favorite tarot novels?

Barleywine

Little, Big by John Crowley

I got this a long time ago from the Science Fiction Book Club, but lost interest somewhere in the middle while reading it. I'll have to go back and look; I thought it was more about faerie than tarot but maybe I didn't get far enough.
 

Mirra

Right now, I'm loving The Raven Cycle book series (The Raven Boys / The Dream Thieves / Blue Lily, Lily Blue / The Raven King) by Maggie Stiefvater. It's YA fantasy but pretty good!
 

Teheuti

Right now, I'm loving The Raven Cycle book series (The Raven Boys / The Dream Thieves / Blue Lily, Lily Blue / The Raven King) by Maggie Stiefvater. It's YA fantasy but pretty good!
I've read the first two books in this series and really enjoyed them. The Tarot is used in an entirely fresh and imaginative way. Forget what you think each card means or how it would act in real life and just go along for the ride! It's an engaging tale that's full of surprises.
 

Richard

I got this a long time ago from the Science Fiction Book Club, but lost interest somewhere in the middle while reading it. I'll have to go back and look; I thought it was more about faerie than tarot but maybe I didn't get far enough.

It is a seemingly subtle but strategic element of The Tale.
 

Freddie

Castle of Crossed Destinies - Italo Calvino

This is one I never tire of.



Freddie
 

_R_

It strikes me that Gustav Meyrink's eerie novel of madness and mysticism, "The Golem", has not yet been mentioned in this thread - the Tarot plays a certain role in the narrative.

There are a couple of English translations of this work available, as well as a classic 1920s Expressionist horror film by Paul Wegener.


And, since we're on the subject of cards - do you play tarot much, Herr Zwakh?"

"Tarot? Of course. Ever since I was a boy."

"Oh, then I'm surprised to hear anyone asking for a book about the whole Kabbala who's had it in his hands at least a thousand times."

"I? Had it in my hands? I?' Zwakh beat his brow.

"Yes, you. Has it never occurred to you that the game of tarot contains two and twenty trumps-precisely the same number as the letters of the Hebrew alphabet? Don't our decks have card after card of which the painted pictures are obviously symbols - the fool, death and the Devil, the last judgment? My good friend, how loud do you want life to shout her answers in your ears? There is no need for you to know, of course, that the word 'tarot,' bears the same significance as the Jewish 'Tora,' that is to say, 'The Law,' or the old Egyptian 'Tarut,' 'Questions asked, ' and the old Zend word 'Tarisk,' meaning, 'I require an answer. ' But learned men ought to ascertain these little facts before they give out with such certitude that tarot dates from the period of Charles the Sixth. And, just as the Pagad comes first in the game of cards, so is a man the first figure of all in his own picture book - his own doppelgänger, so to say. The Hebrew letter Aleph is shaped like a man, with one hand pointing to heaven, and the other downwards, meaning: 'As it is above, so it is below; as it is below, so it is above.’”


“I fetched down my old pack of tarot cards from the bookcase meanwhile, to while away the time.

Maybe I should get an idea from one of them for a design for a new cameo? I hunted through them for the Pagad. But it didn't seem to be there. Where could it have got to?

As I sat shuffling through the cards, my thoughts dwelt upon their mystic import. Especially that of the Hanged Man. What could that mean?

A man, strung on a cord betwixt heaven and earth, head down, arms bound behind him, right thigh crossed over his left leg, looking almost in the form of a cross, over an inverted triangle.

Some symbol pregnant with meaning that I could not fathom.”
 

AJ

light reading

Steve Hockensmith and Lisa Falco, the White Magic Five and Dime
and Fool Me Once. Says published in April, Give the Devil His Due but I've not found it.
 

Cocobird55

All the Dark Disguises -- Deborah Adams. A light mystery. Each chapter is named after a card in the major arcana, and a tarot reader is one of the main characters.
 

dianekay

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell