In a desperate bid to avoid death by collapsing book pile*, I made a concerted effort yesterday to sort out the to read pile on the bedside cabinet. One of the issues with the great to read pile of doom was my inherently bad habit of adding books to it while never removing the ones I have acctually read. As happens if I leave this task long enough, it had gotten out of hand, and there was a real risk that ‘Hero with a thousand faces’ was going to brain me one night.

*There are worse ways to go

In any event this had led to me finding a bunch of books that need putting on book shelves, some of which I read, loved, planned to review, but they were forming the foundations and super structure of the dark tower of book doom so they were not so much forgotten about but irretrievable. For many reasons, if I review a book I like to have it sat on my desk while I am doing so…

Anyway, fascinating insight as that may be to the beside cabinet of a bibliophile, on to some reviews, starting, as a delightful Flemish research witch has me on a folklore kick at the moment with with Fascinating Folklore… A book that answers a question much on the lips of the zeitgeist these days. Did anything good ever come out of Twitter..?

Fascinating Folklore: A compendium of comics and essays

Back in the dim long forgotten past, when the world was bright and joy surpassed hate as the currency of short text based social media there was (and still is) a hashtag called #FolkloreThursday. With that hashtag in mind PJ Holden and John Reppion started a weekly comic which would be based on a different bit of folklore each week. These proved popular and fascinating, So it is perhaps no great surprised this book came out of those comic’s.

Within there are those original comics PJ drew and also short essays from John delving deeper into the folklore behind each of the stories he got PJ to draw. The result is this compendium, half folklore comics half short essays on folklore, all intriguing, delightful and enriching. I knew a lot of the subject matter to one extent or another, but there was plenty here that also was new to me. The pair did not restrict themselves to the British Isles for one thing, instead they span folklore from around the world, as well as a fair grounding in the myths and mythology from which it sprang.

The comics are a mix of dark and sinister to the uplifting and joyous. All beautifully drawn in different styles to suit each subject, they really exhibit Holdens full range of artistic skill and flair. The short essays by Reppion equally are skilled crafted words that explain and enlighten but are never dry and dusty. Together they bring each of they many talents to bare and the outcome is somewhat unique.

This book is perfect for someone interested in folklore but who needs a nice introduction to the broad suave of everything that falls under that banner. As well as old hacks who forget they don’t know everything… As such I can highly recommend it. It is also perfect for children, as its bloody, dark, and full of viscera, all those things children love… So they will not even notice the education they are getting while they read it.

As this book is only available in Hardback (and frankly its the only way to read it.) I do not have my customary kindle link. here however is a the link to amazon if you want to check this out. Which you do…

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fascinating-Folklore-Compendium-Comics-Essays/dp/1912634724

Several years ago I was selling books in a park with several other authors one of which was Stephen Palmer, a brilliant fiction writer and a fascinating writer of narrative non-fiction. We exchanged at least three sentences, one of which was, “I am nipping to the Tesco’s down the hill, do you want anything?” Which just goes to show what fascinating people we authors are, and the intellectual nature of our conversations. In my defence, I really wanted a sandwich.

In any regard I was later to read, and love, his steampunk/Victorian urban fantasy Conjuror Girl, which started with the splendid Monique Orphan.

For reasons best known to himself Stephen contacted me earlier ( much earlier) this year and asked if I would be interested in an ARC copy of his latest book, a narrative non-fiction work exploring the relationship between humanity, the constellation of Taurus and the sacredness of bulls. I said sure. Failed to find time to read the arc and ended up buying the book when it was released where it got placed in the to read pile of doom. Eventually I did read it over the course of a couple of months because it a book that lends itself to being read a chapter at a time, as each chapter is a separate entity. This is not me disparaging the book, or saying it was difficult to get into. There are some books, books that lend themself to been read in episodes between other books. That’s just how I like to read. Novels are all absorbing and need to be read beginning to end. Short fiction and books like this one which is a link series of short narratives, lend them selves to short reads between novels.

In any regard I finished I am Taurus months ago but like Fascinating Folklore it became lost in the foundations of the to read pile and the review I had written notes for got forgot about… So somewhat delayed…

I am Taurus

Spanning from the prehistory of the ice age as portrayed in the cave paintings of Lascaux of our ancestors hunting the now long extinct aurochs, the great wild bovines of northern Europe, right up to the running of the bulls in Pamplona. I am Taurus examines how human cultures have long been influences by and linked to the spiritualisation of bulls.

This is not however an arid intellectual book of anthropology or archology. Each epoch is examined form the point of view, as the title suggests, of the bull. A narrative from the scared beast, be it the hunted honoured by the hunter, the sacrifice offer to the gods, the sacred bulls that were the ‘dance partners’ of young Minoans, the golden calf of Canaan, or any of the other times the bull has featured heavily in human culture. Which is to say, often.

This is a unique and fascinating perspective, and one that Stephen crafts in such a way that it draws you in to each chapter. He is a master of narrative exploration. There is a beauty to the writing, a richness and a vibrancy about it that just makes each chapter its own unique joy. As a writer of fiction, I love narrative, so perhaps I am biased, but this is the way dure people in to thinking about our collective humanity. It is a joy.

Anyway, the to read pile is safer for now, and these books among others have found there true homes on my bookshelves, though I suspect I shall revisit them both over time. They are both books to delve into, and refresh your acquaintance with time and again.