Carpe Librum

I grew up in the boonies. And as much as I would love to live in the boonies again, I have to admit that working in the city occasionally has its perks.

Every day I come out of the metro station to someone pushing something. More often than not it's high school kids selling Krispe Kremes to raise money for whatever club they're in. Now that baseball has started I occasionally see a giant George Washington or Abraham Lincoln trying to convince me to attend a Nationals games. And then there's the occasional person handing out fliers for a play or a magazine or a concert or something. I've gotten really good at ignoring all of them.

But today a couple of words caught my attention: popup bookstore. I took a flier and proceeded to not throw it in the nearest trash can.

The flier told me of a used bookstore, conveniently located between my office and the metro station I use, that would be open for the next few weeks. It was a fundraiser for Turning the Page, an organization that focuses on improving public education in DC.. This is extra incentive to buy books that I don't necessarily need. I mean, a used bookstore on my way home from work whose proceeds go to charity? Shut up and take my money!

I ended up stopping by after work. Because obviously. I confined myself to the (rather small) sci-fi section where I managed to find three books I've been wanting to read. I picked up The Mists of Avalon (which I haven't read since high school), Stranger in a Strange Land (which I've been meaning to read since high school), and Contact (I saw the movie, but never read the book). All three cost me about five dollars total.

I'm sorely tempted to go back tomorrow and see what else I can find. The books cost between one and three dollars, which is hard to pass up. But I could also see myself spending far too much money there. Then again, it all goes to kids, right?

The silver lining (and touch of gray) is that the store won't be there forever. This is a limited temptation, meaning that I won't be able to spend all of my money on books. In the meantime, I'll probably be adding quite a few books to my personal collection at an incredibly reduced price

Intertwining Fantasy Epics

I took a break from A Song of Ice and Fire to read the new edition of Neil Gaiman's American Gods (my review of which is so far incredibly disjointed and will probably stay that way). This turned out to be a good thing, as it actually gave me a bit more insight into ASOIAF.

I had reached the point in American Gods with the god in Las Vegas. The one that everyone always forgets and I can never figure out. Armed with my internet connection, I decided to figure it out once and for all. My search led me to a complete listing of the gods that appear in American Gods, which seemed like a reasonable place to find my answer. Scrolling though, I came across Bran, the Fisher King, and little alarm bells started ringing in my head.

Bran was a king in Irish mythology who got co-opted as the guardian of the grail in the Arthurian legends. He usually appears injured and unable to walk or move around by himself. He is usually called the Fisher King (because all he can do anymore is fish) and sometimes the Wounded King. The kingdom suffers along with his injuries, experiencing war and famine.

This discovery sent me down a rabbit hole of research. I remember learning about the Fisher King in my Arthurian literature class in college. It's one of the legends we spent the most time on. We watched the original movie about Perceval (which you need to be stoned to properly appreciate), read Bernard Malamud's The Natural to look for the parallels and watched that movie adaptation as well. We even watched The Fisher King, which seemed like the biggest stretch of the legend. I think we read (or were supposed to read) Chretian de Troye's Perceval, and I still have the anthology that it's a part of.

The Fisher King got renamed for more recent adaptations, which is why I never picked up on this connection before. He is Pelles in Perceval and Roy Hobbs (the hobbled king) in The Natural. But he is always wounded, always ruling in some way over a barren land, always waiting to be saved through the grail quest.

George RR Martin must have been aware of these parallels. It's one of the more insidious myths if you start looking for it, and any serious fantasy author is sure to go looking. Bran's name and injuries were no accident. Now when I pick the books back up, I'll be paying closer attention to hints about a grail quest of some sort.

I'm also going to have to re-read some of the Arthur legends. I have a decent collection of them, thanks to that class I took, and I didn't read nearly as many as I should have. Then, of course, I'll need to re-read A Song of Ice and Fire with an eye open for King Arthur. I'm sure he's in there in a thousand little ways and I just haven't picked up on it yet.

I never did figure out who the Las Vegas god is. Damn, Neil Gaiman's good.