No library is complete without this collection. And every person's life is richer for having read this.

Martin Buber, whose ideas I still think can help to bring peace to our troubled world, loved the simple tales of the Hasidim. In these two collections he presents them lovingly in all their simplicity and directness. I find that there is a striking similarity between these tales and those found in Sufi, Zen and early Christian tradition.

Well, if you've ever wondered about Taoism this is the original thing. This is the best complete english translation. It contains hundreds of little stories that are, at once, whimsical and deeply philosophical. The following wee bit I used to entitle and guide my Master's paper at York University:

One morning Chuang Tzu woke from a dream, turned to his friend and said: "I just dreamt that I was a butterfly. But now I do not know if I was a man dreaming he was a butterfly or if now I am a butterfly dreaming he is a man."

This is a collection of hundreds of short tales from many spiritual traditions around the world. Both editors are Buddhist teachers. Jack Kornfield is a well-known West Coast Vipassana Buddhist whom I have seen give one of his weekly public talks/teachings. This was a cover-to-cover read for me which is to say that I have a special fondness for spiritual tales. This collection is especially rich in Buddhist tales (Zen, Taoist, Tibetan and Pali), as you might guess, but also has plenty from many other world traditions including Jewish, Sufi, Christian, Hindu, North American Native.

Eduardo Galeano is one a few authors whose works I buy sight unseen. His work has taught me to see magic in the most humble and unnoticeable gesture. His words are a gift of such magic as I think was once a daily companion of all people and which, with the rise of rationalist science, we have abandoned. All five of these books are composed of short (somewhat anecdotal) passages that range from 100 to 500 words. It is a style that Galeano uses to express a poignancy that can often be heartbreaking. The trilogy, Memory of Fire is a different history of the Americas than has ever been written. Based on hundreds of sources Galeano has found the most remarkable events to recount. Though they are mostly about resistance and conquest, there is also a smattering of humourous pieces. There is an air about this book for which no word exists with which to describe it. If we could compose a new word out of melancholy and whimsy that might do it. I often had to set these books down as I was frequently overcome by strong emotion. The Book of Embraces is a memoir, also composed of many vignettes. They are simultaneously personal, parable, myth, anecdote. This book has more whimsy than the trilogy but is equally moving. Walking Words is made up of tales that are like folktales re-invented within a dreamworld. They are interspersed with poetic pieces called "Window on...", for instance:

Window on Arrival Pilar and Daniel Weinberg's son was baptized on the coast. The baptism taught him what was sacred. They gave him a sea shell: "So you'll learn to love the water." They opened a cage and let a bird go free: "So you'll learn to love the air." They gave him a geranium: "So you'll learn to love the earth." And they gave him a little bottle sealed up tight: "Don't ever, ever open it. So you'll learn to love mystery."

Alice is one of Canada's national storytelling treasures whom I have been privileged to meet and see perform a number of times. Now over 88 she still lives on her own a few blocks from me. Alice and her family immigrated to Canada from Belfast when she was thirteen. She brought with her a wealth of remembered songs and sayings that have been put down in this unique memoir with the help of the late Edith Fowke, Canada's leading folklorist. One of my favourites is:

O Lady Moon, your horns point to the East. Shine, be increased. O Lady Moon, your horns point to the West. Wane, be at rest.

This is a collection of Alice's favourite tales. It includes some for which she is well-known. It has my personal favourite, The Golden Fly.

Jataka tales are stories of the Buddha's pre-incarnations - the many lives he lived as many kinds of animals before being born as human. In university libraries you will find big collections of these. This is the most elegant english translation (from the Sanskrit) that I have found. These stories are filled with a gentle humour and a deep compassion.

This is one of the many titles published under The Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library. Though all the books in this series are excellent collections this one is my favourite. Both the writing and the organization of the tales is superior to most of the others. Ramanujan's scholarship is some of the best there is in the field. The tale "What Happens When You Really Listen to a Story" is both funny and deeply wise about how to live one's life.

