Currently Reading and Recently Read Books

Currently Reading and Recently Read

Currently Reading:

Children of the New Forest

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.

Some to re-read:

Date Published	Title	Author(s)	Date Read
2005	Cracking the Symbol Code	Tim Wallace- Murphy	2013
2007	The Secrets of Solomon's Temple	Kevin L. Gest	-
2010	The Hiram Key Revisited	Christopher Knight and Alan Butler	2011

Read so far in 2024:

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.

Sidelined:

Christmas Stories by Charles Dickens

I believe it was the December of 2022 that I started reading this, and then in 2023 I continued. I like the time that Dickens writes from and how he conveys it. Even the writing style is different, although sometimes hard to follow.

As of Christmas 2023 I have one story left, so I'll save that until next Christmas.

The Magic of Sleep Thinking by E. Maisel and N. Maisel
- How to solve problems, reduce stress, and increase creativity while you sleep

This is a self-help book but because I've now begun reading/working my way through another addressing creativity, this one will take a backseat for now.

Great True Stories of The Islands by Claude Williamson

This book contains 40+ short stories, written by a variety of authors, about various islands around the world. I had been gradually working my way through the book and I often recorded myself reading the tales, and uploaded them as audio books to Youtube... until my account was removed by them for unrelated reasons - you can find out more in the Audio section.

The Third Reich by Michael Burleigh
- A New History

A hefty book at over 900 pages.

The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot

Contact by Carl Sagan

I landed a copy of the movie on DVD and when I got around to watching it I came to realise that I hadn't already seen the movie (I thought I had at some point). I liked the film so, when I learned it was "based" on a book by Carl Sagan I looked up a copy of that to read.

The two have differences; in fact, some aspects I prefer in the movie - for one, in the book five passengers travel in the craft while the story is presented from the perspective from its main character, leaving the other four characters, and their experiences (which are pretty much glossed over), superfluous.

Neuromancer by William Gibson

I don't know why or how I came to have this downloaded and on my ereader, nor what it was going to be about (I should have perhaps looked it up before starting it). I can certainly see a lot of Blade Runner (1982) and other essences of P. K. Dick's work in this 1984 book, and more latterly The Expanse series, but that's sci-fi for you. It's always a little that sci-fi writers of the 80s and 90s got hung up on what technologies were prevalent at the time and imagined them still existing in their futures, or it's perhaps a shame that we don't still use CRTs and computer like they were back then. Ultimately I didn't really gel with this book; I'm sure I would have enjoyed it a little more if I knew what it was about and wasn't trying to figure that out the whole time.

The Penguin Book of the Renaissance by J. H. Plumb

This book was quite insightful and each chapter (written as essays by others, although it's good that there appears to be little change in writing style) is its own topic, bringing you the Renaissance from that perspective; Machiavelli, Michelangelo, and Leonardo da Vinci are covered.

Masters of Time by John Boslough

The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron
- A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity

I've read and kind of worked my way through the first part with involves "Morning Pages"; a daily journaling technique where you make yourself write three whole pages each morning.

The Addictive Personality by Criag Nakken
- Understanding the Addictive Process and Compulsive Behavior

Interesting and insightful, if not lacking research to backup all what the author talks about. Conclusion: "you have to join a 12-step program if you want to recover." (I don't think this is true for everyone).

The Western Esoteric Traditions by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke
- A historical introduction

Because some of my reviews on books have increasingly included vast notes and quotations, I would like to point out that I do recognise that these books are protected by the Copyright act. I put my views online to share with other internet browsers in the hope that little snippets of information may be useful and my views interesting. I have always included links to the online retailer Amazon and encourage anyone that finds any title particularly interesting (thanks to what I have to say) to either buy a copy or borrow one from their local library.