A friend recently asked me for some suggestions on music, and this is a list I just threw together for him:

Ewan Dobson, Time 2
https://youtu.be/eXqPYte8tvc

Julie Fowlis, Scottish Puirt a Beul, vocal dance music.
https://youtu.be/k3UydfYggEU

Shane Cook and Jake Charron, Ontario Tunes
Shane lives near where I'm from and I've had the fortune to jam with him over the years.
https://youtu.be/u9N-ZlnOVnk

Hurdy Gurdy, anyone?
https://youtu.be/QHmML7bu-iM

Stan Rogers, one of the greatest folk singers to have ever written a song.
https://youtu.be/fT-aEcPgkuA

Traditional Swedish tunes on Nyckelharpa
https://youtu.be/38G1uYgU7_A

Time for some comic relief:
https://youtu.be/uXMuWi0dUBc

A fiddle game as played in Pembroke, Ontario where the judge calls out a key and the fiddler has to respond by playing the first part of a tune in that key, and no one can repeat a tune that's already been played.
https://youtu.be/nKf7eh-eXcE

Roma music, anyone?
https://youtu.be/VqwPDWF0Mwc
or
https://youtu.be/zxmuJEnT0wc

Or Gypsy jazz,
https://youtu.be/jjc832n1bVU

Kate Rusby, one of the great English folk singers:
https://youtu.be/95WeNwF5448

Booker White, Aberdeen Mississippi Blues
https://youtu.be/bsMpHHSLSlc

Tony MacMahon, masterful performance on the Irish button box.
https://youtu.be/cdXRX9VEqaQ

Scottish master fiddler and accordionist brothers Phil and Johnny Cunningham:
https://youtu.be/fEGxWWctBtw

Annbjorg Lien on the Norwegian Hardingfele or Hardanger fiddle (typically with 8 or nine strings).
https://youtu.be/0ioX9-UGboc

Chinese Er Hu:
https://youtu.be/SL3BXzJoVQ4


Pierre Schryer, the McDades, and Tiffany Fewster (great Ontario step dancer)
https://youtu.be/mLkduWb4XJ0

Speaking of music, I just read this article. It's very interesting:
http://www.christianitytoday.com/behemoth/2016/issue-43-march-3-2016/messy-secrets-of-perfect-pitch.html?share=9iiOSaVXTxPFK6OUky7ORkFlEciMvFBv

So,

Narrative. . .

We've been listing fantasy authors. There have been so many good books written. As the book of Ecclesiastes says, "of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body" (12:12). When I walk into a bookstore these days, though, I hardly know what to look at. Especially in the fantasy section, all the colorful book covers with the artwork that all looks the same -- none of it seems to capture my interest or promise anything unique. I normally don't buy anything like that from a bookstore, and when I walk into a used bookstore, I often look for classics. I've read the rest of James Fennimore Cooper's Leatherstocking series, as well as a number of maritime books such as The Sea Wolf in the past year or so. Lately, Game of Thrones has made a big impact in terms of the fantastical genre, though I haven't read them myself. Of course, Harry Potter within the past twenty years has been huge. In both cases, the books were turned into film/television media. I even think that in both cases, the awareness on the authors part that the works would be turned into film media changed the way the books were written. I've been a performance storyteller for a few years, which is another form of narrative art, and then there are video games which are another form of narrative art, though I don't really play video games anymore. . . It seems that the world of narrative is expanding, especially when we include the different forms of multimedia narrative. And yet, I find that things are multiplying and diversifying at such a rapid rate that it is hard to identify any significance. It seems there are simply tons and tons and tons of television shows, movies, video games, comic books, and even print books. The proliferation of narrative seems huge. Certain works rise to the top, like the Harry Potter series which was a huge phenomenon. The recent success of Star Wars: The Force Awakens is an example of how much the narrative universe of Star Wars has impacted our culture on a wide scale. We still have "big" stories that influence our culture. Still, it seems like things are becoming more fractured, and any appeal to mass audiences typically result in an reduction in quality -- the butchering of the Hobbit by Peter Jackson is an example, I guess.

