#TopFive Books About…..Mythology That I Want To Read!

Here are Amanda @ Devouring Books book tags for February-it’s a leap day so we get an extra #TopFiveSaturday, hurray!

Feel free to join in and post your own top 5, link back to the original post and share your thoughts.

As usual, I’ll post mine and as others post theirs, I will add links throughout the week so don’t forget to check in!

 

2/1/20 — Dystopian Books

2/8/20 — Mental Illness

2/15/20 — Books about Mermaids

2/22/20 — Books about Spies

2/29/20 — Books inspired by Mythology

 

Ho boy, this is going to be tough as there as so many to choose from….there might be more than 5 in this list…and one I think people might argue about but I am going to stand my ground (for a little bit anyway!)

I am a huge fan of myths and legends, principally Greek and Roman, but I am going to try and chuck in some random choices that I hope you will like, don’t forget to share some of yours too!

1) ‘Wake,Siren:Ovid Resung’ by Nina MacLaughlin

In fierce, textured voices, the women of Ovid’s Metamorphoses claim their stories and challenge the power of myth

I am the home of this story. After thousands of years of other people’s tellings, of all these different bridges, of words gotten wrong, I’ll tell it myself.

Seductresses and she-monsters, nymphs and demi-goddesses, populate the famous myths of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. But what happens when the story of the chase comes in the voice of the woman fleeing her rape? When the beloved coolly returns the seducer’s gaze? When tales of monstrous transfiguration are sung by those transformed? In voices both mythic and modern, Wake, Siren revisits each account of love, loss, rape, revenge, and change. It lays bare the violence that undergirds and lurks in the heart of Ovid’s narratives, stories that helped build and perpetuate the distorted portrayal of women across centuries of art and literature.

Drawing on the rhythms of epic poetry and alt rock, of everyday speech and folk song, of fireside whisperings and therapy sessions, Nina MacLaughlin, the acclaimed author of Hammer Head, recovers what is lost when the stories of women are told and translated by men. She breathes new life into these fraught and well-loved myths.

2) ‘The Mere Wife’ by Maria Dahvana Headley

Two mothers—a suburban housewife and a battle-hardened veteran—struggle to protect those they love in this modern retelling of Beowulf.

From the perspective of those who live in Herot Hall, the suburb is a paradise. Picket fences divide buildings—high and gabled—and the community is entirely self-sustaining. Each house has its own fireplace, each fireplace is fitted with a container of lighter fluid, and outside—in lawns and on playgrounds—wildflowers seed themselves in neat rows. But for those who live surreptitiously along Herot Hall’s periphery, the subdivision is a fortress guarded by an intense network of gates, surveillance cameras, and motion-activated lights.

For Willa, the wife of Roger Herot (heir of Herot Hall), life moves at a charmingly slow pace. She flits between mommy groups, playdates, cocktail hour, and dinner parties, always with her son, Dylan, in tow. Meanwhile, in a cave in the mountains just beyond the limits of Herot Hall lives Gren, short for Grendel, as well as his mother, Dana, a former soldier who gave birth as if by chance. Dana didn’t want Gren, didn’t plan Gren, and doesn’t know how she got Gren, but when she returned from war, there he was. When Gren, unaware of the borders erected to keep him at bay, ventures into Herot Hall and runs off with Dylan, Dana’s and Willa’s worlds collide

3)’The Amber Fury’ by Natalie Haynes

When you open up, who will you let in?

When Alex Morris loses her fiancé in dreadful circumstances, she moves from London to Edinburgh to make a break with the past. Alex takes a job at a Pupil Referral Unit, which accepts the students excluded from other schools in the city. These are troubled, difficult kids and Alex is terrified of what she’s taken on.

There is one class – a group of five teenagers – who intimidate Alex and every other teacher on The Unit. But with the help of the Greek tragedies she teaches, Alex gradually develops a rapport with them.

Finding them enthralled by tales of cruel fate and bloody revenge, she even begins to worry that they are taking her lessons to heart, and that a whole new tragedy is being performed, right in front of her…

This is hands down a tremendous read and a great window into Natalie’s works on the classics, I 100% recommend starting here and then reading all her books. Huge fan!

4) The Wailing Woman’ by Maria Lewis

Good girls don’t talk back. Good girls don’t cry. Good girls don’t scream.

Sadie Burke has been forced to be a good girl her entire life. As a banshee, she’s the bottom of the ladder when it comes to the supernatural hierarchy. Weak. Condemned. Powerless. Silent. That’s what she and her six sisters have been told their entire lives, since their species was first banished from Ireland.

Yet when a figure from her childhood unexpectedly arrives on the scene, Sadie finds it harder than ever to toe the line.

Texas Contos is the son of their greatest oppressor. He’s also someone she’s inexplicably drawn to, and as they grow closer, Sadie begins to question what banshees have been told for centuries about their gifts.

But the truth comes at a cost. With Sadie and Tex forced to run for their lives, their journey leads them to new friends, old enemies, and finally to her true voice – one that could shatter the supernatural world forever.

I have checked, and a banshee is not just a supernatural being, but also an Irish myth, plus Maria is a balls to the wall writer par excellence so who wanted want to shout about a book that she wrote?

