(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best literary genre history & criticism books

I've had this journal thing called My Grandma: Her Stories on the top of my list for a bit. My grandmother is one of the most important people to me. I love hearing the wisdom she has to impart as well as any random story from her past. She loves writing and talking, so it's the perfect gift for both of us really. I'm not that great with starting conversation, and even if I do, I know there I things I don't even know I wanted to know. There are a bunch of questions about life stuff in there that I'm sure I'd love hearing about. I'm sure I could gush about my grandma some more, but yeah. That's my tippy top item.

Somehow didn't notice that you mentioned each list. The above is my main super wants list and really the only thing that I'd want if given the option between all lists. Grandma has a special place in my heart.

My other lists though:

From my food list: A pack of Luna Bars, so that my SO has a decent snack while in class. She doesn't get much of a break and sometimes goes a good 5ish hours without anything to eat.

My music list: This is a bit strange, though I want all of the albums there, none of them are super mega wants. Oddly enough, the super mega want albums are on my high priority/default list. I guess I should change that. That being said, the albums I reallyreallyreally* want, are on Bandcamp. Artists that are lesser known and stuff. That'd either be Ott's Mir, Ne Obliviscaris or Naomi's self-titled that I've wanted for quite some time. Though, if it HAD to be on Amazon, the Blade Runner soundtrack would be AMAAAAZING!

Books list: I'm into cyberpunk, so the top of my list right now is between Afrofuturism because rarely are POC represented in sci-fi and I'd love to see who's done what and the Cyberpunk Handbook which is a bit of a parody/joke book.

Vidya games list: The highest are Way of the Samurai 3 and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed "Ultimate Sith Edition"

Finally, my other random assortment of items wishlist: Probably the H&K MK23 airsoft gun. I like H&K, and this is much safer lying around than the actual thing. I won't shoot somebodies eye out with it a la A Chris Story, I promise!

I'm fond of everything by Samuel Smiles. He started writing Self-Help books in the 1850s, and it's all public domain. You can read virtually all of his works free on using the Amazon Kindle online reader.

> Who better to take inspirational advice from than a man named Smiles? But unlike the feel-good cheerleading that the term "self-help" says to us today, to Smiles it might well have been synonymous with "hard work." For this 1859 volume is dedicated to "stimulat[ing] youths to apply themselves diligently to right pursuits,--sparing neither labour, pains, nor self-denial in prosecuting them--and to rely upon their own efforts in life."

> Though the author himself admits his lessons are "old-fashioned but wholesome," he nevertheless delivers stern but well-intentioned lectures on such commonsense concepts as the importance of learning from failure, how work is the best teacher, and the value of thrift, gentility, and honesty, all peppered with examples of such noble industry from the lives of writers, scientists, artists, inventors, educators, philanthropists, missionaries, and--gulp!--martyrs. It's as if all paternal wisdom had been reduced to a single book.


https://www.amazon.com/Self-Help-illustrations-Conduct-Perseverance-ebook/dp/B0083ZXW3Q/ref=sr_1_4?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1480063281&sr=1-4

https://www.amazon.com/Thrift-Samuel-Smiles-ebook/dp/B004TILLF2/ref=sr_1_5?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1480063281&sr=1-5

https://www.amazon.com/Character-Samuel-Smiles-ebook/dp/B0082XL5SS/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1480063258&sr=1-1&keywords=samuel+smiles+character

Which brings me to my third point: no, children were not originally the target audience of fairy tales. Children were often included in the audience, but they were not the primary audience. As such, the tales had lots of violence, lots of sex, lots of bawdy jokes and references, and lots of frank discussion about issues that impacted the storytellers’ worlds. For some context on when these stories might have been told, women often told such tales to each other while doing domestic work, chores, and other activities, or together with men around the fire after the children had gone to bed. They were chiefly for entertainment purposes, though there were often lessons embedded in them (because most tales do, after all). Writers, editors, and storytellers began to utilize fairy tales in 18th and 19th-century Europe in the moral and cultural education of children. Before that, they were chiefly for adults, whether for the teaching of lessons or entertainment purposes, which is why so many of the tales are particularly gruesome or filled with sexual exploits: they are not sanitized for children.

