Lots of Merlin

Current Reads: Otherland Vol. 3: Mountain of Black Glass by Tad Williams
                        Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich

Current Writing Projects: Thesis work, focusing on the introduction for the next few weeks

The first bit of news I want to share is this: SOMEDAY, that mysterious series-opening novel I mentioned in my first post on this blog, has reached the end of its first full draft. This has been an effort three years in the making, and it is far from over (I imagine at least two more drafts will be necessary). However, in a sort of celebratory mood, I am planning on going through a massive reading list of Arthurian books, some old friends and some new ones recommended by people I know over the years. Here is my starting list:

The History of the Kings of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth (the relevant parts anyway)
Le Morte D'Arthur by Thomas Malory
The Idylls of the King by Lord Tennyson
The Dark is Rising sequence by Susan Cooper
The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart
The Pendragon series by Stephen Lawhead
War in Heaven by Charles Williams
The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
The Great Tree of Avalon trilogy by T.A. Barron (I haven't included his Lost Years of Merlin series because I don't feel the need to reread it right now)
The Sword in the Stone and The Once and Future King by T.H. White (I realize that SitS is part of OaFK, but I like the longer, separate version of SitS better, so I'm reading it and skipping to Book II of OaFK.)
The Space Trilogy by C.S. Lewis (Technically only the third book is Arthurian, but I love them all.)
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Tolkien's translation)
The Mammoth Book of Merlin edited by Mike Ashley
Merlin edited by Martin H. Greenberg
The Sword at Sunset by Rosemary Sutcliff (I may also include her novel The Eagle of the Ninth, as it's related to this one.)
The Light Beyond the Forest by Rosemary Sutcliff
The Sword and the Circle by Rosemary Sutcliff
Arthurian Romances by Chretien de Troyes

Anything I'm missing? Anything you don't think should be on the list? Let me know. I'm always interested in new Arthurian books.

Also, if I can find James Mallory's novelizations of the Hallmark miniseries Merlin or Jane Yolen's Young Merlin trilogy, I will be adding them to the list.

Comments

  1. AnonymousJune 8, 2012 at 2:41 PM

    The Tragedy of Arthur by Arthur Phillips might entertain you. It's about a guy whose father claims to have found the long, lost Shakespearean play about King Arthur, and the two men struggle to get scholars to accept it. Phillips wrote the play in its entirety, and supposedly this is the actual struggle he went through trying to get his play published as a Shakespearean one, and the whole thing is included at the end of the novel. Pretty interesting read.

    Love your blog. Keep writing.

    ReplyDelete

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