Down The Rabbit Hole

The books I have been reading lately have inspired me to go down the rabbit hole.  What does that mean you ask?  Good question.  Going down the rabbit hole is what we call it when something inspires me to do extra research...and usually this research leads me to more topics and more research and so on so forth.  With the advent of smartphones this has been even more pervasive in my reading.  Anytime a topic, word, idea, or well anything really pops up, I can just look it up on my phone.  The down side to this of course if that it sometimes adds hours to my reading time, but since I am a pretty fast reader that is ok.  This works both ways, sometimes I will be studying or watching something that inspires me to go find a book on the topic.

I LOVE this back and forthness of reading.  I find if a story inspires me to dig deeper that it did one of it's jobs in catching and keeping my attention.  I love learning new things and each new bit of knowledge, no matter its inspiration is like finding treasure.  Of course it also inspires nice long ramblings and gushings and my poor Hubbin having to hear "Hey baby did you know..." on a constant basis.  It also means that I don't get a whole lot of sleep.  This is just one more reason I love reading so much, and love people who read so much because I feel it broadens all of our minds and makes us better people.  So on that note, I have more books to read and research to do and rabbit holes to go down.  Happy Reading Everybody!

Around The World In A Zillion Variations

One of my favorite things about fairy tales, mythical creatures, and fireside stories is the prevalence of them around the world.  I love to see the differences and the similarities between these old familiar tales and characters told in different places and through out time.  Some characters, creatures and stories are specific to a place or time, but most have a similar counterpart in most places.  To further my research on my favorite at the moment I acquired a book by Heidi Anne Heiner who also runs the SurLaLune site.  This book in particular is about the mermaid tales from around the world.

Mermaid

This is a nifty not so little book that is an incredible resource for people who want to delve into the stories of these fabled creatures.  This book contains observations, history, analysis and most importantly stories from around the world and through out time.  

Sleeping Beauty

There are several of these books, each focusing on a different story, it's origins and variations.  These are not sit down and read like a regular book type of books (does that make sense?).  They are more of a pick it up and find out interesting tidbits here and there. They also make for great resources if you are trying to write a new story, or just want to find out more about the originals (there is always more than one).

Cinderella

Unfortunately the hard copy editions of these books are pretty pricey which sucks 'cause I would like to see all of them lined up on my book shelf looking all pretty. However here is where e-readers are awesome because I can get all of these (there are like 15 of them so far) for closer to 10 bucks a pop instead of the 30-40 bucks the hard copies were costing (and that was for paperbacks!).  Like I said before, these are long, non linear, research type of books.  The content is wonderful and the illustrations awesome!  So anybody who wants to know more about there favorite fairy tale would enjoy the thoroughness of these books.  Anybody want to loan me a couple hundred bucks to buy the set?