Another of The Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library, I like the many short wisdom tales in this collection. You can see in many of the tales the origins of Taoist thought. One of my favourite tales is in this collection as, The Lost Horse. I've not seen it written down anywhere else and, though i'm not crazy about this particular version, I am glad to have a source on it. Here's my version which is a favourite of my niece, Renée:

And the Horse Came Back Once there lived a father and son. They were poor and lived a hard life. One day their only horse ran away. Their fellow villagers lamented saying, "What will you do now? That was your only horse. How will you farm your land. You are so unlucky." To this the poor farmer said, "We’ll see." A few days later the farmer’s horse came back bringing with it a wild horse. And the villagers said, "Now you have two horses to work your land. You’re so lucky." And the farmer said, "We’ll see." The next day the farmer’s son was taming the wild horse when he was thrown from her back and broke his leg. And the villagers said, "Now who will help you work your land? That is your only son. How unlucky." And the farmer said, "We’ll see." A few days later the army came through town to draft all the able-bodied young men to fight in a distant war for their emperor. All the young men of the village, except for the poor farmer’s injured boy, were taken away. And as the villagers watched as their children were taken away they looked at the poor farmer and his boy and said, "You’re so lucky." And the former said, "We’ll see."

Howard Schwartz has collected Jewish tales from all over the world. All his books include extensive notes on sources of the tales. Elijah's Violin is one of my favourite wonder tales.

This is a lovely wee book of quirky parables. I regularly tell a few from this collection. These tales are examples of Christian tales that seem virtually indistinguishable from their Sufi, Zen and Hasidic counterparts.

This is a story-cycle that Dan wrote and performs still. It is a marvellous work of stories within stories in the tradition of the 1,000 Nights and a Night (better known as The Arabian Nights). It includes another of my all-time favourite tales: The Silent Prince.

Dan's collections are especially magical in that all the stories told are still being told by all the tellers published here (with the few exceptions of some recently departed and very beloved). Tales for an Unknown City is a collection of tales told at the 1,001 Friday Nights of Storytelling of which Dan is the principal founding member. Begun in 1978 they continue to this day, every Friday night without exception. Though this book is a wonderful sampling of the Friday Nights, it is no substitute for the real thing. You'll find it at: St. George the Martyr Church, 205 John St. (North of Queen) and it always begins at 8:30 pm. (A $3 donation is requested and you can call for info at 416-656-2445). Next Teller and the forthcoming Ghostwise include a wider sampling of Canadian telling. You will find one tale that I re-tell from my childhood, Ti-flor and the Devil in Ghostwise.

$5.00, Order from: GB Photographic, 300 Park Rd. N., Oshawa, ON L1J 4M2

This is a simple and elegant (and short: 23 pages) reflection on storytelling as an oral art and its relationship to imagination.

Order from: The Storytellers School of Toronto, 791 St. Clair Ave. W., 2nd Floor, Toronto, ON M6C 1B7. ph: (416) 656-2445, fx: (416) 656-8510. CDN$9.00 or US$10.00.

This is a remarkable work that presents the life stories of three very special women. Cruickshank learned to approach autobiography differently as she was taught by her friends that myth and life can have very different boundaries from culture to culture. Angela Sidney, Kitty Smith and Annie Ned recount their family histories as well as the stories they were raised on of the world's creation and transformation, of animals and humans.

This book contains papers presented at the Sixth International Oral History Conference on "Myth and History" (St. John's College, Oxford; Sept. 11-13, 1987) . As papers that address the theory of myth and oral history they are very accessible to non-experts. I especially recommend Julie Cruickshank's piece, Myth as a framework for life stories, which is an excellent preview of her book Life Lived Like a Story (see elsewhere in this bibliography).

Sussman retells Wolfram van Eschenbach's rendition of Parsifal chapter by chapter and reflects on how the story of the Grail is both a ritual of initiation into voice as well as a lesson in how to tell one's stories. It is about imagination and creativity and art and life and all those good things that make life worth living. A taste:

How to relate creatively to wildness, how to leave things intact, free, still breathing in all their beauty and mystery, while simultaneously building an understanding of them, is a definitive late twentieth-century concern in fields as diverse as science, ecology, archetypal psychology, poetry and literary criticism - and the question concerns the initiate-speaker no less. The challenge is to claim a place for oneself, for one's imagination and intellect, in this world without having to kill the world to do it. The wildness in the world, in other people and in ourselves will, now and then, confound us, betray our expectations and ideals, challenge our need to feel in control and therefore terrify us. To maintain respectful relatedness under such conditions can only be accomplished by a courageous commitment to stay open, to keep learning, to live out of ever-changing questions rather than hardened definitions. Improvisation is the key. The initiate-speaker emulates the jazz musician who makes no claim for any final answer or all-encompassing knowledge of the right way. Rather, holding onto a basic "line" of intention, the musician improvises out of what arises within and appears without, constantly accepting new impulses and ideas and working them into a pattern that somehow "fits," expresses some truth or coherency for that moment. Wise fools portrayed in old stories and spiritual masters have always known that the harmonies of the wild world are two intricate for ordinary consciousness to comprehend fully. These teachers point beyond modes of ordinary understanding - to presence, to play, to improvisational artistry. But they do not say this is easy. Those who embody the presence to relate playfully to wildness have undergone rigorous initiation.

Though included in this section this book would be equally at home under autobiography. Griffen's prose is poetic, associative, provocative. Like Life Lived Like a Story listed in the previous section, this book is a unique approach to autobiography. A deeply personal refection that is simultaneously rooted in the social-political lifeworld that we share. Here are two pieces to tempt you:

I am beginning to believe that we know everything, that all history, including the history of each family, is part of us, such that, when we hear any secret revealed, a secret about a grandfather, or an uncle, or a secret about the battle of Dresden in 1945, our lives are made suddenly clearer to us, as the unnatural heaviness of unspoken truth is dispersed. For perhaps we are like stones; our own history and the history of the world embedded in us, we hold a sorrow deep within and cannot weep until that history is sung.

To tell a story, or to hear a story told, is not a simple transmission of information. Something else in the telling is given too, so that, once hearing, what one has heard becomes a part of oneself.

Hillman offers here a radical new/old notion of how to read one's life: i.e. backwards. He uses the metaphor of the acorn and the oak to suggest that we are born with an innate potential ( he uses terms like daemon, genius, guardian angel, calling). This calling can manifest in us as children, but, seeing as we are young and unprepared, our actions can get pathologized, neglected or otherwise misinterpreted. And yet if we re-examine our choices in life we can witness a recapitulation of our calling over and over again. This is a poor description on my part so i'll let Hillman speak:

Is this the appeal of biography, that it is the genre for connecting the two souls, called by biographers the life and the work, the human and the genius? Is that why we are fascinated by biographies? They expose the intricacies of the relation between the two names, and we, reading, might gain an insight into our own genius and how to live it by studying how others did so notoriously, successfully, and also seeing their pitfalls, their tragedies. Not for heroes and models or for escapes into lives not our own, but to solve the fundamental mystery that we are each twice-born, born with a doppelgänger, and if we cannot find this estranged angel by ourselves, we turn to biography for clues. These sorts of superstitions and to us obscure practices regarding the placenta and the elf, the doppelgänger and a variety of souls and soul-names, seem to collect around a central theme: that we are not alone at the beginning. We come to the world with a magical or otherworldly counterpart that is not supposed to be around when and where we are.

But why is it so difficult to imagine that I am cared about, that something takes an interest in what I do, that I am perhaps protected, maybe even kept alive not altogether by my own will and doing? Why do I prefer insurance to the invisible guarantees of existence? For it sure is easy to die. A split second of inattention and the best-laid plans of a strong ego spill out on the sidewalk. Something saves me every day from falling down the stairs, tripping at the curb, being blindsided. How is it possible to race down the highway, tape deck singing, thoughts far away, and stay alive? What is this "immune system" that watches over my days, my food sprinkled with viruses, toxins, bacteria? Even my eyebrows crawl with mites, like little birds on a rhino's back. We name what preserves us instinct, self-preservation, sixth sense, subliminal awareness (each of which, too, is invisible yet present). Once upon a time what took such good care of me was a guardian spirit, and I damn well knew how to pay it appropriate attention. Despite this invisible caring, we prefer to imagine ourselves thrown naked into the world, utterly vulnerable and fundamentally alone. It is easier to accept the story of heroic self-made development than the story that you may well be loved by this guiding providence, that you are needed for what you bring, and that you are sometimes fortuitously helped by it in situations of distress.

Not the place you might normally look for profound linguistic, epistemological and cross-cultural truths but this show presents a lesson in humility that is sadly lacking in all too much human communication and interaction. If you get a chance, and you have a taste for the mythical clothed as science-fiction, then I promise you it is a worthwhile 50 minutes.