The Grimm brothers were trying to please two different audiences. Their first edition was not meant for children at all, and was instead a scholarly pursuit with them trying to record the tales faithfully, even down to colloquial language; they did this largely for nationalist reasons to create a unified German cultural story, at least partially based on Johann Herder’s fundamental philosophy centered around the idea that the only way for Germany (and thus, any nation) to revitalize its sense of self was through the collection and distribution of folklore, which Herder saw as “the summation of the national soul expressed in the poems of the folk”. It was only when people began buying the book and telling the stories to their children, complaining that the stories were too graphic in nature, that the Grimm brothers started extensively editing and sanitizing the tales. Many of the Christian references were added because of harsh criticism that they weren't Christian enough, for example. In Wilhelm’s later versions, he was bending to the will of middle-class parents and the church who wanted the stories to be made suitable for children. The Grimm brothers were poor (they were eating one meal a day at one point because they couldn't afford enough food), and so to maximize financial success when the collection began to get popular, they began to sanitize and edit them to make them more suitable. Disney is not the first to sanitize fairy tales, and the supposedly "dark original versions" are themselves sanitized or changed to fit with the desires of their primary audience.

Ultimately, fairy tales get changed because fairy tales occupy a unique space in the literary landscape: as a genre, they (along with other types of folklore) provide a culture with a single unifying collection of tales the population can claim as “theirs”. This unifying cultural story narrates the life of the people, complete with specific geographical landmarks, cultural/regional issues, and identifying characteristics that mark a tale as coming from “our culture”. It is tribal in nature: the differences between tales help distinguish “us” from the collective “them” by identifying and changing aspects of a cultural/oral narrative. Additionally, they give any particular population a romanticized national narrative of their history and cultural geography, assist in the education of new members (such as children/young adults or immigrants) of the cultural identity of the group, and address issues uniquely important to that culture.

For further reading, I recommend the following books and articles:

• Norton's The Classic Fairy Tales, edited by Maria Tatar
  
  
• The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales, Maria Tatar
  
  
• The Annotated Grimms' Fairy Tales, ed. Maria Tatar
  
  
• Breaking the Magic Spell: Radical Theories of Folk and Fairy Tales, Jack Zipes
  
  
• When Dreams Came True: Classical Fairy Tales and Their Tradition, Jack Zipes
  
  
• Why Fairy Tales Stick: The Evolution and Relevance of a Genre, Jack Zipes
  
  
• The Reception of Grimm’s Fairy Tales: Responses, Reactions, Revisions
  
  
• "The Brothers Grimm as Collectors and Editors of German Folktales," Siegfried Neumann
  
  
• “Cross-Cultural Connections and the Contamination of the Classical Fairy Tale,” Jack Zipes (Found in Norton's The Great Fairy Tale Tradition)
  
  
• "Breaking the Disney Spell," Jack Zipes (while I heavily disagree with his interpretation of Disney's adaptations and think that it's a rather narrow view of Disney and the evolution of fairy tales, a genre that is largely defined by its reliance on interpretation and modification by different cultures, it is a solid article as a whole)
  
  
• “Herder, Folklore, and Romantic Nationalism," William Wilson
  
  
• "Cultural Nationalism: The Grimm Brothers' Fairy Tales" and "Nationalistic Aspects of the Grimm Brother's Tales," Louis Snyder
  
  
• "Why the Brothers Grimm Sanitized Their Fairy Tales"
  
  
• On Censorship and Folklore, from the University of Pittsburgh's Folktext collection
  
  
• A chapter on the History of Fairy Tales
  
  
• The New Yorker: Once Upon a Time

It's interesting of how you're using this idea that somehow since the book is for kids, it can't have significant implications in it as well. If we actually choose to look beyond the first 3 inches, one can find an awful lot to examine.

