Too Many Books

I was demonstrating to someone today that I could get rid of a box of books off my shelf just like that, by setting a box by the shelf and putting them in it.

I have a bunch of books. But a lot of my books are ones I bought on a second's notice on the cheap, so I'm not so terribly attached to them as it might seem.

I do have a philosophy about them that would help me get rid of them. It's this: There are lots of other books that I could have and find indispensable. So because I don't have them, it doesn't make any sense that the ones I have would be indispensable now. That is, if I can live without the ones I don't have, then I can live without the ones I do have. It's an offshoot of one of my older philosophies, which is this, If you can't have everything in the world, there's no reason to have anything.

There is, to be 100% accurate, plenty of reasons to have something. Because you do need a certain amount of things in the course of life. But you could be stripped down to about nothing and still get along perfectly well. Having something, say a book, or not having it isn't going to make any big difference. Anyway, there are millions (or many thousands) of books you're never going to have, so why worry about the ones you do have?

All that said, it doesn't follow that I'm going to get rid of them wholesale. Because I might get some good out of them.                 

The Red Book

I ordered a copy of "The Red Book," the long-awaited and frequently forgotten (be me) book by C.G. Jung.

I heard a guy give part of a lecture on this subject -- the subject came up in the course of his remarks -- one time a few years ago. I made a mental note of it, because he said it was expected to be published in the next few years or so.

Then I've checked around a few times in the last few years to see what kind of progress they were making, or rather to see if it was published and available. It never was.

Now all of a sudden I hear it came out in September and I didn't know about it. So I just discovered it a few days ago, that it was published.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to getting it. I read some of the reviews and the big article on the NY Times site about it, and it sounds very interesting.

I'm hoping to make many breakthroughs of my own with this big book. Not that I don't make plenty already. I certainly do. See you in Heaven!

Looking For A Book

I was looking for a book that I have today. Oh, I hate looking for books.

The big problem is I don't have the room to put all my books in normal places in an orderly way. So they're stacked here there and everywhere, on various shelves, some upright, some on their sides, some double or triple-layered back, etc. It's a mess.

The thing is, My best books it seems like I could have them in one place and in a reasonable place at that. But this particular book -- what it was is irrelevant -- didn't seem to be anywhere. I checked and checked. I'm thinking, I think I know what it's spine looks like, etc.

So I'm in one room. I'm moving the bed, thinking maybe it was under there. Moving stacks, getting irritated.

Finally I narrowed in my sights -- sometimes I can look right at something and still not see it -- and I thought I saw it, then I did see it. There is was. I took it off the shelf and put it on my desk ... somewhere.

I do not ever want to have to look for that book again. Stay on the shelf close to where you belong!

Ardath by Marie Corelli

I finished the book "Ardath" by Marie Corelli. It was a big one but a good read.

Synopsis:

There's a guy named Theos Alwyn, a poet from England who's also skeptical in the religious sense. He happens to be in the East somewhere, the Caucasus mountains, and meets with a monk named Heliobas. (Heliobas is also the main character in Corelli's novel "A Romance of Two Worlds.") He's a mysterious, all-seeing, all-knowing kind of guy, with some deep in's when it comes to religion.

Alwyn stands against religion and Heliobas guides him along. Soon Alwyn takes a serious nap and is transported into realms somewhere above, where he meets an angel he comes to love, and he comes back around and immediately writes a long, inspired poem. One sitting.

Now he's interested in religion. Heliobas opens to him certain mysteries from the book of 2 Esdras, and sends him to the field of Ardath, mentioned in 2 Esdras, which is at the ruins of Babylon. He gets there, goes to the field of Ardath, has some mystical experiences involving the same angel figure from before, then he seems to be transported to a whole other time and place.

The bulk of the book is his experiences in this other time and place, the city of Al-Kyris. In Al-Kyris, they have a king, priests, a High Priestess figure, poets, critics, professors, the whole thing. Alwyn doesn't have recall of who he is, just vague hints come to him occasionally about his life and religion. In Al-Kyris he becomes fast friends with the Laureate of the realm, Sah-luma. There's enough hints dropped along the way that it's obvious the two of them share something very intimate in common.

