Second paragraph of third story (“Vukub-Cakix”):

Vukub-Cakix, the Great Macaw, was nothing but trouble. He shone with the brilliance of gold and silver, and his teeth were emeralds, and he owned the nanze-tree of succulent fruit. He was a boaster, and his sons were no better. Their names were Zipacna the Earthmaker and Cabrakan the Earthshaker. The sons made mountains and then toppled them, and the father guzzled the harvests, so that between them they were a plague in Guatemala.

This is a collection of fifty-odd folk tales from various cultures – I did not count, but I think at least half are English or at least British, and slightly more than half were first published in another collection in 1969 (this one dates from 2011). They are all a bit enigmatic, pricking complacency about the universe. The best are short. A 47-page extract from the Ramayana was the one piece which I felt rather misfired. And it includes also some poetry by Garner himself:

Mist

The mist will always come from the fen.
It bore on its breath the boating men,
Saxon, Viking, iron swords,
Burning thatch and crystal words.
And their sons’ sons and grandsons still
Built house upon house in the lee of the hill.
And the latest house shows on the wall
How they shuttered and barred the lord’s great hall
From the mist and what the mist must hold;
And what it is must never be told.
For the mist will always come from the fen.
And now it is killing the motorway men.

A book to sip slowly from rather than to rush through. You can get Collected Folk Tales here.

Second paragraph of third chapter:

“Do you think there was anything in the quarry?” said Susan.

I had read this years ago, of course; it is the sequel to Garner’s first book, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen. I see a lot of online reviewers saying that they like The Moon of Gomrath better; I must admit that I still have sharp memories of The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, and it must be thirty years since I last re-read it. Still, The Moon of Gomrath is a great fantasy story, with the young protagonists sucked into epic battle with ancient magical forces across the richly depicted landscape of Alderley Edge and Macclesfield. It’s not long since I was near that part of the world myself. You can get it here.

Second paragraph of third chapter:

For a while the road passed charred stumps of buildings, and field rank with nettle. Dust, or ash, kicked up under Roland’s feet, muffling his walk and coating his body so aridly that his skin rasped. Flies whined round him, and crawled in his hair, and tried to settle on his lips. The sky was dull, yet there was a brittleness in the light that hurt. It was no longer wonder that led him, but dislike of being alone.

A recently reacquired Alan Garner novel, this one an intensely imagined story of four siblings who are drawn into the mythic struggle of the parallel world of Elidor from their home in early 1960s Manchester. Garner is very good at painting emotional landscapes with few words, and his realisation of Manchester and the surrounding territories in our world and in Elidor are very vivid. Glad to return to this one. You can get Elidor here.

Surprisingly perhaps, a Bechdel pass even though one of the brothers, Roland, is the viewpoint character; his sister Helen and their mother (whose name is I think given only as “Mrs Watson”) have a couple of exchanges which are not about men.