1. Lets start with werewolves. Remus Lupin is outed by society for having a crippling health condition that he can't help. Yup, it's a metaphor for the aids epidemic. "But that's so obvious!" You exclaim. Fine.
   
   
2. Rowling uses a ridiculous amount of references from classic mythology, not only in creatures, but in her names and plots.
   Minerva McGonagal? Minerva is the Roman Goddess of wisdom. Fluffy, or cerberus, happens to guard the place which contains the key to eternal life? I'm sure Orpheus would be Jealous. All the latin, describing the function of spells (and a mirror)? But I mean all kids know latin, right?
   
   
3. Rowling thought the books through well in advance: While there are many points that she didn't have entirely fleshed out, there are tons of factors that show she was thinking about the overarching plot as a whole. For instance, Rowling always knew Sirius Black was one of James Potter's best friends. Sirius Black is mentioned in chapter one of book one. The horcruxes are obviously not mentioned until book 6, but rowling had the general idea in mind by book 2 (7 years before book 6 came out).
   
   
4. Authors smarter than either of us think that Harry Potter is more than just a children's book.
   Steven King:
   > The fantasy writer's job is to conduct the willing reader from mundanity to magic. This is a feat of which only a superior imagination is capable, and Rowling possesses such equipment. She has said repeatedly that the Potter novels are not consciously aimed at any particular audience or age. The reader may reasonably question that assertion after reading the first book in the series, but by the time he or she has reached ''Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,'' it becomes increasingly clear that the lady means what she says. Nor can there be any question that her stated refusal to dumb down the language of the books (the current one is presented with such British terms as petrol, pub and cuppa unchanged) has lent the stories an attraction to adults that most children's novels simply don't have.
   
   
5. Theres been an [awful] (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003NSBDYI/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1) Lot
   ofLiterature written about Harry Potter for a series that's only 3 inches deep.
   
   That's my two cents anyways.
   
   

Congrats on finishing! WoT really is a wild ride, no other series has left me with a feeling even close to what I felt when I put down AMOL for the last time...

As for your reread, I just want to let you know there are some other books and stories that can help expand your reread. New Spring is an awesome prequel book to the series, I would recommend starting the reread with that first!

Also, if you want to get alllll the info you can on Randland, the WoT Companion book is an awesome encyclopedia of it all while The world of RJ's WoT is almost like a mini textbook describing much of the land and nations. Lastly, there is a very very short story about Bao the Wyld, it's basically a deleted scene. I'm not sure of the ways to access it besides getting the Unfettered anthology though that one is pretty cheap and has a lot of other very good stories from varying authors.

Either way, enjoy the reread! I'm doing my first reread now and I'm having a blast catching all the foreshadowing and hidden gems :)

Mischief Managed!

There's an overarching theory behind how these will all help with a school experience. Which is, basically, that you need to have fun in between studying. All work and no play makes jack a dull boy, goes the saying.

• So, since we're talking about wine, I thought I should point out that one of my favorite ways of enjoying wine is with a nice bath. And what better way to make that prospect quite a bit safer, than with this piece of heaven?
  
• Next, we come to brooms. What else would a wizard or witch ride? You know what else is interesting about witches? According to Harry Potter, they basically enjoy a tickling sensation while pretending to be burned at the stake (I swear I remember this from the books). Since they're already having fun with it, I think they should have even more fun by turning the flames colors.
  
• You know who wears a lovely hat? Well, bonnet. A pretty, floral bonnet. Captain Mal Reynolds. I could surely use this to maximize my time enjoying Captain Mal's world.
  
• This one is a tough one. Because there are so many books I could want, but that's such a traditional explanation... So, since we're talking about books as a journey, I really wanted to put a choose-your-own-adventure book. But it hasn't come out yet, so I'll have to content myself with this journey provoker.
  
• Moving on to trunks. Trunks are storage, right? And I've got a bunch of jewelry that's just begging for a home. This looks like the perfect place for it.
  
