Hello! People have joined this group while I slept dreaming!
So let's start things off: What are some of your favorite books that fit the group's theme?
When I was in middle school, I found a paperback of
Daniel Cohen's
Encyclopedia of the Strange, which I've pretty much completely worn out in the years since then, even if the Spontaneous Human Combustion article still gives me nightmares. It seems to hit exactly the right balance between skepticism and open-mindedness for me.
Ever since then, I've been a sucker for books on the paranormal that are organized encyclopedia-style - they're my brain candy. I used to read
An Encyclopedia of Fairies at least once a year, although since my collection's gotten bigger, I've varied my choices more.
I am somewhat suprized that no mentioned a little encyclopedia called
The Occult issued in 1991 by Chambers. A less than trade sized paperrback, it is interesting. I picked mine up as a Barnes and Noble remainder. The author is Andre Nataf and was translated from a french version published in 1988. I understand it is still from various internet book sellers very cheaply
Message edited by its author, Oct 3, 2006, 9:05am.
Ooh,
The Occult sounds like just the sort of thing I'd like, Suralon! I'll have to keep my eyes out.
Extraordinary Popular Delusions is available on Project Gutenberg and thereby many other places online; I don't have a paper copy but perusing it online has filled many hours ...
(I tag my whole weirdness collection as
parascience, because I was having trouble coming up with something inclusive enough, since I use forteana for the ones that are specifically collections of miscellaneous oddities and phenomena. I love forteana.)
I had
Mysteries of the Unknown and another few books like that as a kid, that I used a lot (which this group reminded me of) There seemed to be lots of that sort of thing around then, Leonard Nimoy's tv, stuff in kids magazines, Ripley's etc.
Extraordinary Popular Delusions is available in the hardcover edition by and from Barnes and Noble as part of their reprint program rather cheaply. However it appears to me a well made book.
I have
The Complete Books of Charles Fort bound in one Dover edition. I also read Strange Magazine online. A very witty publication and full of fascinating articles: strangemag.com
I've read
The Book of the Damned in library copies and public domain e-texts several times, and I adore it! But I've seen mixed reviews of the later ones. I got a used hardcover copy of
New Lands for Christmas which is on my currently-reading pile, it seems to so far be focussed more on debunking traditional science than on the positive proofs of weirdness that made
Damned so great - still fun, but since half of the things he talks about are now utterly obsolete, it's kind of disappointing from a "rock your world" standpoint. Does it get better?
(For some reason, my new copy was published as part of the "Garland Library of Great Science Fiction", which seems to imply that they thought it was fiction. I haven't quite worked that out yet.)
Ahh, thank you bluetyson! You’ve helped me without knowing it.
For a few days now, I’ve been racking my brain trying to remember the name of the Time-Life books I had as a kid, which I now know was "Mysteries of the Unknown". I only had a couple from the series, but I remembered liking them. Does anyone hear know if they are actually any good--or do I have skewed childhood memories of them?
On their Web site (
http://www.timelife.com/catalog/product.... ) they offer a one-book, 429 page version of it, which appears to contain the original content, but I wonder if some stuff was taken out or not. Anyone know?
Message edited by its author, May 8, 2007, 4:46am.
As far as I recall they were good at the time, had fun info and tidbits and pictures. No idea how many there were though, I know I had one bigger hardback one and maybe some others.
Reprinted and combined? Sounds cool.
LT has been excellent for finding stuff nagging in the back of the brain like that!
“LT has been excellent for finding stuff nagging in the back of the brain like that!”
Very true!
At 429 pages, it likely contains all of the original material. If I recall the books in the original series were rather thin, so this may be the case. And at $12.98, I probably can’t go too wrong, except for being Time-Life I will probably forever be bugged by them to purchase tons of useless stuff for years to come.
Sounds pretty cheap for some nostalgia, sure. Imagine we likely ha different editions to what you had, but looking at that page, sounds about right.
My father-in-law has a 5-inch thick tome titled
Who's Who in Hell.
It's got people listed alphabetically and things they've said (or possibly done) that qualifies them for said afterlife existence. It's really quite funny, but the print is very small.
Message edited by its author, May 8, 2007, 10:55am.
EVERYONE should read Patrick Harpur's "Daemonic Reality" -- a bona-fide masterpiece of esoterica.
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