Here are 100 books that The Origins of the World's Mythologies fans have personally recommended if you like
The Origins of the World's Mythologies.
Book DNA is a community of 13,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
When I was young, I used to ask every new person I met if they believed in magic. No caveats, no explanation of what I meant by that. Their response – generally either an unequivocal no, a tentative what does that mean, or a delighted yes, cemented the direction of our relationship.
One of my favorite quotes is Yeats’ statement that “the world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.” This conviction fuels my writing and my life. Whatever genre I write is informed first by magic, and there is no higher form of magic than the natural world and the science that explores it.
First of all, how could anyone not love a book with an author’s name like that?
This book was on display mere inches from me while I was signing books at an exceptionally enchanting indie bookstore called Sudden Fiction in Castle Rock, Colorado. I couldn’t wait for the signing to be over so I could get a copy for myself. And it did not disappoint, the contents being as beguiling as the cover.
Sheldrake describes not only the incredible and seemingly irrepressible capacity fungi have for survival and thrival (yep, I made that word up), but also encourages us to practice the same spells. I may have to become a mycologist in my next iteration – it’s good to remake oneself every few months, I think.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A “brilliant [and] entrancing” (The Guardian) journey into the hidden lives of fungi—the great connectors of the living world—and their astonishing and intimate roles in human life, with the power to heal our bodies, expand our minds, and help us address our most urgent environmental problems.
“Grand and dizzying in how thoroughly it recalibrates our understanding of the natural world.”—Ed Yong, author of I Contain Multitudes
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR—Time, BBC Science Focus, The Daily Mail, Geographical, The Times, The Telegraph, New Statesman, London Evening Standard, Science Friday
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
I’m a nerd about all things museums and archives, which I teach and write about. I was trained as an anthropologist, and got really interested in using anthropology’s methods (namely ethnography) to do long-term, embedded, deep-dive fieldwork in bureaucratic settings, like big museums. I love reading books by journalists, economists, historians, and others who do ethnography and really embed themselves in different communities, places, and cultures.
This is an academic book, but it's beautifully written, and not too, too jargony. Tsing does a kind of commodity ethnography, embedding herself in multiple parts of the lifecycle of the Matsutake Mushroom trade, while depicting the worlds of pickers, restauranteurs, mushroom traders and auctioneers, nature guides, and more. She also weaves in a critique of capitalist markets in which these kinds of natural entities now are embedded, which I dig!
What a rare mushroom can teach us about sustaining life on a fragile planet
Matsutake is the most valuable mushroom in the world-and a weed that grows in human-disturbed forests across the Northern Hemisphere. Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing's account of these sought-after fungi offers insights into areas far beyond just mushrooms and addresses a crucial question: What manages to live in the ruins we have made? The Mushroom at the End of the World explores the unexpected corners of matsutake commerce, where we encounter Japanese gourmets, capitalist traders, Hmong jungle fighters, Finnish nature guides, and more. These companions lead us into…
Since my first college course in quantum physics, I have been fascinated with this enigmatic, infinitely interesting theory. It's our most fundamental description of the universe, it's been found to be unerringly accurate, yet it's quite subtle to interpret. Even more intriguingly, "nobody really understands quantum physics" (as Richard Feynman put it). For example, the theory's central concept, the wave function, is interpreted radically differently by different physicists. I have always yearned to grasp, at least to my own satisfaction, a comprehensive understanding of this theory. Since retirement 23 years ago, I have pursued this passion nearly full-time and found some answers, leading to several technical papers and a popular book.
Guilder uses historical vignettes to describe how entanglement came to be regarded as a – or perhaps the – central pillar of quantum physics. For example, we share a streetcar ride through Copenhagen in 1923 with Niels Bohr, Albert Einstein, and Arnold Sommerfeld. Although we don't know precisely what they discussed, Guilder indicates what they probably discussed based on quotations from letters and other evidence. Thus, the book reads like a historical novel. It centers on the distant correlations, dubbed (by Einstein and Erwin Schrodinger) "spooky action at a distance." Since 1964, physicists have shown this astonishing phenomenon, now called "non-locality," to be clearly predicted by quantum theory and fully confirmed by experiment. This development is the "rebirth" of quantum physics referred to in the title. Guilder is a non-scientist who writes beautifully with a good grasp of physics.
