to your specific  post and not your general blog link. In the Your Name field, type in your name and the name of the book in parenthesis. In the Your URL field leave a link to your specific post. If you don't have a blog, leave a comment telling us what you have been reading.   Every week I will put up Mr. Linky which will close at the end of each book week.  No matter what book you are reading or reviewing at the time, whether it be # 1 or # 5 or so on, link to the current week's post.