Narrative has become big business. Novel writing is still a form in which an individual artist has control over the narrative, but I'm not sure that the dominant future of narrative rests in novels even as much as in video games. And such endeavors as video games, due to complexity, are the result of big business in order to reach any significant distribution. Even movies that reach any significant distribution are not made by an individual so much as a team and an industry.

So how does this change the stories we are getting? Is the future of storytelling collaborative, or will it still be driven by individuals like J.K. Rowling, for instance?

I'm still considering this. . . So far I've come up short.

Someone came to mind the other night:

Robert C. O'Brien's The Rats of Nimh. I recently read it for the first time and found it thoroughly enjoyable. His daughter wrote a couple follow-up books, and I'm interested to read those as well. This book feels to me very fantastical, but it might be better placed in the science fiction category. It's one of those grey areas of crossover I think. In some ways it reads like a fantasy (talking animals, etc) but its basic plot perhaps is based more on science fiction ideas.

Also, speaking of talking animals there is always Brian Jacques. Now, I really liked the novel "Redwall" and I've read some of the others, though my last attempt to read through one resulted in losing interest. His writing certainly has its pros and cons, but as far as a fantastical writer of animal stories, he can't be left out, and again, "Redwall" is fun.

I wish I had all my books with me; I suspect I'm forgetting authors/books.

Well, I know there isn't much direction at the beginning, but there is the first portion of a quest already laid out. I'm not sure how far you got, but you can actually get out of the forest through talking to some people in the Timberlost. And of course, avoid goblins.

I'm not sure what I wanted to do with it, other than to kind of create a world that people could explore. As of right now, the quest is to find the Lord of the Timberlost, who is gone, because his return will cause the goblins to flee. . . If you find the NPC characters they will talk of that.

I've made a second sort of mini-game in the same world that I may allow to stand alone and/or incorporate it into the Timberlost section.

I'd ask if there was interest in me continuing the world, but though I've been spreading the word about the forum, I've yet to raise a whole lot of interest. Not sure what I can do about that, exactly.

Trae

As for MacDonald, Lilith and Phantastes are in some ways the pinnacles of his work. I bought a large number of the abridged/edited versions of his many non-fantastical novels on ebay.
His short stories are excellent, too. I have a few collections of his stories. And to be honest, I've never really delved into his poetry or sermons (I never found his poetry particularly interesting). MacDonald makes a lot of theological points in his works, and I often enough disagree with him, but  the man had a beautiful sense for the love of God as our Father.
MacDonald has been my favorite for a long time, but really Tolkien, Lewis, and MacDonald are so remarkably different in the types of worlds they created. One thing to note is how little violence there is in MacDonald's work. Tolkien and Lewis' works deal with war, but MacDonald's works, where they contain violence at all, seems more like a fairytale type of thing. This may have to do with Tolkien and Lewis being of the "Great War" generation, but also because I think Tolkien and Lewis took more from the Scandinavian traditions, which are rife with violence, whereas MacDonald I think had more influence from Romanticism and fairytales and was less interested in creating "worlds at war." I some ways, Lewis and Tolkien are patriarchs of war fantasy, whereas I'd see MacDonald as a patriarch of fairytale fantasy. These are just my attempts to differentiate them.

Wow, Justin, this is some really good work. I don't even know these guys, and now I've got a bunch of reading to do. Drat -- I'm starting an accelerated nursing program in May; where to find the time. My first response is probably not going to be so detailed, and I'm gonna jump time periods here. This will be my first response. There's far too many to count.

I have to agree, the primary canon for me is George MacDonald, Tolkien, and C.S. Lewis with George MacDonald being my favorite.
I am also a huge fan of the Icelandic Sagas and for a period of years made it a literary mission of mine to read through the sagas available in English translation. I was able to read most of what I could get my hands on, which involved a number of volumes. They are an amazing work of literature. Of course, I made need to write a post just treating the medieval sources for a lot of things, such as the Mabinogion and others works. My mind is filling up with good books and authors at the moment, so many memories.