• Finally, we come to capes. Superheros, wizards, Sherlock Holmes. All these people have a history of wearing capes. And wizards are a strange people, and we sometimes need to work to understand strange people. This book might help guide the way.

Here's a list of sources, in English translation, for the stories I discussed in this video. All of them are public domain, and readily available in at least one edition on Wikisource. All of these stories can be found in their original languages as well.

Grimm's Cinderella, from a 1952 edition translated by Edgar Taylor and Marian Edwardes: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Grimm%27s_Household_Tales_(Edwardes)/Ashputtel

Grimm's Hansel and Gretel, from a 1952 edition translated by Edgar Taylor and Marian Edwardes:
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Grimm%27s_Household_Tales_(Edwardes)/Hansel_and_Grethel

Grimm's Sleeping Beauty, from a 1952 edition translated by Edgar Taylor and Marian Edwardes: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Grimm%27s_Household_Tales_(Edwardes)/Briar_Rose

Perault's Cinderella, from a 1901 translation by Charles Welsh:
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Tales_of_Mother_Goose/Cinderella,_or_the_Little_Glass_Slipper

Perrault's Sleeping Beauty, from a 1901 translation by Charles Welsh:
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Tales_of_Mother_Goose/The_Sleeping_Beauty_in_the_Wood

Giambattista Basile's Sun, Moon, and Talia, from an 1850 translation of the Pentamerone by John Edward Taylor:
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Pentamerone,_or_The_Story_of_Stories/Sun,_Moon_and_Talia

I had a much harder time tracking down the original, 1812 edition of the Grimm's stories along with the original introduction. The best I could find digitally was an edition translated by Oliver Loo and published in 2014. It's currently available on Amazon for just $3.00:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MMX1Z5W/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

If anyone would like a hand finding alternate translations of the sources, other versions of the stories, or the medieval art that inspired my drawings, feel free to send me a PM.

If you search for "minimalism" in the Amazon Kindle store and sort by price from low to high, there are usually 2 to 3 books being offered for free at any given time.

I think showing anyone an episode of Hoarders or Hoarding: Buried Alive has a much more visceral impact, and some of these are available on Netflix. I do enjoy the public domain book, "How to Live in 24 hours a Day" which was written in the early 20th century.

Still, if they're comfortable with their clutter, and it's not really a problem, why try to change them?

• Tao Te Ching
  
• Hoarding: Buried Alive
  
• How to Live on 24 Hours a Day by Arnold Bennett (1910)
  
• The American Frugal Housewife by Lydia Francis Child (1832)
  
• Thrift by Samuel Smiles (1875)
  
• Buddhist monks' rules
  
• 侘寂
  
• How to travel the world with 10 pounds or less
  
• What's in your backpack?

Green Planets has a bunch of very good essays on ecology & world building in science fiction.

Narrower focus, but if you are a fan of Iain M Banks' Culture, Simone Caroti's book is very good.

Too late for your course, but a book of critical essays on Adam Roberts' science fiction is being released next year. He's the best "1 big idea per novel" writer right now.

I know it is unpopular around here, but I would recommend reading the Brian Herbert/Kevin Anderson books a read. Borrow em from your library if you are nervous.

Nothing as cerebral as Dune but I am a big fan of John Ringo's stuff. He had a collaboration with David Weber that was good "The Empire of Man" which begins with "March Upcountry".

I also started The Horus Heresy series and am on book 9 and cannot get enough.

There is The Road to Dune which sheds some more light on Frank and the development of the original novel.

There is Dreamer of Dune which is a biography of Frank.

Last but not least, this book is kind of cool: The Science of Dune. It is a collection of essays by scientists and philosophers about different aspects of Dune and their scientific foundation (i.e. could Arrakis exist). Disclosure, the links I provide might be an affiliate link.

Re-reading Tad William's Memory, Sorrow and Thorn is now available in eBook form.


Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow and Thorn is the fantasy series cited as a major influencer of George R. R. Martin, Christopher Paolini, Patrick Rothfuss and many others. With the publication of The Last King of Osten Ard, the new series set in the same world, readers of the original series may need a re-read or a refresher.


This eBook goes through each chapter in all three massive books, and includes additional chapters on the series place in fantasy genre history, the three great swords, conjecture on the new Last King series (and the additional new books set in Osten Ard) and a list of additional resources for information about this deep and expanding place.


Get ready for The Heart of What Was Lost (which takes place immediately after the end of To Green Angel Tower) and The Witchwood Crown (occurring 30 years after To Green Angel Tower) with Larry Ketchersid's thorough and sometimes humorous re-read notes.


Many thanks to Deborah Beale and Tad Williams for their support on this project.

John Howe's maps of Middle-earth (available in a big box set) are pretty good, and his map of Middle-earth is definitive as far as I'm concerned.

Jonathan Roberts created a set of maps for A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones called The Lands of Ice and Fire which are excellent. I have the big map of the entire world on my wall.

Terry Pratchett has a whole set of maps for his Discworld books, including the entire Discworld itself and the city of Ankh-Morpork (both twice, in fact, in The Streets of Ankh-Morpork, The Compleat Ankh-Morpork, The Discworld Mapp and The Compleat Discworld Atlas).

You can buy a map of Roshar from Brandon Sanderson's website and one of Temerant from the Worldbuilders Store.

A buddy of mine wrote a series of essays on the inspiration for DnD listed in Gygaxs appendix N. He goes in depth about where a lot of the DND stuff comes from. I found it excellent and a great jumping point for some great reading. The big thing that I always disagree with a lot of people is the DND and LOTR connection was not original, DND is a lot more pulp and planetary romance inspired.

His book is great imho but not popular around these parts due to the authors conservative leaning views

www.amazon.com/Appendix-Literary-History-Dungeons-Dragons-ebook/dp/B01MUB7WS6

If you're familiar with those systems, why not just grab a world book about Shannara, (http://www.amazon.com/The-World-Shannara-Terry-Brooks/dp/0345480686) use say Pathfinder, and tweak stuff as needed?

Shannara is essentially heroic fantasy, and that's the one thing Pathfinder and 3.5 do well. Use the world as is, set up characters based on Shannara archetypes, and chance the particulars to fit the fiction (together with your players). Should work fine!

Just to add some Potter stuff here...
The Wisdom of Harry Potter: What Our Favorite Hero Teaches Us about Moral Choices by Edmund Kern

Here are all the local Amazon links I could find:


amazon.co.uk

amazon.ca

amazon.com.au

amazon.in

amazon.com.mx

amazon.de

amazon.it

amazon.es

amazon.com.br

amazon.nl

amazon.co.jp

amazon.fr

Beep bloop. I'm a bot to convert Amazon ebook links to local Amazon sites.
I currently look here: amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, amazon.ca, amazon.com.au, amazon.in, amazon.com.mx, amazon.de, amazon.it, amazon.es, amazon.com.br, amazon.nl, amazon.co.jp, amazon.fr, if you would like your local version of Amazon adding please contact my creator.

Thomas Disch wrote a good (nonfiction) book about this idea. It's called The Dreams Our Stuff is Made Of. It's quite good.

Cool find!
If you're into the Science of Dune, you owe yourself a read of - literally - The Science of Dune, a compilation of essays by notable, credentialed authors on various aspects of Dune's biology, ecology, technology, culture, astronomy and more. Genetic memory, stillsuits, the physical location of Dune (which is a real planet!), anti-gravity... It's a great read.

You might want to check out this book it has a ridiculous amount of short stories, history and insight. It covers easy stories everything from alchemy to android. It covers so much that you can get a real idea of what is out there and help you find what type of stories like. I would think if you get the book and browse to see what you would like to cover and then either find alternative sources or some of the stories are common enough to be easily found online. This book isn't near as good but it still alright and is specifically sci-fi.

