The details are here. In short, it’s all about having fun. (So says Carl, the inimitable host.)

Shouldn’t be much of a challenge, really, with great company and great stories.

There are many quests from which to choose. I’d like to opt for the Multi-Quest version, please.

That’s Quest the Second (with at least one mythology, one fantasy, one fairy tale, and one folklore) and with side-quests for some short stories and good viewing.

Quest on Screen

New viewing possibilities: “The Brothers Grimm”, “Red Riding Hood”, “Ever After”, “Penelope”, “Enchanted”, “Tangled”, “Stardust”, “The Company of Wolves”, Cocteau’s “Beauty and the Beast” (1946), Jacques Demy’s “Donkey Skin” (“Peau d’âne”, 1970), “Greedy Guts” (“Little Otik”, 2000), “Beastly”, “Freeway”, “Snow White: A Tale of Terror”, and the new Snow White film that’s being released next month.

Re-viewing possibilities: “The Secret of Roan Inish”, “Fairy Tale”, “The Princess Bride”, “Princess Mononoke”, “Spirited Away”, “Shrek”, and “Pan’s Labyrinth”.

And I’m probably the last person to start watching “Once Upon a Time” and “Grimm”, but I want to make up for lost viewing time.

The last time that I remember fairy tales hitting prime time, it was the later ’80s with a beast and beauty that I never really got my head around.

Short Story Quest

A friend of mine gave me this collection years ago which I haven’t read yet: Joanna Cole’s Best-Loved Folktales of the World.

I’d like to read it, finally, and I’m curious to see how well I remember some of the European tales from my fairy tale reading earlier this year. (There are more than 200 tales, so I’m sure this will span a couple of OUAT’s!)

I was reading Maria Tatar’s Classic Fairy Tales (along with Karen Armstrong’s A Short History of Myth) and earlier this month I read some Irish Fairy Tales and listened to some wonder tales.

But much as I’ve been enjoying the tales, they’re quite a blur up in my reader’s brain. Geese and orphan girls, tinderboxes and blessings, curses and childless couples: I’m not sure I could retell even the simplest tale “properly”.

Fairy Tales

There are 135 options on my Fairy Tales shelf on GoodReads.

Possible Fresh-reads: Holly Black’s Modern Faerie Tales series, Cameron Dokey’s The World Above, Marissa Meyer’s Cinder, Catherynne M. Valente’s In the Night Garden, Francesca Lia Block’s The Rose and the Beast, Pamela Dean’s Tam Lin, Jane Yolen’s Briar Rose, Emma Bull’s War for the Oaks.

Possible Re-reads: Linda Medley’s Castle Waiting Volume 1 (because I’d like to read Volume 2), Alice Kane’s The Dreamer Awakes, Tanith Lee’s White as Snow, Emma Donoghue’s Kissing the Witch, Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber

Folklore

Possible Fresh-reads: Wu Cheng’en’s Monkey: A Journey to the West (Trans. David Kherdian), Hermann Bote’s Till Eulenspiegel, Martin Bennett’s West African Trickster Tales, Terri Windling’s The Wood Wife, Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys, Lewis Hyde’s Trickster Makes This World, William Joyce’s The Guardians of Childhood series

Possible Re-reads: Kij Johnson’s Fox Woman, Thomas King’s Green Grass Running Water

Mythology

Possible Fresh-reads from my GoodReads shelf: C.S. Lewis’ Til We Have Faces, Madeline Millar’s The Song of Achilles, Rick Riordan’s The Lightning Thief (Volume 1 in the series), Terri Windling’s The Green Man, Marina Warner’s Alone of All Her Sex, Christa Wolf’s Cassandra, Victor Pelevin’s The Helmet of Horror, Sean Kane’s Wisdom of the Mythtellers, Kim Echlin’s Inanna

Possible Re-reads: Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad, Jeanette Winterson’s Weight

Fantasy

Possible Fresh-reads: Kenneth J. Harvey’s The Town that Forgot How to Breathe, Walter Wangerin Jr’s The Book of the Dun Cow, Ursula K. LeGuin’s Always Coming Home, Keri Hulme’s The Bone People, Diana Wynne Jones’ Howl’s Moving Castle, Brian Jacques’ Redwall, Elizabeth Moon’s The Deed of Paksenarrion, Tad Williams’ The Dragonbone Chair, George R.R. Martin’s The Game of Thrones, Lev Grossman’s The Magicians, Charles deLint’s Dreams Underfoot, Sergei Lukyanenko’s The Night Watch, Kelly Link’s Magic for Beginners, Mervyn Peake’s Gormanghast Trilogy

Possible Re-reads: Philippa Pearce’s Tom’s Midnight Garden, Guy Gavriel Kay’s A Song for Arbonne, Sheri S. Tepper’s Grass, Ursula K. LeGuin’s Earthsea Chronicles, Nalo Hopkinson’s Midnight Robber, Nnedi Okorafor’s The Shadow Speaker, Hiromi Goto’s Half World

Freshest Picks (just finished or more than half-read)
Eowyn Ivey’s The Snow Child
and
Homer’s The Odyssey (in translation by Richard Lattimore and the illustrated edition by Gareth Hinds)

What about you? Any titles you particularly recommend?

Have you fallen under the Once Upon a Time spell?

Have you gathered any ridiculously large reading pools?

(Not that I know anyone who does that kind of thing.)