Status Updates From Rudra: The Idea of Shiva

A book with utter logic and illustrations about Shiva from prospective of Vishnu, Parvati and others. A must read if one wants to understand the theological underpinning of stories.

I clearly remember the day of our wedding. Shiva arrived, seated on his mount, Nandi, the magnificent bull. He was clad in the tiger-skin loincloth of the yogi, with a live serpent draped across his left shoulder and chest instead of the sacred brahmanical thread. Chandra, the moon, rested in his hair, suffusing him in a silvery light.
- Sati remembering her marriage to Shiva (p. 57)

"In his contempt for ritual and religious rites, Shiva ignores, overturns and confutes the rules laid down by the Brahman priests and they inveigh against him with undisguised hostility."