Shards of Consciousness

Can You Spell Bibliophile?

Do you like books? I like books. I like the smell of old paper. I like the feel of the binding as it rests in my hand while I dive through space, time, and others' minds. Books have as close to a perfect interface as we've found. You can mark your place. You can browse through them. Decently indexed, you can easily find anything in them. You can take them anywhere. You can mark them up, or preserve them for posterity.To me, books are the epitome of joy, pleasure, and creation. Electronic books just don't make it. Paper is a necessity. Until you've held a book, you haven't felt the good life. When they discontinue paper publishing, I plan on reinventing the printing press and taking Project Gutenberg back to it's roots.

Terry Starbucker tagged me for a neat meme that's floating around, the book meme.

How many books do I have? I have no idea. I counted 996, but this is approximate since we're out of shelf space, so some books ares stacked. Many others are loaned out. And I keep finding them in odd and unusual places.
What's the last book I read? The Towers of Sunset by L.E. Modesitt, Jr. Second in an excellent, thought-provoking series of fantasy books that he wrote.

What's the last book I bought? It's been a while, since we're at the point that every book we buy means we need to at least try to find a home for an old one, but I think it was Wicked, by Gregory Maguire. This is a biography of the Wicked Witch of the West.

Five (plus one) Meaningful Books

  • The High Frontier by Gerard K. O'Neill. We can still do it.
  • The Nature of Personal Reality by Jane Roberts. Never believe anything anyone says without testing it. Seth said two things we can all test. You create your own reality. The point of power is in the present.
  • Yoga, Immortality and Freedom by Mircea Eliade. This is an excellent introduction to the theory, practice, and history of yoga.
  • The Tree of Life by Israel Regardie. Israel Regardie served as Aleister Crowley's assistant for some time and became the transmitter of the theory and practice of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn to the second half of the 20th century. This is an outline of the modern techniques of magic that have found new life in the psychology of Jung and the popularized, simplified, somewhat fuzzy technique embodied in the law of attraction.
  • The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn. This is one of the most influential books on the history of science you'll ever find.
  • Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein. One of the few works by a science fiction writer that started a religion, short lived though it was. Scientology has had a longer run.

So, what do you like to read. What has had an impact on your life and your world view? Nneka, Belle, Karen, Mike, Steve, mahud?

Entry Details

November 13, 2007

By Richard Cockrum

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