Jenny's Top Ten Favorite Retellings

Top Ten Tuesday is a feature hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week was a freebie and, as Lesley Anne is currently unavailable, I decided to chose one of my all-time favorite genres: retellings. I will read practically anything (except erotica) if it is a retelling of a myth or fairytale. The dichotomy of beauty and suffering is so much clearer in these stories than in 99% of what is written today. J.R.R. Tolkien's essay, "On Fairy-Stories", sums up the necessity of these stories. This quote, though long, hits right at the heart of these stories:

"The consolation of fairy stories, the joy of the happy ending; or more correctly, the good catastrophe, the sudden, joyous "turn" (for there is no true end to a fairy tale); this joy, which is one of the things that fairy stories can produce supremely well, is not essentially escapist or fugitive. In it's fairy tale or other world setting, it is a sudden and miraculous grace, never to be counted on to reoccur. It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, or sorrow and failure, the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance. It denies, (in the face of much evidence if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief."

Bet you didn't realize how incredible fairytales were, did you?





1. Till We Have Faces | C.S. Lewis

{A retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche}
This is, hands down, my favorite book. I think it might be because I see so much of myself in Orual. It is a beautiful retelling of the myth in Lewis's inimitable style.







2. The Percy Jackson and the Olympians Series | Rick Riordan
{A retelling of Greek mythology}
I never tire of talking about how much I love this series. Riordan's attention to detail and the amount of research that went into these books is second to none. Percy and Annabeth are on my all-time favorite characters list.






3. Black Ships | Jo Graham

{A retelling of the Aeneid}
I ran across this book while browsing Amazon one day and I am so glad I did. I read this book before I actually read the Aeneid so I did not appreciate, fully, how wonderful it was until I was familiar with Virgil's epic. This story is told from the POV of the priestess who goes along with them once Troy is destroyed. It is fantastic. Please, put this on your TBR list.






4. Deerskin | Robin McKinley
{A retelling of the fairytale "Donkeyskin"}
This is a hard retelling because the subject matter is not for the faint of heart. It deals with the ugliness of human nature (stress ugliness), and it can be hard to read at times. There is so much beauty to be found there, though, that it is well-worth the read. Don't expect to feel warm and fuzzy at the end, but expect to be humbled by the resilience of the human spirit.






5. The Scorpio Races | Maggie Stiefvater
 {A retelling of the myth of the water horse}
This is, so far, my favorite book I have read this year. Hannah, a fellow blogger, reviewed it here and it caught my eye. The premise is unique and it is about horses. What more could you want? This, to me, is YA at its absolute best.







6. Ella Enchanted | Gail Carson Levine
{A retlling of Cinderella}
I believe this book is why I love retellings so much. Levine does such wonderful job with this heroine. She is believable. For further gushing over this book, see the blog post here.







7. Daughter of the Forest | Juliet Marillier
{A retelling of "The Six Swans"}
This is book was another one that was hard to read in spots but was so, so good. It makes you want to live at SevenWaters and be a part of the magical world that Marillier has created. Again, as with Deerskin, the beauty of the human spirit is showcased by the difficulties Sorcha must endure.







8. The Once and Future King | T.H. White
{A retelling of King Arthur}
This is one of my top ten favorite books of all time. It is a fleshing-out of the the Arthurian legend and its surrounding stories while, at the same time, managing to be a social commentary on the 20th century. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.






9. A Court of Thorns and Roses | Sarah J. Maas
 {A retelling of Beauty and the Beast, Tamlin, "East of the Sun, West of the Moon"}
There will be a longer blog post on this book, so I won't say much other than I liked this book so much more than I was expecting.









10. The Princess Bride | William Goldman
{A retelling — satire — of fairytales}
This is satire at its finest. Goldman is making fun of all sorts of tropes in fairytales and does it well. You will be laughing out loud at parts, so make sure you are not reading it somewhere where it would be embarrassing to draw attention to yourself.