Working on my own book has kept me too busy to follow up on a chain of connections and interesting things to look at. Luckily, Furl does a handy job of tracking them all for me, and it plugs right into my Firefox. For a peek into all the stuff I’ve been busy bookmarking with Furl while occupied elsewhere, check this out. Whoever said that was one of the best web tools since Google knows what the hell they are talking about… Oh wait, I guess blogging is up there too. And wikis too. Between those four though, yeah, thats some shit right there…

Anyway, I just wanted to put together a little list of books I’ve heard mentioned recently that sound pretty interesting. First off though, I’m waiting for Amazon to deliver me the following four books (they’re supposed to come in tomorrow, but we’ll see):

1. The Dragon Legacy: The Secret History Of An Ancient Bloodline - I’ve been meaning to read this for more than a year, but never got around to it until I got some gift certificates for my birthday. It’s by Nicholas de Vere who used to write crazy whacked out alternative takes on history, where he was trying to detail that like elves and vampires were real (plus the same thing), and that Jesus was one of them. It sounds totally nuts, and it is, but there’s also some really excellent occult history thrown in for good measure. Or at least there was, back when this book was available online under the title of From Transylvania to Tunbridge Wells on that Dragon Court site. I have some other posts about de Vere, the Dragon Court, and the old version of that book elsewhere on this site, if you poke around with the google search box.

2. The Transmigration of Timothy Archer - by your favorite and mine, Philip K. Dick. Yes, that’s right, now I will have YET ANOTHER book of his from which I can endlessly quote. I bet you can’t wait! This book is supposed to be about a real guy, Bishop Pike, who I think I posted about elsewhere, but you can also read about him here,
3. The Gnostic Gospels - by Elaine Paigels; I’ve been reading a lot of gnostic stuff lately, and her name always seems to pop up, as this book is a pretty big classic in that field. I figured it was high time I checked it out.
4. Holy Blood, Holy Grail - Another book which I’ve wanted for a while, but which I was never willing to spend my own money on, because I was kind of afraid that it would suck. After reading that flaming piece of shit The Da Vinci Code though, I thought maybe I’d go back and brush up on the Grail “history” straight from the book that kickstarted it all so many years ago.

Here are also some books that I’ve seen mentioned recently that sound interesting in varying degrees:

1. Mind Wars - by Ian McFadyen; recommended to me by somebody who’s been reading my site, and saw an older post about memes. He suggested that I might be interested in it, but that since the author is a “Fundamentalist Atheist” I may also not like it. So it could be a toss-up.

2. The Stories We Live By: Personal Myths and the Making of the Self - by Dan P. McAdams (Ph.D.); I think it’s hilarious that Amazon has to let me know that the guy who wrote this is a PhD, as if that wasn’t already pretty obvious from the title. Well, obvious to me anyway, but I spend an assload of time looking at stuff written by people like this. It does sound pretty interesting though. Supposedly it looks more into developmental theory than archetypes and “hypothesizes how people begin to ‘gather material’ for their ’self-defining stories’ in infancy and early childhood.” I definitely know that all the shit I’m interested in is exactly the same as the stuff I was interested in as a little kid, but in a more structured way. On that note, here is an excellent quote from Hitler on that very same subject.
3. Narrative Knowing and the Human Sciences - by Donald Polkinghorne; There’s pretty much no information about that book, but the title sounds pretty cool, if a tad academic for my tastes.
4. The Hamlet Syndrome: Overthinkers Who Underachieve - I think this is both a great title and a great topic for a book. There are some kind of critical comments about it on Amazon, but overall it’s rated pretty highly. I can think of a ton of people who “fit the bill” described by the title - myself included (well, before I became highly productive and awesome, that is)
5. A Voyage to Arcturus - by David Lindsay; I heard about this weird Scottish sci-fi novel from 1920 while listening to an unremarkable lecture on gnosticism available in RealAudio at some gnostic website. The book, however, sounds totally weird as shit. It features a hero named “Everyman” who goes to some other planet, and like has all these weird psychedelic gnostically-tinged adventures as he battles against a villain named “Crystalman.” It’s really a shame we don’t still name characters “Everyman” anymore.

Anybody who has any other book recommendations ought leave em here for me. I’ve been in a bookish kind of mood lately. Pzow!