Once Upon a Time IV Reading Challenge

I am hugely excited for this reading challenge to begin.  I had just started blogging about books last April so I missed this last year, but I had enormous fun during the RIP IV Reading Challenge and during the Science Fiction Experience - all sponsored by Carl at Stainless Steel Droppings.  To be completely honest, I've been amassing a little stack of books for this challenge.  You see, fairy tales and books based on them were my entree into reading.  My mother was a librarian and an amazing storyteller and I spent my childhood, young adulthood, and most of my adult life reading all kinds of things related to or that can be classified as fairy tales or mythology or fantasy.

I have degrees in biological anthropology with a focus on evolutionary aspects of behavior and have read all the theory you'd care to name and then some about what makes us human and apes ... well ... not.  Sadly, while I think that many of these theories are amazing ways of telling stories about the world I think most of them miss the point.  I think we're human because we tell stories about the world and our fairy tales and mythology are right there at the heart of it.  We didn't become people when we stood up, became bipedal, and started hunting more efficiently across the savannah - we became people when we started sitting around the fire and telling each other stories - and what a glorious and amazing thing that is, eh?

In any event, this is a challenge that was made for me and my particular set of interests.  The Once Upon a Time Challenge runs from March 21 to June 20.  As with most reading challenges there are various levels.  I think I am probably signing up for the Quest the Fourth combined with Quest the First and Third and I'll probably throw some of all of the other levels in there, too.  Heh.  I will not be pinned down!

In any event, here is a list of books I plan to read for this:

First, some non-fiction:

• Uses of Enchantment by Bruno Bettelheim (the classic psychoanalytical text on fairy tales)
• From the Beast to the Blonde:  On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers by Marina Warner (a feminist literary criticism take)
• The Mystery of Lewis Carroll by Jenny Woolf (a new biography of Lewis Carroll)

Next, the fiction:

• The Annotated Alice:  The Definitive Edition by Lewis Carroll, Martin Gardner, and John Tenniel
• The Last Hot Time by John M. Ford (this inspired my favorite part of Sandman - A Game of You)
• American Gods by Neil Gaiman (a re-read, but what an amazing re-read - I can't wait)
• The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame (my mother and I re-read this book together every spring when I lived at home - it's time to start it up again - I love Mole and Ratty and Toad and Badger)
• The Fionavar Tapestry by Guy Gavriel Kay (another re-read - it's been about 10 years, seems time)
• Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare (also read before, but you can never read it too often)
• City of Night by Michelle West (the next in the House Wars series - love these books)
• The Wood Wife by Terri Windling (she edits the wonderful modern fairy tale series with Ellen Datlow)

That should keep me happy, eh?