>There's also a great little book that's dedicated to using the books to make a full atlas of Middle-earth, and the author's very knowledgeable about geography and geology. She even explains the theories pertinent to Middle-earth's shift from flat to round.

To add on to this a bit, the book you would be looking for is called The Atlas of Middle Earth (revised edition) by Karen Wynn Fonstad.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KEWAP1I/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1


Under NO circumstances should you ever buy, look at, or read An Atlas of Tolkien by David Day.

I thought it was passable until I read the chapter on it in Simone Caroti's book on the culture series. Now, I realize how totally brilliant it is. I'd highly recommend checking that book out.

edit: Here's a link to it: https://www.amazon.com/Culture-Iain-Banks-Critical-Introduction/dp/0786494476 It's a little pricey, but totally worth it.

THINKING HORROR and THINKING HORROR vol. 2 are two great and recent collections of great nonfiction essays and interviews. Highly recommended.

There are 3 critical studies of Banks' writing that can be ordered from Amazon, and might be suitable?

• Paul Kincaid's
  
• Nick Hubble's
  
• Simone Caroti's
  
  Not read any of them personally, but I think the Kincaid one is the highest profile one - Hugo Award finalist last year, and IIRC Kincaid knew Banks personally. Both Kincaid and Hubble live in the UK, so you might be able to contact them to get a copy signed?

A few I haven't read, but have heard good things about here and elsewhere:

• On Writing and Worldbuilding, Vol I
  
• Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding
  
• Fantasy cartography book
  
• Short book on language creation

https://www.amazon.com/Compleat-Ankh-Morpork-Terry-Pratchett/dp/0385538235/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=guide+to+Ankh+morpork&qid=1563332828&s=books&sr=1-1


I got this for 5 bucks at a meijer a year or two ago. I plan on using this as plot city for a city campaign. It has an awesome map of the city.

Well reading the books is the best and fullest way to learn about the world, but if you want something more concise and organized, there is the World of Shannara book that is a guide to the setting.

There is also a wiki

There's an intriguing book about Appendix N, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

For getting upt to speed with the old books without re-reading them, I highly recommend Larry Ketchersid's re-read. It's a 10th of lenght and you'll know everything necessary. It is a self published ebook on amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Re-reading-Williams-Memory-Sorrow-Thorn-ebook/dp/B01I8GIWQ6/

Norse mythology is also free.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01BMHMD40/ref=pd_aw_sim_351_2?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=ND6TGD1PRJBXA6ETJDP9&dpPl=1&dpID=81fp1rvUEYL

Thinking Horror is worth checking out!!!

um, appendix N (the old one is great):
https://www.amazon.com/Appendix-Literary-History-Dungeons-Dragons-ebook/dp/B01MUB7WS6

and the new one in the 5e PHB:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/2de2u7/the_new_dungeons_and_dragons_players_handbook/

if you haven't read all the original Conan articles yet, or Fritz Leiber, there are lots of fresh, nearly forgotten ideas buried in the old-style fantasy schtick.

Not at all difficult, people who understand how languages work do it all the time: Klingon, Dothraki, and so on. People have written books on the topic.

Esperanto was invented as a universal language in the late 19th century, and while it never caught on, there are still groups who speak it for grins. William Shatner did a whole movie in it.

The Atlas of Middle-Earth, an essential for anyone looking to expand their Middle-Earth collection and IMO an almost required necessity companion when reading The Silmarillion.

Buy your mum a copy of one of my favorite nerd books:

The Atlas of Middle Earth

If you want a city map, there's this monstrosity

Although this isn't an rpg system, this book is The Shannara companion book which could serve as a guide to the setting and the background information that you could use to build a campaign from:

Shannara Book

Anyone know anything about the "Oliver Loo" version which is also out?

http://www.amazon.com/Original-1812-Grimm-Fairy-Tales-ebook/dp/B00MMX1Z5W/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1416438807&sr=1-1&keywords=grimm+oliver+loo