Fantasy With Friends: Further Reading

A new week, and a new Fantasy with Friends discussion post! The prompts are hosted at Pages Unbound, and this week’s is about fantasies that have inspired you to do further reading: Has reading a fantasy book ever inspired you to do further research into something else? (ex. Read a classic the book is inspired by/read a history text/read nonfiction writings by the author/research a specific topic) Almost certainly, but I’m having trouble dragging anything to mind! Tolkien’s an obvious one for me: I actually studied Tolkien for a taught module during my MA, and we read a lot of stories which were… “sources” is the wrong word, but “inspirations” and “patterns” that Tolkien borrowed little bits from and did tribute to in creating his world. I wrote the assignment on “Northern courage” in his work, so I was reading stuff like ‘The Battle of Maldon’, the Prose and Poetic Eddas, and also a lot of the posthumous volumes that got pumped out with his notes, letters, etc. But I don’t think that…