I can't summarize the whole Al-Kyris section since it's huge. He's there when the whole kingdom experiences its downfall and Sah-luma is killed. Then he's back to the present day. It's revealed to him that all that was a dream, but it was a dream of actual people and things that happened. In fact Sah-luma was a prior incarnation of himself. That explains why all of Sah-luma's poems are poems that Alwyn also wrote, including the long one, Nourhalma, the inspired one from before.

In the experiences he had he focused in on many presentiments of Jesus Christ, the Cross being used as a mystical symbol in anticipation of the Gospel, prophesied to come into the world in 5,000 years. So he was reliving things that happened close to 7,000 years before.

Because of his life of flesh and denial of the spiritual things, he has been denied a final consummation and life with the female angel figure, his everlasting beloved Edris. But obviously he's well on the right path now, being aware of the reality of spiritual things and God.

The last section has Alwyn back in England, where he's with friends and heavily engaged in the social scene. His big inspired poem was a bestseller and everyone wants to meet him. The last section has some truly boring parts. It's kind of a let-down. The big thing in it is that he's a completely different person and fame holds no charm. So he's put off by all the hangers-on, etc.

He meets Heliobas, who's in England on his way to Mexico. They talk over Alwyn's transformation and what his life has in store for him. He knows he'll someday be with Edris. He also knows he has some kind of power to bring her back, but keeps avoiding it out of true love. He's denying himself, which turns out to have been a good move.

Finally he meets Edris in a cathedral and it's revealed that she's come down to spend mortality with him after all, because every time he prayed that she be spared this and that he get along as well as he can, it actually meant she was that much closer to being sent.

They go somewhere, to some mountain retreat somewhere, and live there. He's writing poetry, as I recall, and doing his best to convert the world to spirituality through poetry and away from their vain ways.

Reading "Ardath"

I mentioned somewhere on one of my blogs that I was reading "Ardath," by Marie Corelli. I still am! I haven't ended it, since it's a longish book, but I'm getting there.

It is a three part book, and it looks like it was published as three separate volumes, going by what I see at Google Books. Fortunately the edition I have has all three volumes together, making it so I don't have to track down three separate books and buy them.

I'm in the last part, so that's pretty good. I think it's a compelling book. I like it a lot. The author had a real lavish way of describing things, apparently from having read so much poetry. So she's not shy and not reserved in giving things a completely over the top description.

I'll probably write about it when I get done with it. I notice there's not many descriptions of the contents online. So that's something that could be filled in. And I'll try to do that when I make it the rest of the way through.

Ardath

I got a new book today (new to me), first published in 1896, I believe.

It's called "Ardath" by Marie Corelli. I read a book by her within the last month, "A Romance of Two Worlds," so I bought a couple more books online. This is the one that came today.

It's fairly lengthy, being around 550 pages of smaller print. The publisher looks like some kind of cheapo publisher, since the type is broken in places, the printing is poor, and I've noticed a couple of typos in the first 40 pages. So I don't know if this was some kind of bootleg copy from way back when or what.

The publisher was Hurst & Co. There's no copyright information, date, any of that. That's weird.

It's not great but I can make out most of it. I noticed there was one use of the word "sever" when "several" would make more sense. I looked at the copy on Google Books and it said "several." So that's a major typo, as far as I'm concerned.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to making it through this book. It's interesting that Heliobas, from the "Romance" book is a character in this one as well. I didn't know that was going to be the case, so I was pleasantly surprised.

A Romance Of Two Worlds

I'm reading an old book, "A Romance of Two Worlds," by Marie Corelli. It was published in the 1880s.

I was at a rummage sale and it was there. I passed it by the first day, even though it was only a quarter. It looked like a million other crappy old novels from the turn of the century, so I let it set there.

I was back the next day and decided to look through it. It seemed remarkably different on the pages I was sampling. It seemed like it had a religious, spiritual, even mystical bent to it. So I considered it a quarter well spent, and still do.

I'll write more about it when I get it read. I'm up around page 220 and it's a good read. It's old fashioned in lots of ways, of course, but still has an interesting theme and works it out in a memorable way.

There's a guy who seems to have super scientific/mystical powers, because he's tapped into the electricity within the inner person. He's come up with liquids that help induce mental or soul travel in the heavens and to Heaven itself. Naturally these experiences impact the lives of those who make the journey. Plus with regular attention to developing their inner electricity, they continue to prosper here on earth.

