I can’t remember how I discovered Franz Xaver von Schönwerth’s book of “newly discovered fairy tales,” but I am glad I did. It is called The Turnip Princess and Other Newly Discovered Fairy Tales (2015), and it is just that. Von Schönwerth apparently collected these stories from the Bavarian countryside in the 1850s, and a... Continue Reading →
The Trial Lawyer’s Art (2000) by Sam Schrager is a folklore study of trial lawyers as performers and as authorities. Apparently, lawyers are really actors! We see this through the personas lawyers take on, such as an aging hippie lawyer from San Francisco, whom juries usually dislike at first and then learn to love because... Continue Reading →
The June pick for the Literary Wives series is The Crane Wife (2013) by Patrick Ness. We are asking the following questions of all of the "wife" books we read. 1. What does this book say about wives or about the experience of being a wife? 2. In what way does this woman define “wife”—or... Continue Reading →
What would you do if your job included finding brains splattered along the freeway, having people chase you with knives, and dealing with blood, brains, and severed limbs? You’d tell stories about it with your coworkers. That’s what you’d do. Talking Trauma (1998) by Timothy Tangherlini is folklore research on the people who face this... Continue Reading →
The Bookshelf of Emily J. 