10 Books A Day: #70

The Elizabethan Zoo...Edward Topsell...A Nonpariel Book

The Secret Commonwealth Of Elves, Fauns, & Fairies...Robert Kirk...New York Review Books

The Tough Guide To Fantasyland...Diana Wynne Jones...Firebird

English Myths And Legends...Henry Bett...Dorset Press

The Lost Books Of The Bible and The Forgotten Books Of Eden...World Bible Publishers, Inc.

The Hero With A Thousand Faces...Joseph Campbell...Princeton/Bollinger

The Book Of The Damned: The Collected Works Of Charles Fort...Charles Fort...Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin

The Book Of Imaginary Beings...Jorge Luis Borges...Viking

Hamlet's Mill: An Essay On Myth & The Frame Of Time...Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend...Gambit Incorporated

Albion: The Origins Of The English Imagination...Peter Ackroyd...Nan A. Talese Doubleday

Fabulous Feasts: Medieval Cookery And Ceremony...Madeleine Pelner Cosman...George Braziller

Fireside Book Of Folk Songs...ed. Margaret Bradford Boni...Simon And Schuster


A variety of books today, on history, myth, legend, and the history of myth and legend. The Elizabethan Zoo is a selection edited from Topsell's monumental The Historie of Foure-Footed Beastes and Historie of Serpents; these two books were hugely popular in the old days, partly because they were illustrated, and partly because they were "scientific" books actually written in English. They include not only well known animals (the section on horses alone was enormous, as particularly interesting to the people of the day, as cars are now), but also fabulous foreign beasts like dragons and rhinoceroses, and the latest discoveries from the Americas. Many of pictures of the more outlandish beasts will be familiar to some people from their constant reproduction in works on myths and cryptozoology.

I love the Fireside Book of Folk Songs, not only because it reminds me of the kinds of books my teachers back in grade school might have had (it was published in 1947) but because it tells the full stories of songs I have heard in bits and pieces all my life. Who knew that "Darling Clementine" drowned, and the singer of the song couldn't rescue her because he didn't know how to swim, and so was "dreadful sorry"? Who knew that "Alouette" was about plucking apart a skylark, piece by piece, and that it was Canadian, not French? It includes music scores for all the songs as well.


Book Count: 899.