I just wanted to mention a few flaky things about it, though, tonight.

In the main character (the narrator's) journey through the heavens, she's briefly on a few of the planets in our solar system that are inhabited by happy people who don't have problems and don't doubt -- not one of them -- the Creator's existence. The planets include Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn. The rings of Saturn are some kind of electrical field that helps them have happiness. (Electricity is a force for great spiritual book in the book.)

The other flaky thing -- that I can think of -- is where the scientist (Heliobas) explains that the moon isn't really there in space. That it's an "electrograph," a kind of lingering electrical picture up there that we're looking at. It used to be there, but now it's not. I don't know why Corelli would've included something flaky like that. Or to say that the sun was a planet at one time where the people have now gone into its center. Hmm.

The book is very good though in other ways, at least I'm finding it interesting enough to keep reading it!

Got Some Old Books

I got some old books at a garage sale in the neighborhood.

I didn't really need any of them, but they were a quarter each, so I picked them up.

One is a signed edition of a book by a guy named August Derleth. I wasn't going to buy this because it looks just like a generic novel from the '40s, "The Shield of the Valiant." But I thought, If I get home and look him up and he's really popular, and I had a chance to get a signed book by him, etc., and I don't do it... I'll be kicking myself, since it was only a quarter. It doesn't look especially gripping, and it's part of a series that I'll likely never own.

Next is "War Sketches and Incidents," with Iowa Commandery and Vol. II on the spine. Copyright 1897, looks to be about the Civil War. Doesn't look especially interesting either.

3rd: "My Four Years in Germany" by James W. Gerard. He was an ambassador to the German Imperial Court. The book was published in 1917. Too bad he didn't look up Hitler and kill him.

4th: "Wings" by John Monk Saunders. this is a book based on a movie by the same name, starring Charles Rogers and Clara Bow. There's a picture of them next to the title page. Clara Bow was the "It" Girl. And looking at the picture, she was very cute.

5th: "Creative Evolution" by Henri Gergson, translated by Arthur Mitchell. I have this book in the Modern Library edition. This book has a bookplate. It was No. 258 in "The Private Library of Charles Harrison Becker," dated Feb. 1918. The bookplate says this as well, "Books Are Among My Best Friends." Mr. Becker purchased this book on Feb. 23, 1918.

6th: "The Gold Rock of the Chippewa" by D. Lange. This is an Indian story, and it looks like D. Lange wrote several of them. Basically for kids.

7th: "Ginger Rogers and The Riddle of the Scarlet Cloak" by Lela E. Rogers, published by Whitman. A kid's story maybe. There's a sexy line drawing of Ginger in bed.

8th: And this book is considerably newer than the others, "Jesus" by Deepak Chopra. From 2008. Hope it's worth a quarter. I will probably actually read this one.

The Tattoo Guy

When I get a free minute, which I haven't had yet today, I'm trying to read "The Lost Symbol," by Dan Brown.

I'm up a little ways, barely started really. But there's one character who really seems to have a bizarre description. In that he's tattooed, every inch of his body except for a little crown on the top of his head. I guess that's where the "Lost Symbol" goes. So that whenever the supernatural looks down it'll eventually see him coming. I don't know.

His name is "Mal'akh." What that means precisely, I also don't know. Mal usually means bad. Like Malfoy in Harry Potter. Or malfeasance.

Sometimes I get a "Mal'akh," a bad cough.

Walking Around Barnes & Noble

I was walking around Barnes & Noble bookstore today. I love seeing all the books, but they are so many and, to my way of thinking, they're expensive, so I ended up not getting one.

I wanted to get this one by Manly Hall, who I've heard of but never have had anything by. He did some big book on the various esoteric traditions of the world, published 1928. I would've gotten it but the spine had the start of a split, just the start, which would have consummated the whole thing within a year anyway.

Since people can sit there and read the books all day in their easy chairs, they ought to call it a used book store. Because this book was definitely used to that extent. And I saw another book that was split right through. Meaning you open it and it falls open to a spot in the middle.

I'll be ordering it ... and I hope there's no one sitting around Amazon.com reading their copy to death.