In The Age of Entanglement, Louisa Gilder brings to life one of the pivotal debates in twentieth century physics. In 1935, Albert Einstein famously showed that, according to the quantum theory, separated particles could act as if intimately connected–a phenomenon which he derisively described as “spooky action at a distance.” In that same year, Erwin Schrödinger christened this correlation “entanglement.” Yet its existence was mostly ignored until 1964, when the Irish physicist John Bell demonstrated just how strange this entanglement really was. Drawing on the papers, letters, and memoirs of the twentieth century’s greatest physicists, Gilder both humanizes and dramatizes…
Those People Behind Us is set in the summer of 2017, post-Trump election and pre-pandemic. The story takes place in the fictional city of Wellington Beach, California, a suburban coastal town increasingly divided by politics, protests, and escalating housing prices. These divisions change the lives of five neighbors--a real estate…
I particularly like this group of books because, in one way or another, they not only exemplify my ideas of great science fiction (or great books in any genre), but they are all about the same thing: the mind, personhood, identity, self, and motivation. Moreover, they show that the best novels are, at their core, about people. It doesn’t matter if it’s a romance, fantasy, historical novel, or science fiction; at the heart of the story is a person. Some are “silicon people,” some are “meat people,” but all are people. What really drives a person to think and act as they do?
Asimov shows how the human psyche, while individual, is still collectively and mathematically computable in determining the future of humanity. I also enjoy that it is a reimagining of Edward Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, making it a grand adventure.
The first novel in Isaac Asimov’s classic science-fiction masterpiece, the Foundation series
THE EPIC SAGA THAT INSPIRED THE APPLE TV+ SERIES FOUNDATION, NOW STREAMING • Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read
For twelve thousand years the Galactic Empire has ruled supreme. Now it is dying. But only Hari Seldon, creator of the revolutionary science of psychohistory, can see into the future—to a dark age of ignorance, barbarism, and warfare that will last thirty thousand years. To preserve knowledge and save humankind, Seldon gathers the best minds in the Empire—both scientists and scholars—and…
I like history. I also like myth. And I revere the imagination, the liberal use of which can lead to what many call “fantasy.” Though the portions change, almost all the fiction I’ve written—from The Chess Garden to John the Baptizer to my latest, The Unknown Woman of the Seine—is the product of this recipe. Some moment from the past captures my attention, digs its hooks in, invites research, which begets questions, which beget answers that only the imagination can provide, informed both by experience and by the oldest illustrations of why we are the way we are. Dice these up, let simmer until you’re not sure which is which, and serve.
Another story we discuss in my mental health and literature class, and easily found in any collection of Dostoevsky, The Dream of the Ridiculous Man recounts one desperate and momentous night in the life of the titular depressive and proto-absurdist. His experience revolves around a faith-restoring dream in which (spoiler alert) the narrator shoots himself, is buried alive, pulled from the grave by a black angel, then flown through outer space to an alternate sun with an alternate earth where the local population is enjoying a shamelessly Edinic existence—that is, until the narrator contaminates them with his ego, causing them all to fall from grace, the description of which provides Dostoevsky the opportunity to recap the whole of human history in roughly three pages. Accurately no less. It’s a bravura performance.
Graeme Davis has been fascinated by myth and folklore ever since he saw Ray Harryhausen’s creatures in Jason and the Argonauts as a child. While studying archaeology at Durham University, he became far too involved with a new game called Dungeons & Dragons and went on to a career in fantasy games. He has written game sourcebooks on various ancient cultures and their myths, and worked as a researcher and consultant on multiple video games with historical and mythological settings.
This short book takes a deep dive into the nature of mythology and its relationship to the human mind. As well as the mythologies of past civilizations, Leeming examines modern-day myths and cultural beliefs and shows how myths are living and evolving things that serve a human need to understand the universe. If you have ever wondered what makes a myth a myth, or why everyone seems to have them, this book has some interesting answers.
Joseph Campbell wrote that mythology is "the wonderful song of the soul's high adventure." In Myth, David Leeming considers the role this "wonderful song" has to play in a world increasingly dependent on scientific and technical information. Exploring classic works such as the Song of Songs, the Tao Te Ching, the Rg Veda, the New Testament, and the Indonesian myth of Hainuwele, Myth reveals the cultural energies that ancient "mythmakers" sought to corral in their creations. Leeming argues that myths are, by definition, evolving creations that live on in the work of modern-day "mythmakers" such as W.B. Yeats, Virginia Woolf,…
Dr Dee has designs for a British Empire that will dominate the world for ages to come ushering in Revelation, and with the aegis of the Angels, he has the power to make it a reality.
