Books like Hamlet's Mill — picked by fans

Reading Graves’ biography, I get the sense of not just his wry humour but of his enduring pain. When he covers his First World War service, his jokes are cracked out of exasperation at the orders he receives that led to a succession of “bloody balls-ups,” and retold through a wince.

Graves’ biography has been described as “a version of events that told the poetic truth about his experiences…rather than being primarily fact-driven.” I believe all biographies are a form of fiction as our own memories are more often a product of our imagination than photographic recall.

Graves’ poetic retelling allows a more universal resonance beyond the trenches of the Somme than if he just stuck to the facts of that time and place, and resonated more for me because of this. 

Back in the 18teens, the president of Yale somehow had enough free time to lead the senior class in debates of various “questions” followed by an extemporaneous “decision” on who was right.

Yale’s President Dwight certainly had plenty of amusing ideas (that California was frequently visited by mariners from “Hindostan”; that Africans who “never expose their faces to the sun are white”), but what makes his “decisions” so interesting is that many of the questions force him to examine counterfactual histories.

And so he describes what the world would have been like if the Crusades had not happened (Europe bound in a perpetual feudal system!) or if the South were to secede (and this is in 1813, remember!—anyway, it wouldn’t turn out well, Dwight says).

(I found an 1833 copy of this book jammed behind a shelf and torn to pieces back when I was working in a used book… show more.

Long before people had any tolerance for such nonsense—meaning back in 1822—an anonymous genius published an version of the life of Lord Nelson unlike any other. I mean specifically that this book, Albion, is 234 pages long and contains approximately forty-five impressionistic run-on sentences.

In 1922 such an account of a recent war—compare with David Jones’s strange, difficult WWI prose-poem "In Parenthesis," for example—would be merely audacious, but in 1822, it was completely baffling; which is too bad, because for two hundred years the text has lingered in obscurity. (I have reason to believe I’m the only living human to have read it in its entirety.)

But a pointillist biography of Nelson—as narrated by the great man himself to the angel that bears his soul to heaven after his death at Trafalgar—is exactly what the world has been missing!

There have been many descriptions of Atlantis published before, but very few have been written by someone who has actually been there, via psychic time travel, or at least via a series of dreams inspired by Atlantean stone furniture in Bolivia.

Fortunately, Walter F. Laredo has left us just such a book, and if he sometimes plays coy (maybe it was all just a dream???), he wonderfully includes an appendix of technical schematics of Atlantean inventions (bionic eyes, “chemical laser” beams) alongside full-color paintings of Atlantean architecture and the occasional nude Atlantean woman.

The Oxford Companion is an encyclopedia, not a narrative, but I love that it includes stories from the Bible, the Quran, and other sacred texts alongside fantastical legends that span the globe. The line between myth and religion is, after all, largely subjective. King David, the nymph Daphne, and the Dayak myths of Borneo all share the same page. For those of us seeking inspiration in myth, the Oxford Companion offers ideas from Abraham to Ziusudra.

Although this isn’t the first book in the series, I find it the most fun. I have a deep love for the myth series because it was the first series of books I ever read. They are a very traditional fantasy story about a wizard, his dragon, and a demon he pals around with. But, it is a tongue-in-cheek comedy rather than a serious epic tale.

The series reads fine out of order and you could start anywhere, but this one is my favorite.

This short punchy book is written by ex-policy advisor Alex Evans, following his disillusionment with high power international climate politics. Having worked for the British Government and for the UN Secretary-General in the 2000s, Evans realised that scientific evidence and rational arguments were not enough to change the world for the better. In The Myth Gap, he therefore makes the case to recognise – or else to create – different stories, or myths, which provide the orientation and motivation for different people groups to act out change in their own different worlds. No one story will do the job; we need many.

Point blank, this book changed the way I see the world. While on its surface, it might not seem like a mental health book, it is a powerful testament that story is the bedrock of consciousness. In reading it, I was asked to reevaluate many of my ideas and truths.

It illustrated how much of what I think makes us different is a shared story and a place where I can connect to others if I’m willing to rattle the cage of the stories I “know” to be “immutable.” This translates into every story I tell about myself and my world. I’ve read it repeatedly, and every time, I pull something new from it.

It has helped me grow by expanding my worldview and has led me to a more comprehensive understanding of the mind, humanity, and the stories we share.

Cameron Battle has to be one of the most tenderhearted characters I’ve ever read.

He’s a sweetheart, and just the right hero for this African-inspired fantasy as Cameron portals with his friends into the world of Chidani. There are dangers at every turn, but Cameron handles them all by trusting in his friends, his compassion, and his desire to learn what happened to his parents.

Along the way, I was inspired by Cameron learning more about his family ancestry as well as his own identity.

A controversial, scholarly attempt at synthesizing and organizing the foundations of world mythologies may seem a strange selection. It’s certainly an enormous task, and Witzel could be wrong, but this sweeping book tantalizes and enriches any open mind with an interest in mankind’s story on Earth: two great separate migrations out of Africa carried differing concepts of the world’s origins. The first made its way around India to Australia. In this story, the world had no origin, it always existed in Dreamtime. Mankind emerged into time and joined all creatures and their landscapes. The second migration into Europe and Asia brought the foundations of Western traditions. The story is more familiar: an all-powerful deity created the world out of chaos or primordial waters, fashioned and breathed life into human beings, and thrust them into a world of constant struggle and conflict. If for some reason that doesn't sound familiar, reread … show more.