George MacDonald:
Not just MacDonald's fantasy/fairytale works, either, but his whole narrative canon. He was a prolific author and I enjoy reading his "Christian romance" books, although the term "Christian romance" did not mean then what it means now, exactly. They are mostly character-driven narratives of spiritual life played out in mystery and social relationships. The term is used as a mix of the "romantic" era of the 19th Century (of which MacDonald was a denizen) and some of the current idea of romance, as there is typically a romantic relationship somewhere in the books. Speaking of MacDonald, the Scotsman was influenced by a German Romantic writer who went by Novalis ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novalis ) and I really need to look into that influence more, as I haven't yet read his work.

Michael Ende:
One of my all-time favorite individual books is the German book Die Unendliche Geschichte, which in English is the Neverending Story. There was an 80s fantasy movie flick made of it but it should not be taken as a representation of the incredible, moving, deep work of Michael Ende. I liked it so much that I went out and ordered a special edition in the original German. It is really a beautiful work about the imagination and creativity and, maybe in a way, childlikeness.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Ende


Chretien de Troyes:
Jumping back in time, Chretien de Troyes (12 century) is in my opinion the gold standard of medieval Arthurian sagas. I think the genre reached its peak with Chretien de Troyes. It was a very specific genre with very specific conventions, and Chretien's renditions are the most lush that I've read. I like Thomas Mallory's Le Morte D'Arthur, but it's less detailed, more a rough collection, even if it is more comprehensive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chr%C3%A9tien_de_Troyes

T.H. White:
Speaking of Arthurian, I think the best modern take is T.H. White's The Once and Future King. It is truly moving, and while I think it is best in its early portions, the whole thing serves as a kind of capstone to the development of Arthurian. Stephen Lawhead (who deserves his own entry) had a very interesting treatment of the Arthurian sagas,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Once_and_Future_King

Rosemary Sutcliff:
There's nothing like a good Rosemary Sutcliffe book. In a sense, these are historical fictions set from the late Roman period to the medieval period, centering on what was early on called Britannia. Yet in another sense, they often have somewhat fantastical elements, and even read like fantasy novels because of their setting. I've read many of her works and enjoyed them but the most exemplary Rosemary Sutcliff novel to me is The Shining Company, which is a heartbreakingly beautiful look at the Celtic attempt to stem the tide of Saxon immigration/invasion, and it is based on the "dark age"/early medieval poem "Y Gododdin" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y_Gododdin )
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_Sutcliff

John White:
Also an author I liked growing up, who is not contemporary with the Inklings or prior, but who was trying to mimic Lewis, is John White and his Archives of Anthropos. He didn't get to write the last book, but someone else did it for him, but there are a number of really enjoyable books I remember as a kid. He came to mind early on as I was thinking.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_White_(Christian_author)



That's it for now. Speaking of fantasy, Justin have you gotten a look at the Timberlost section of the website? Is it worth keeping/expanding or should I do something else/let it go?

It is totally acceptable to search for a riddle.

Dang those convertibles!


Here's my reply:

Turn us on our backs
And open up our stomachs
You will be the wisest of men
Though at start a lummox
What am I?

Well, judging from IMDB that movie is a definite no-watch for graphic sexual content.

Okay, so I indulged in some geekery.
If you go to the village map on lostpathway.com you can now click on the Timberlost forest to have an adventure. Or you can go directly to the Timberlost by following this link: http://www.lostpathway.com/timberlost/index.html

Well, as you probably remember I'm very much a lover of fiddle music.
This video is always good for a fiddle and accordion pick-me-up:
https://youtu.be/fEGxWWctBtw

I don't know what movie this piece was dubbed from originally, so I can't endorse it, but I stumbled on this clip and it is pretty reliable for a good laugh.

https://youtu.be/g09GtnWdBjc

Okay, so I'm guessing that "no sign of entry" implies that all doors were locked or had not been opened after he was shot at least, and that there are no signs of bullet holes passing through the car?

I think that the windows were made of bullet proof glass, and the car with the man inside was loaded into a very large cannon and shot a great distance, and the man died upon impact with the ground. Hence, the man was found shot in his car. . .