Kindle and Folklore

I have long been a proponent of Googlebooks - among the millions of already-scanned books there are a lifetime's worth of books of interest to the folklore scholar.

Another resource that expands the resources of the folklorist without access to a university library is the Amazon Kindle store. There are thousands of public-domain books available for free download through the store. I received my Kindle for Christmas over a year ago, and I have filled it with dozens of folklore books.

A quick keyword search for "folklore" generated 90 free downloads. Most of the books date from the turn-of-the-last-century (late 18oos-early 1900s), but still are great reads. Many of these are duplicated in the Googlebook archive - but it is nice to have them formatted for the Kindle.

Some of the highlights available include Ralston's "Russian Fairy-Tales," "Storyology" by Benjamin Taylor, Gomme's "Folklore as an Historical Science," Charles Skinner's series "Myths and Legends of Our Own Land," and Andrew Lang's "The Clyde Mystery."

April Showers Bring a Pile of Folklore Books

The Yankees and Red Sox are in the 7th inning - but I am so devoted to the art of folkloristics that I am updating this silly blog. Here are the books coming out this month of interest to us like-minded people.

• Hungarian Classical Ballads and Their Folklore - Ninon A. M. Leader. Paperback edition of book originally published in 1967.
• Georgia Through Its Legends, Folklore and People - Michael Berman, Ketevan Kalandadze, George Kupaladze and Manana Rusiesvili (eds). No information on Amazon about this book, but those surnames definitely suggest that this book is about the nation of Georgia rather than the state :)
• A Story as Sharp as a Knife: The Classical Haida Mythtellers and Their World - Robert Bringhurst. Second Edition. Part of the series "Masterworks of the Classical Haida Mythtellers."
• Myths and Legends of Ancient Egypt - Joyce Tyldesley.
• On Greek Religion - Robert Parker. Cornell Studies in Classical Philology.
• Native American Legends of the Southeast: Tales from the Natchez, Caddo, Biloxi, Chickasaw and Other Nations - George E. Lankford.
• Critical and Creative Perspectives on Fairy Tales: An Intertextual Dialogue Between Fairy-Tale Scholarship and Postmodern Retellings - Vanessa Joosen. "Fairy Tale Studies" series.
• Amish Folk Tales and Other Stories of the Pennsylvania Dutch - C. Eugene Moore.