The Sirius Mystery by Robert K. G. Temple
 - Was earth visited by intelligent beings from a planet in the system of the star Sirius?

This book is from 1977. As I began reading it I thought it was one I had already read and perhaps neglected to document, but perhaps I am mistaken and it is from another book where I read about the Dogon tribe...

The Complete Book of Dreams by Pamela Ball
 - A practical guide to interpretation and dreaming creatively

I've been actively intrigued by dreams since childhood when, as I recall, I dreamed of a burning city and the following day drew, with crayons, a colourful picture of a scene I saw. With my school friends I was into digging in the mud and a following day at school we unearthed some charred remains beside the school playground - I was convinced this and my dream had been related.

While the internet is a useful resource for looking up particular dream symbolism, it's certainly handy to have a book instead, and now I have one with this book that I picked up at a thrift shop. A lightly thumbed paperback it weighs in at 500 pages, and as other reviews on Amazon have pointed out, the font size is very small. This means there is a lot of information packed in, but also that you need quite good eyesight!

As is commonplace with such books, the second half forms an A-Z, whereas the first half covers the following:

 - Introduction
 - Sleeping and Dreaming
 - Dream Interpretation
 - Managing Your Dreams
 - Creating Your Own Reality
 - Enhancing Your Dreams
 - Dream Dictionary: Common Images

The final pages cover:
 - Living With Creative Dreams
 - Tips And Techniques

The introduction curiously states (p.9): "It has been discovered that at certain stages in the development of control over creative dreaming some very bizarre distortions take place." What bizarre distortions I wonder.

Astronomy for GCSE by Patrick Moore

I'm slowly working my way through this book, researching further things of interest. You can find out more in my Astronomy section which is dedicated to this pursuit.

The White Rock by Hugh Thomson
 - An Exploration of the Inca Heartland

Quite interesting and insightful, reading about Hugh as he follows in the footsteps of other explorers and explains the history of the region, much of which I was ignorant of.

Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer

The fourth book in the Twilight Saga. [A few spoilers will follow] Overall I liked the Saga but there were a few irritating parts throughout - Bella (Stephenie) and her inner monologue can be quite annoying; the whole chapter where she goes to the cinema with soon-to-be-wolf-boy and the guy from school, geez that was some drivel.

Her dad, who is a police officer, is such a blandly-written normy NPC of a character who all he seems to do is "watch the game on TV", occasionally go fishing, and have Bella cook for him because he's is incapable of doing that (even though he lived on his own prior to her moving in), and shows no interest in dating any other woman since him and her mom broke up.

Towards the end of the Saga, wolf-boy suddenly decides to go and tell (reveal to) her dad (I remind you, a police officer) that he's a werewolf. This in itself made no sense to me and it was one of those time where, even though you're deeply invested in a book, you're compelled to put it down and give up. Yet this situation somehow goes fine; just like that the guy accepts what he's suddenly shown... and, more bizarrely, I couldn't help but recall the storyline early on in the saga about the missing hikers and sightings of large creatures in the woods even though the author seemed to have forgotten all about this by now and thus Charlie couldn't put 2-and-2 together and assume werewolf boy or his kind were responsible.

My favourite characters were Alice, who is quite charming, and later Seth. I think Stephenie comes up with some novel twists to the genre of vampires and werewolves, such as the concept of 'imprinting' which I found quite interesting. It was also quite amusing to be reading these books 20 years late; if you like the era of the 2000s with dial-up internet, CDs, no cell phones (except among the wealthy Cullens), and later MP3s, you might well enjoy that aspect too.

Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer

The third book in the Twilight Saga

New Moon by Stephenie Meyer

The second book in the Twilight Saga

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

And here it begins. I found the four books on a second-hand Kindle I acquired. It had been some years since I saw the movie.

Satanism and Witchcraft by Jules Michelet

Four  by Veronica Roth

Essentially this is Book 4 of the Divergent series, and as the name should imply it is written from Four's perspective. An interesting thing to discover from the beginning of this book is that it had been Roth's intention to write the series from the perspective of Tobias rather than Tris, but that wasn't working out. I can appreciate why that might have been but I did enjoy this 'version' of Tobias. One particular thing to note is that had his dad never been so abusive he would never have acquired the toughness to gain his position. Having said that, I find it hard to believe in his father's character in this way as there appeared to be next to no explanation for it... almost like Roth invented the abusive parent in order to put Tobias in the position he needed to be.

Allegiant  by Veronica Roth

Book 3 of the Divergent series. I discovered a little way into this that unlike the first two books which are all from Tris' perspective, each chapter in this one alternates between her and Tobias and I had to acknowledge this next to each chapter heading. As I understand it, Book 4 (Four) is about him, so I wasn't expecting this until then and I found it a challenge at first, and still a little odd since this is the third book in a series. Alternating through different character perspectives reminds me of The Expanse series where I was new to it as I never used to read as much fiction. Sometimes I found girly Tris, as created by Veronica, to be a little annoying, especially with biases towards her boyfriend Tobias who it seemed to me was Veronica playing herself with her dream boyfriend, and now I have to assume she could understand the mentality of Tobias himself; maybe she got help from some male friends for this.

Insurgent by Veronica Roth

Book 2 of the Divergent series.

Divergent by Veronica Roth

Book 1 of the series.

Thiaoouba Prophecy The Golden Planet by Michael Desmarquet
 - Abduction to the 9th planet; a true report by the author who was physically abducted to another planet.

This book reminds me of The Only Planet of Choice which I read in 2020 and 2010.

Children of the New Forest

This was a charming tale to read.

The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories by M. Cox and A. A. Gilbert

I saw this book at a carboot in September 2023 and thought it would be idea to read my way through it in the evenings of the month of October, leading up to Halloween.  I managed half of it that year and enjoyed most of the stories - they're published in chronological order. I then saved the final half for the Halloween month of 2024.

Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

A novel that I'm not sure how I came to seek it out.