September Folklore Books, Part Deux

Now that the month is almost over, time to list the other notable books about folklore that came out this month. I still haven't recieved a copy of the book "Folklore and the Internet" yet, but I hope to have it in my mitts very soon! I better be cited.

• Feminist Traditions in Andalusi-Moroccan Oral Narratives - Hasna Lebbady.
• The Suburban Gothic in American Popular Culture - Bernice Murphy.
• Islamic Spectrum in Java - Timothy Daniels. Part of the Series "Anthropology and Cultural History in Asia and the Indo-Pacific."
• Multiculturalism's Double Bind - John Nagle. Part of the Series "Urban Anthropology."
• Tales of the Yukaghir - Waldemar Bogaras. Yet another reprint of this oft-reprinted anthology. I read it a few months ago for free on Googlebooks and loved it.
• Folklore of Scottish Lochs and Springs - James Murray MacKinley.
• Animal Worship - edited by Frederic P. Miller, Agnes F. Vandome and John McBrewster.
• The Doctor in History, Literature and Folklore - William Andrews.
• Perspectives on the Caribbean: A Reader in Culture, History and Representation - Philip W. Scher and Kevin Yelvington (eds).
• American Indian Fairy Tales - Margaret Compton. Reprint of the 1907 edition.
• Turf Fire Stories and Fairy Tales of Ireland: A Collection of Irish Myth and Legend - Barry O'Connor. Reprint of an 1890 collection.
• Celtic Fairy Tales - Joseph Jacobs, ed. 1892 collection.
• The Chinese Fairy Book - Frederick H. Martens.
• The Politics of Heritage Tourism in China: A View from Lijiang - Xiaobo Su.
• Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms - Ethan Gilsdorf. Not sure how this holds up to Gary Alan Fine's classic "Shared Fantasy" and (ahem) my dissertation, but should be an interesting lay read.
• Tall betsy and Dunce Baby: South Georgia Folktales - Mariella Glenn Hartsfield.

American Idol and Folklore

I got so excited last time about the new book on Folklore and the Internet that I have forgotten to update the list of folklore books for the month of September - and September is almost over! I will catch up later - I ordered a copy of the book and hope to have it in my grubby hands within the week. I hope I am cited! If not, then shame on them.

What could American Idol possibly have to do with folklore? Interesting question. Last year's contestant Anoop Desai was a folklore graduate student. And the Smithsonian has just recently put a display of the American Idol desk up in the castle. A discussion of this development can be found at the marvelous folklore blog Forums on Folklore, which has been added to the official New Vernacular Culture blogroll.

September Folklore Books

Amazon this month lists 373 books coming out this month with the keyword "folklore." Here is the cream of that crop:

• Evil People: A Comparative Study of Witch Hunts in Swabian Austria and the Electorate of Trier - Dr. Johannes Dillinger Phd. I just love typing the word 'Swabian.'
• The Oral Traditions in Ile-ife: The Yoruba People and Their Book of Enlightenment - Yemi D. Ogunyemi.
• Pop Goes the Weasel: The Secret Meanings of Nursery Rhymes - Albert Jack. This is for the lay reader, but looks interesting.
• Rostam: Tales of Love and War from the Shahnameh - Abolgasem Ferdowsi.
• Tales from a Finnish Tupa - James Cloyd Bowman, Margery Bianco. A reprint of a book that originally appeared in 1936.
• Mythematics: Solving the 12 Labours of Hercules - Michael Huber. Applying math to myth.
• Legends, Lore and Secrets of Western New York - Lorna MacDonald Czarnota.
• Myth in History, History in Myth: Proceedings of the Third International Conference of the Society for Netherlandic History - Laura Cruz & Willem Frijhoff (eds).
• Folklore and the Internet: Vernacular Expression in a Digital World - Trevor J. Blank (ed). OMIGOD! Someone turned my dissertation topic into a book! JK! LOL! ROFL! Goatse! I am so reading this book!

That last title got me so excited that I am running to the bookstore right now! I will have to finish this list later tonight.

Cemetery Folk Expressions

I don't think it matters whether you find them tasteful or not, but I beleive that decoration of gravesites in cemeteries is one of the most natural exhibitions of folk expression. However, some people get riled up by this, as evidenced by this (fairly) recent article from the Boston Globe.

I plead guilty to doing this myself; I left a picture of my father holding my daughter at his burial site, along with the requisite flowers.

Veal Cheeks Blog

It is no secret that Gary Alan Fine is one of my favorite writers; I believe I have mentioned it on this and many other blogs. He has studied little league baseballers, high school debaters and kitchen workers. I have been all three - for a while there I thought he was stalking my life!

I have also used his book on role playing gamers and the creation of a shared narrative as the basis for a major chunk of my dissertation.

I was pleasantly surprised the other day to stumble upon his blog - thank you GoogleAlerts! You all should read it too.

Veal Cheeks

This is Why They Invented the Interne

Small hut for chickens.

The AMNH has posted a massive collection of photos from an expedition to the Congo made by Herbert Lang and James Chapin from 1909-1915. I found the above photo by searching for the word "chicken."

This expedition was thorough, to say the least. This site is filled with riches.

Congo Expedition, AMNH.

Koschei The Everliving

The blog "EnglishRussia" has a very interesting posting about the Russian mythological beast "Koschey" along with a collection of many excellent pictures.

English Russia: Russian Folklore, Koschey