A Rising Star That Crashed And Burned

Here's an entry from a parallel universe, one in which Gov. Mark Sanford, REPUBLICAN, is a rising star in his party, all set to tell us all the terrible things of the Obama Administration and lead us back to the fine Republican principles of the Bush years, er-- check that, back to some golden time of Republican ideals, perhaps 10 minutes during Reagan's time in office.

TPM has part of a book catalog for a book that Sanford had written and would've been published now. In those long ago days, before the Appalachian trail, before the lover in South America, before all the weird overcharges on his expense reports, before he gave a semi-psychotic news conference, he was writing "a conservative manifesto."

Then he unzipped his pants and all bets were off.

His "down-to-earth voice and common sense principles will give conservative readers a much-needed sense of hope," says the publicity. Are so-called conservative readers even looking for a down-to-earth voice and common sense principles these days? They seem a lot less hinged than that!

Local Book Clubs

We need local book clubs like this, so many of them that there's one for any book you might be reading, or the well-preserved records of the last time there was an exhaustive group discussion on a particular book.

I'm thinking of lists and databases or big file cabinets and digital printouts speeding by with every conceivable date and day of the week. "We discussed 'Tarzan of the Apes' in 1915 and I remember it as a very good group."

Not A Big Reader

I have lots of books. I was commenting yesterday, somewhere, that I went to a book sale and only bought one book. A rarity for me. But just because I have lots of books doesn't mean I do a commensurate amount of reading. Because I'm busy for one. Then half the time I'm depressed and/or worried, so I can't always concentrate. And I try to get eight hours sleep everyday, so that means there's not enough time in the day.

But anyway...

A guy asked me the other day, "What are you reading?" And I'm thinking I'm going to sound dumb, but I had to say, "I'm not reading anything." Because I read five to 10 pages of about everything and hardly ever get much farther.

But today I had the book I got yesterday, and I cracked it open and looked at it. The Complete Poems of Sir Walter Scott, I think it's called. It's one of those old editions of poems, the Cambridge edition of a poet's complete works, from around 1900. I have several of these, various poets, and couldn't remember if I had this one. I started reading "The Lady of the Lake" today, and am up in the second canto. Very interesting so far!

So if anyone asks what I'm reading -- and they hardly ever do -- that's what it is, Sir Walter Scott. Gotta get that "Sir" in there, I guess.

As for my new found discipline in not buying books to excess, I picked one up at Goodwill today -- something -- and then hesitated and put it back. So that was good.

Doldrums Eating

I need to think about eating something. I feel down tonight, but not eating isn't a solution. There's no compelling reason I have to eat; it's not like I'm going to starve; but just giving in to a bad mood isn't the answer either.

The thing about eating, though, is it takes effort. More effort than pushing the keys on this keyboard. And my stomach is doing some things. But what is there? I have some things in the refrigerator that could make a meal. The problem is some of it is the same stuff I have for breakfast. And I don't want every meal to be breakfast.

I could go out but I hate spending money at this point. I've had some crazy expenses -- family crises -- and it'd be better to keep back plenty for the next rainy day, which could be literally any minute. There's no telling. There's no security, that's for sure.

I have a book somewhere, and I can't find it, even though I've looked several times. Maybe it's fitting that I can't find it. The book is something like this, "The Wisdom of Insecurity," and I think it's by Alan Watts. (I looked it up on Wikipedia and that's the correct title and author.) I see he wrote it in 1951. Anyway, I've looked at it in places over the years but never have read it through. I seem to recall the upshot is that being insecure is actually a pretty good way to be. What reason? This I don't know, but my guess would be it keeps you trying, keeps you alert, and lets you know life is meant to be lived this moment, moment to moment, and not like The Rich Fool of the Bible.

The big problem is I feel like I like security, even if it causes all kinds of pain. Just thinking of complete insecurity, I will leave that pleasure for when and if it just happens all by itself. I can hardly see me being homeless and all that. It's a terrible thought, but who knows, maybe it wouldn't be all that bad. I don't say that humorously.

I think there's a couple of cranky pork chops in the fridge. By cranky, I mean the ones the grocery store hides under the good looking ones. The first to be packed, the last to be eaten. They have a kind of security in their insecurity.

