Reddit reviews New Larousse Encyclopedia Of Mythology

The Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology is a great resource for descriptions of the basic features of numerous mythologies. Amazon has a bunch of editions of it from very low prices. Here's one of them:

https://www.amazon.com/Larousse-Encyclopedia-Mythology-Felix-Guirand/dp/0517004046/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1480319480&sr=1-1&keywords=larousse+encyclopedia+of+mythology

It covers Egyptian, Assyro-Babylonian, Phoenician, Greek, Roman, Celtic, Teutonic (including Norse), Slavonic, Finno-Ugric, Persian, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, North and South American, Oceanic, and African.

There's a lot of stuff there. The myths of the Finns have wizards instead of gods. In Chinese Mythology heaven is populated by a vast bureaucracy with regulatory responsibility for everything in the universe. Indian mythology has a vast number of gods and demons, all of whom are ultimately manifestations of a single universal god. Persian mythology has a good god and a bad god; they are equally matched and locked in mortal combat to decide the fate of the universe. Roman is heavily influenced by Greek, but isn't the same. For one thing, the Romans had minor gods of families, households, and other features of everyday life that were not versions of anything from Greek mythology. For another thing, some of the Roman gods were very different from their Greek parallels. The most obvious example is Mars, who is supposed to be courageous, noble, and virtuous, versus Ares, who is supposed to be pretty much the opposite of all those things.

There's just lots of good stuff you can find in there.

It doesn't have everything. It doesn't have Wirikuta from Huichol mythology or Kokopelli from the Hopi. It doesn't cover the loa of Voodoo or the hybrid Yoruba/Roman Catholic mythology of Santeria. But it's a good place to start.

It's a bit old but The Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology is really great and has a number of cool illustrations with pictures too.

https://www.amazon.com/Larousse-Encyclopedia-Mythology-Felix-Guirand/dp/0517004046/ref=pd_cp_14_1?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0517004046&pd_rd_r=JMJV466AVEZ6CFTXEF6N&pd_rd_w=PGUXw&pd_rd_wg=6gXak&psc=1&refRID=JMJV466AVEZ6CFTXEF6N

If you're looking for a book about everything mythological I can highly recommend The New Larousse Encyclopedia Of Mythology by Felix Guirand. It covers all the bases, although it is somewhat dated academically (1987). Full index of sources and lots of pictures.

https://www.amazon.com/Larousse-Encyclopedia-Mythology-Felix-Guirand/dp/0517004046