Scan barcode
A review by unlikelyplaces
World Mythology: From Indigenous Tales to Classical Legends by Tamsin Hughes
Did not finish book. Stopped at 29%.
I just picked this up because it was on sale without looking into it. I love mythology and have a decent knowledge of Greek, Roman and Norse myths and wanted to do some more reading about other cultures' folklore. This book is good for giving very brief little summaries of different folktales from around the world.
However, in just the bits that I read I noticed a fair amount of inaccuracies in the mythologies that I do know which makes me suspect they are present in the myths I wasn't familiar with as well and there are quite a few grammatical errors.
The book also refers to Native Americans as "Indians" throughout which made me assume it was really old but apparently it was only written in 2020 which is shocking. It also includes stories from several present day, active religions which to me seems kind of offensive and patronising, especially if you're not going to present them accurately. And it just has a slightly patronising tone in the way it relates some of the stories.
So I don't know, I guess if you want like a very basic intro to mythology then it might be a good starting point but I could list many better ones. This just feels like it wasn't really edited or checked by anyone. Probably not worth the time.
However, in just the bits that I read I noticed a fair amount of inaccuracies in the mythologies that I do know which makes me suspect they are present in the myths I wasn't familiar with as well and there are quite a few grammatical errors.
The book also refers to Native Americans as "Indians" throughout which made me assume it was really old but apparently it was only written in 2020 which is shocking. It also includes stories from several present day, active religions which to me seems kind of offensive and patronising, especially if you're not going to present them accurately. And it just has a slightly patronising tone in the way it relates some of the stories.
So I don't know, I guess if you want like a very basic intro to mythology then it might be a good starting point but I could list many better ones. This just feels like it wasn't really edited or checked by anyone. Probably not worth the time.