Lincoln: Reading Is Fundamental

I think we all -- my immediate circle anyway -- have an image in our heads of Abraham Lincoln doing a lot of reading. Especially reading by the fireplace or with a candle, in a dark room with such a small flickering light that he can barely see by, but he keeps on reading.

For him, then, clearly reading was fundamental, as something to learn by as well as to kill time. And there's no evidence -- none -- that he was reading just to get free personal pan pizzas. But had he been reading to earn pizzas, he would have earned a great many, and subsequently been a very fat man.

But it'd be weird back then to be a big reader, because books weren't really that plentiful, or they were expensive to get. And being out in the sticks somewhere, they just didn't have them. So we have it so great and don't appreciate it.

According to a book I've been reading today, Herndon's Life of Lincoln, Lincoln concentrated on the Bible, Aesop's Fables, Robinson Crusoe, Pilgrim's Progress, a History of the United States, and Weems' Life of Washington. (p. 74). And as to this Life of Washington, he borrowed it from a guy, but then they had cracks in their log cabin and it got water damaged when it rained and Lincoln had to work hard to pay the guy back 75 cents. The guy was very unforgiving (p. 74-75).

Lincoln didn't get much formal schooling. All total it was only about a year. But he educated himself by carrying books around and reading all the time he could. And he had a great memory of the things he read.

One friend Lincoln had, a younger boy -- Joseph C. Richardson -- reported that Lincoln had the best penmanship in their neighborhood. At Richardson's request, Lincoln wrote him a penmanship sample that touched on his love for books. (p. 75-76)

It said:

"Good boys who to their books apply
Will all be great men by and by."

(The book quotes are from "Herndon's Life of Lincoln," 1965 paperback in the Fawcett World Library.)

Kino No Tabi

There is a world. You can't think of it as Japan or America or anywhere really that you've been.

This book is book one of "The Beautiful World." By Keiichi Sigsawa. First published 2000, Media Works, Tokyopop. This one, English translation, published 2006. Marketed to teens, young adult fiction.

It has episodes in the life of Kino, a young woman, and Hermes, her motorcycle. Hermes has a consciousness, talks, and is an actual character throughout.

Kino travels and stays in countries, or cities, for three days tops. She didn't always travel. When she was just about grown up, an old man came to her town, and stayed with her family. His name was Kino. He questioned the customs of their country, which included having a physical operation when you were 12, making you a grown-up. He assembles the motorcycle from the scrapheap.

Kino leads Kino-to-be to question this growing up business, a serious thing there. In the process he's killed, then they're coming at her with the knife, she gets on the motorcycle and leaves home. Doesn't call, doesn't write.

From there on, the book gets going. These episodes take her to various countries, like her own country, each with some peculiar ways. There's a city that has one survivor in it, because in the process of governing, everyone else got killed. So it's a functioning city with massive graveyards. There's a country of competing cities, who have overcome war between themselves, but this is won by keeping a common enemy in the middle, and periodically going out to massacre them. The book ends up with a city (country) where you compete for citizenship in a series of personal battles, more or less to the death.

Kino and Hermes have conversations, they rest and relax, there's some humor.

Everything seems to be making some statement, about government, the choices we make, mass behavior, personal awareness, and so on. There's one episode that reads like a real parable. Some guys working for 50 years but separately. Something like this: One is polishing railroad tracks, one is dismantling the tracks, and he's followed by another putting the tracks in place.

Kino is tough. She carries two guns, one a more conventional gun which can be shot over and over. And one that has a liquid 'bullet,' which needs careful preparation, good for one shot.

The book reads in a light, breezy way. The customs are so bizarre -- but really, if we could detach ourselves from our own customs, we could see that some of them approach or reach absurdity as well.

The story continues on beyond this book, as the cover says there is an eight-volume series. A piece of the back cover blurb says, "a critique on the inherent beauty of imperfection, oscillates between philosophical and winsome, while remaining consistently and overwhelmingly imaginative."

Naked Covers

Wow, cool, the White Album for books.

I saw this story at the Joseph Likes blog.

Penguin is publishing some books with blank covers, so the reader can draw his or her own cover.

I like the idea a lot!

Let's keep books around, and not let anything happen to them.