But, two elements are missing, and through blackmail and occult ritual, infamous swordswoman Captain…
I have been fascinated by the weather since as a schoolboy I avidly followed the cricket scores and the fate of tomorrow’s match. This co-dependence of my passion for cricket with the state of the weather turned into a professional career as, first, a research scientist and then later a professor of geography, I studied the idea of climate and the many ways in which it intersects with our social, ecological and imaginative worlds. As human-caused climate change became a defining public and political issue for the new century, my interests increasingly focused on understanding why people think so differently about the climate, its changes, its future trajectory—and what to do about it.
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.
Why, with absolutely no idea what Brexit actually meant, did the UK vote for Brexit? Why, rather than vote for the best-qualified candidate ever to stand as US President, did voters opt for a reality TV star with no political experience? In both cases, the winning side promised change and offered hope. They told a story voters longed to hear. And in the absence of greater, more unifying narratives, then true or not, voters plumped for the best story available. Once upon a time our society was rich in stories. They brought us together and helped us to understand the…
I’m probably too dishonest to write a real non-fiction book, but the sort of non-fiction book that has some wiggle room for me to “improve” on reality when I think it needs tightening up, or a little more schmaltz—that’s the strange twilight area the books I write live in, and all irresponsible history books dwell in this neighborhood. Remember, kids, as long as you make it clear when you’re lying, it still counts as non-fiction!
GdS and HvD have assembled in this book such an overwhelming superflux of fascinating tidbits about ancient history, literature, and myth that reading it you barely notice that every conclusion they come to is completely bonkers and necessarily false.
There really can’t be any connection between ancient civilizations in Polynesia, Mesoamerica, India, and Finland—but the fact that someone dug up stories about whirlpools (!) from each place and located points of convergence among them is amazing! I feel like such a killjoy even bringing up my objections (that cloud doesn’t really look like a castle! that Rorschach blot doesn’t really look like your mother!) that I’ll just shut up. Hamlet’s Mill is a great work of science fiction, the most exhaustively detailed what if? you’re likely to find.
A truly seminal and original thesis, this is a book that should be read by anyone interested in science, myth, and the interactions between the two. In this classic work of scientific and philosophical inquiry, the authors track world myths to a common origin in early man's descriptions of cosmological activity, arguing that these remnants of ancient astronomy, suppressed by the Greeks and Romans and then forgotten, were really a form of pre-literate science. Myth became the synapse by which science was transmitted. Their truly original thesis challenges basic assumptions of Western science and theories about the transmission of knowledge.
Although I write in many genres, fantasy was my first love in reading. I fell in love with the possibilities of a boundless world. And as the years went on, I realized that fantasy could be more than just dragons and sorcery. Fantasy was this big umbrella that housed all the impossible dreams. So, I gravitated toward the genre. I also have an affinity for fun things. I don’t like to be sad, so I prefer movies, music, games, and books that revolve around fun and humor.
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.
Skeeve is feeling rather restless and suddenly remembers the treasure map he bought on his last adventure. Knowing Aahz's lust for money, he shows him the map. Quicker than a Deveel at the Bazaar of Deva can take your possessions, they were off to find the Golden Cow! There were a few problems, aren't there always. Tanda decides that she is in on the hunt; for a share, of course. Since Aahz is not too up on vortexes, just dimensions, they have to visit a shifter at the Bazaar for directions - he/she/it gets a five-percent cut of the treasure…
The Birthright of Sons is a collection of stories centered around the experiences of marginalized people, namely Black and LGBTQ+ men. Although the stories borrow elements from various genres (horror, suspense, romance, magical realism, etc.), they are linked by an exploration of identity and the ways personhood is shaped through…
Michelle Lute is a conservation scientist and advocate with fifteen years’ experience in biodiversity conservation on public and private lands around the globe. She dedicates her professional life to promoting human-wildlife coexistence through effective public engagement, equitable participatory processes, and evidence-based decision-making. Michelle is the National Carnivore Conservation Manager for Project Coyote whose mission is to promote compassionate conservation and coexistence between people and wildlife through education, science and advocacy.
Wolves may be more prevalent in literature and film than they are in reality. For an ecocritical perspective on canid cameos in American narrative, Robisch examines 200 texts to understand the real and imagined wolves and their places across cultures and what that tells us about humans and nature more broadly.
This book presents a new perspective on the role of the wolf in American literature. The wolf is one of the most widely distributed canid species, historically ranging throughout most of the Northern Hemisphere. For millennia, it has also been one of the most pervasive images in human mythology, art, and psychology. ""Wolves and the Wolf Myth in American Literature"" examines the wolf's importance as a figure in literature from the perspectives of both the animal's physical reality and the ways in which writers imagine and portray it. Author S. K. Robisch examines more than two hundred texts written in…
