Here is a selection of authentic stories from African myth and legend, retold by the author with interesting and unique twists. Although the origins are not necessarily known, the tales all center on the Ghanaian people, their culture, and beliefs. A very nice selection, creatively and warmly told.

The Ojibway Indians' sense of humor sparkles through these stories set on the fictional Moose Meat Point Indian Reserve, connected by a dirt road to the town of Blunder Bay. If some of them seem "farfetched and even implausible," Basil L. Johnston writes, "it is simply because human beings very often act and conduct their affairs and those of others in an absurd manner." ø These twenty-two stories were originally collected under the title Moose Meat and Wild Rice. Among the most memorable of the stories is "They Don't Want No Indians," in which all attempts are made to circumvent bureaucratic red tape and transport a dead Indian to his home for burial. One of the funniest is "Indian Smart: Moose Smart," which pits a moose in a lake against six Moose Meaters in two canoes. "If You Want to Play" and "Secular Revenge" are the result of misunderstanding or imperfect communication. Still other stories, like "What Is Sin?" and "The Kiss and the Moonshine," reveal the clash of different cultural approaches. All show the warm-heartedness and good will of the Ojibway Indians. If they are gently satirized, so are the whites who would change them, and with good reason. Government ineptitude and rigid piety are foisted on the Moose Meaters, who have only thirty thousand acres to move around in.

Many people say, "You can't judge a book by its cover". That saying definitely doesn't apply in this case, because the title and picture say it all. In this book the vulnerability of us all is humorously exposed as we typically find ourselves trying to hide the human condition, which has been passed down throughout mankind. If you breathe, then you eat, if you eat then you poop. No one is exempt from this natural act of waste disposal. However, most people will sit in misery rather than admit the need to go. Whether you are rich or poor, man or woman, you know you have been stuck in some kind of compromising situation. Maybe you have experienced the helplessness of finishing your business, only to discover an empty toilet paper cylinder at your side as you contemplate your options before heading back in to the office. Possibly it was the embarrassment of trying to expel a little gas to relieve an uncomfortable pressure, only to find a science experiment gone wrong in your drawers when the gas changed to a liquid. Or perhaps the awkwardness of a first date has been multiplied by a thousand, as you begin to feel the grumbles in your stomach set in after dinner. Each hilarious tale tells of the experiences of the authors from many different stages in their lives. They share experiences ranging from their own childhood, through the college years, into young adulthood and finally reach full circle with funny tales about their own children. These stories have been written with every intention of making you smile if you must be stuck on the throne for any length of time. Can you honestly think of a better topic for the most notorious and infamous reading room in history?

A girl discovers the beauty in herself by looking into her Nana's eyes.

It would be difficult to imagine what human life would be like without stories—from myths recited by Pueblo Indian healers in the kiva, ballads sung in Slovenian market squares, folktales and legends told by the fireside in Italy, to jokes told at a dinner table in Des Moines—for it is chiefly through storytelling that people possess a past. In Homo Narrans John D. Niles explores how human beings shape their world through the stories they tell. The book vividly weaves together the study of Anglo-Saxon literature and culture with the author's own engagements in the field with some of the greatest twentieth-century singers and storytellers in the Scottish tradition. Niles ponders the nature of the storytelling impulse, the social function of narrative, and the role of individual talent in oral tradition. His investigation of the poetics of oral narrative encompasses literary works, such as the epic poems and hymns of early Greece and the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf, texts that we know only through written versions but that are grounded in oral technique. That all forms of narrative, even the most sophisticated genres of contemporary fiction, have their ultimate origin in storytelling is a point that scarcely needs to be argued. Niles's claims here are more ambitious: that oral narrative is and has long been the chief basis of culture itself, that the need to tell stories is what distinguishes humans from all other living creatures.