So You Want to Discover Myths?

This is a book list of actual myths, folklore and fairy tales — usually in translation.

Many of them I read in my mythology and religious studies classes in college.

I believe that the best way to learn about myth is by reading the once oral stories in as close to the original format as possible. There is power in these stories — like an electrical current — that you can feel when you read them like that.

So, while Edith Hamilton’s Mythology may be a great introduction to Greek, Roman and Norse myths, it remains a pale shadow compared to the real stories.

So You Want to Discover Myths?

Interested in one or more of these books? Click the mouse on the book title to order it from your local CLEVNET library.

• The Epic of Gilgamesh: The Babylonian Epic Poem and Other Texts in Akkadian and Sumerian translated by Andrew George

• Documents from Old Testament Times edited by D. Winton Thomas

• The Egyptian Book of the Dead translated by E.A. Wallis Budge

• The Iliad of Homer by Homer, translated by Richmond Alexander Lattimore

• The Odyssey of Homer by Homer, translated by Richmond Alexander Lattimore

• The Homeric Hymns by Homer, translated by Apostolos N. Athanassakis

• Hesiod: Theogony; The Works and Days; The Shield of Herakles by Hesiod, translated by Apostolos N. Athanassakis

• The Oresteia (Agamemnon — The Libation Bearers — The Furies) by Aeschylus, translated by Alan Shapiro and Peter Burian

• Persians and Other Plays (Persians — Seven against Thebes — Suppliants — Prometheus Bound) by Aeschylus, translated by Christopher Collard

• The Theban Plays of Sophocles (Antigone — Oedipus tyrannos — Oedipus at Colonus) by Sophocles, translated by David R. Slavitt

• Four Tragedies (Ajax — Women of Trachis — Electra — Philoctetes) by Sophocles, translated by Peter Meineck and Paul Woodruff

• Euripides: 10 Plays (Alcestis — Hippolytus — Ion — Electra — Iphigenia at Aulis — Iphigenia among the Taurians — Medea — The Bacchae — The Trojan women — The Cyclops) by Euripides, translated by Paul Roche

• Apollodorus: The Library, with An English Translation by Apollodorus, translated by James George Frazer

• The Aeneid by Virgil, translated by Robert Fitzgerald

• Metamorphoses by Ovid, translated by Charles Martin

• The Poetic Edda translated by Carolyne Larrington

• The Prose Edda: Norse Mythology by Snorri Sturluson, translated by Jesse L. Byock

• The Nibelungenlied translated by D.G. Mowat

• The Saga of the Volsungs: The Norse Epic of Sigurd the Dragon Slayer translation by Jesse L. Byock

• Beowulf: A New Verse Translation translated by Seamus Heaney

• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight translated and edited by William Vantuono

• Early Irish Myths and Sagas translated by Jeffrey Gantz

• The Tain (also called: Tain bo Cuailnge) translated by Ciaran Carson

• The Mabinogi, and Other Medieval Welsh Tales translated by Patrick K. Ford

• The Song of Roland (also called: Chanson de Roland) translated by W. S. Merwin

• The Poem of the Cid (also called: El Poema Del Mio Cid) translation by W. S. Merwin

• The Mahabharata: An Abridged Translation by John D. Smith

• Bhagavad Gita: A New Translation translated by Stephen Mitchell

Check Out Another Version of This List

You can view another version of So You Want to Discover Myths? book list complete with my annotations for many of the books at the CLEVNET webcatalog.