5) ‘Sealskin’ by Su Bristow

Donald is a young fisherman, eking out a lonely living on the west coast of Scotland. One night he witnesses something miraculous, and makes a terrible mistake. His action changes lives—not only his own, but those of his family and the entire tightly knit community in which they live. Can he ever atone for the wrong he has done, and can love grow when its foundation is violence?

Based on the legend of the selkies—seals who can transform into people—evokes the harsh beauty of the landscape, the resilience of its people, both human and animal, and the triumph of hope over fear and prejudice. With exquisite grace, Su Bristow transports us to a different world, subtly and beautifully exploring what it means to be an outsider, and our innate capacity for forgiveness and acceptance. Rich with myth and magic, Sealskin is, nonetheless, a very human story, as relevant to our world as to the timeless place in which it is set

Another selkie novel I want to read is …

‘The Brides Of Rollrock Island’ by Margo Lanagan

Rollrock island is a lonely rock of gulls and waves, blunt fishermen and their homely wives. Life is hard for the families who must wring a poor living from the stormy seas. But Rollrock is also a place of magic – the scary, salty-real sort of magic that changes lives forever. Down on the windswept beach, where the seals lie in herds, the outcast sea witch Misskaella casts her spells – and brings forth girls from the sea – girls with long, pale limbs and faces of haunting innocence and loveliness – the most enchantingly lovely girls the fishermen of Rollrock have ever seen.

But magic always has its price. A fisherman may have and hold a sea bride, and tell himself that he is her master. But from his first look into those wide, questioning, liquid eyes, he will be just as transformed as she is. He will be equally ensnared. And in the end the witch will always have her payment.

Margo Lanagan has written an extraordinary tale of desire, despair and transformation. In devastatingly beautiful prose, she reveals unforgettable characters capable of unspeakable cruelty – and deep unspoken love. After reading about the Rollrock fishermen and their sea brides, the world will not seem the same.

EXTRAS!!!

SO MANY GREAT BOOKS!

The first five just came up as the ones that popped into my head first, I want to read ALL of these books so here are my add ons-

6) ‘The Only Good Indians’ by Stephen Graham Jones

The creeping horror of Paul Tremblay meets Tommy Orange’s There There in a dark novel of revenge, cultural identity, and the cost of breaking from tradition in this latest novel from the Jordan Peele of horror literature, Stephen Graham Jones.

Seamlessly blending classic horror and a dramatic narrative with sharp social commentary, The Only Good Indians follows four American Indian men after a disturbing event from their youth puts them in a desperate struggle for their lives. Tracked by an entity bent on revenge, these childhood friends are helpless as the culture and traditions they left behind catch up to them in a violent, vengeful way.

Absolutely a must read for this book lover this year, Stephen Graham Jones goes from strength to strength so this is a no brainer for the book stacks.

7)’Omens’ by Kelley Armstrong

Twenty-four-year-old Olivia Taylor Jones has the perfect life. The only daughter of a wealthy, prominent Chicago family, she has an Ivy League education, pursues volunteerism and philanthropy, and is engaged to a handsome young tech firm CEO with political ambitions.

But Olivia’s world is shattered when she learns that she’s adopted. Her real parents? Todd and Pamela Larsen, notorious serial killers serving a life sentence. When the news brings a maelstrom of unwanted publicity to her adopted family and fiancé, Olivia decides to find out the truth about the Larsens.

Olivia ends up in the small town of Cainsville, Illinois, an old and cloistered community that takes a particular interest in both Olivia and her efforts to uncover her birth parents’ past.

Aided by her mother’s former lawyer, Gabriel Walsh, Olivia focuses on the Larsens’ last crime, the one her birth mother swears will prove their innocence. But as she and Gabriel start investigating the case, Olivia finds herself drawing on abilities that have remained hidden since her childhood, gifts that make her both a valuable addition to Cainsville and deeply vulnerable to unknown enemies. Because there are darker secrets behind her new home and powers lurking in the shadows that have their own plans for her…

What do you do when your favourite Urban Fantasy writer creates a book with Welsh myths and folklore  as it’s basis? This is when you let out a dragon wakening scream of joy! The first in the Cainsville series, I was so excited to come across things very familiar to me as a Welsh woman .

8) ‘Deer Woman’ edited by Elizabeth LaPensee and Weshoyot Alvitre

Produced by Native Realities (Tribal Force, Tales of the Might Code Talkers, The Wool of Jonesy, DemiCon) and co-edited by Elizabeth LaPensée (Honour Water, Sequential Survivance, Indigenous Love) & Weshoyot Alvitre (Umbrella Academy, Little Nemo: Dream Another Dream, Native American Graphic Classics), ‘Deer Woman:An Anthology’ brings together more than a dozen Native and Indigenous women artists and illustrators to present stories of resistance, survival, empowerment and hope.

Drawing from the inspiration of traditional Deer Woman stories, DEER WOMAN: AN ANTHOLOGY will be a powerful collection of stories by Native women to bring determination and healing to those in need and those willing to listen with their hearts

How great does this look?

It’s been way too long since I read a graphic novel and this one looks so intriguing…

I will probably be adding to this over the weeks as I have about 50 books with mythological bases so subscribe and keep an eye out for updates.

Links-Mandy @https://devouringbooks2017.wordpress.com/2020/03/03/top-5-books-inspired-by-mythology-i-want-to-read/