So Many Books,so Much To Know Options

whew...I'm a point where there are so many books i want to read and so little time.Each time i read a new book on the occult or spirituality it leads me to another book or branch of knowledge i need to learn.I wish i could just put my head onto a book and miraculously absorb it by osmosis or something...you know? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wacko.gif)

I know what you mean. My apartment is full of books. I don't have enough shelf space. I haunt several favourite used bookstores. It is difficult to afford all the NEW books that I would like so I buy used or borrow from the library. Luckily our library isn't too bad relatively speaking and I can search it online and reserve the books I choose. Plus I don't have to find someplace to put the books afterwards unless I thought it was valuable enough to go out and purchase. I prefer to buy locally so only resort to Amazon when I'm desperate.

Like you, it seems that I read one book which leads to questions that I have to search out in another book, and so on and so on. I do have patience about finding a particular book. Hunting through the used bookstores has become a hobby almost like the sport of hunting with a set of self imposed rules. But I've been doing this for decades. Unless I go blind I will be doing this sort of reading for the rest of my life and my main regret is that I won't be able to continue after that (at least not in the same way). Perhaps after death we will have all the answers, or maybe I will just haunt my favourite bookstore, sneaking upon customers and saying 'Boo'. Or if they are cute females I might pat them on the ass with my ghostly hands (maybe there are up-sides to being dead and invisible).

I love books so much.

But have you ever gotten the sense that the books at the local book store -or even the local occult book store- regurgitate the same information? Red lion and the 5 elements and yada yada...

The other problem is arbitrary complexity. The Don Juan series could be considered a prime example of new age books that suggest that there is some mysterious order of the universe that you never quite get due to random variations and pervasive vagueness. I think these kinds of books tend to be written by authors that have an inkling about the sense of mystery in the universe but no real spiritual experience, thus creating books that leave the reader abound in wonder but without any sense of what it's about.

Then there are the authors that create their own set of terms to describe, sometimes badly, what other people have already described. What is stated well or poorly is always going to be a matter of opinion, but it's basically the regurgitation problem again.

So, to end my rambling, I think my point (if I have one) is that it IS possible to get a sense of what's out there. Obviously you can't read everything, but you can figure out what makes sense to you.

Oh! Random free association moment: occult dictionaries are a great way of getting familiar with most of the -mainstream occult- (what the hell is that?) materials.

So my other rambling point (if I had that) is to go wide!

>>I wish i could just put my head onto a book and miraculously absorb it by osmosis or something

tried that in college - didn't work then either!

i love occult dictionaries, and made my own

I'm having book burnout right now. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wacko.gif)


There are a lot of "toy" spellbooks out there ("Plant three beans under the full moon and win the lottery!" (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nonono.gif) )

I love books so much.

But have you ever gotten the sense that the books at the local book store -or even the local occult book store- regurgitate the same information? Red lion and the 5 elements and yada yada...

Yah I know what you mean. Sometimes the New Age authors seem to copy off of each other or use another person's writings as an authority. Also a lot of the New Age ideas that are portrayed as being from time immemorial actually originated in the 1960s with the hippies or the 1920s and the New Thought movement. Louise Hay or Hayes, for instance, seems to mix up her new ideas with ancient practices, often without knowing much about the ancient practices. Some of the authors are writers first and experts on what they are writing about second if at all.

The there is Mantak Chia. He lifts whole chapters from earlier books and puts them into the following books. He doesn't paraphrase it or restates it from a different angle he just lifts out chapters in their entirety from his earlier works. It isn't plagiarism, but it seems that when you've read three of his books you've pretty much read them all. I suppose that it saves him time and effort, but it seems like he is padding out his books with old material.

whew...I'm a point where there are so many books i want to read and so little time.Each time i read a new book on the occult or spirituality it leads me to another book or branch of knowledge i need to learn.

I know, isn't it great? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Does anyone else use LibraryThing to catalogue their books? I'm on there as plutopsyche:http://www.librarything.com/profile/plutopsyche

I'd love to compare notes.

whew...I'm a point where there are so many books i want to read and so little time.Each time i read a new book on the occult or spirituality it leads me to another book or branch of knowledge i need to learn.I wish i could just put my head onto a book and miraculously absorb it by osmosis or something...you know? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wacko.gif)

Few years ago I stopped buying books. I still find enough texts to read online or read available pages of books. I have a sort of mini library of books. Too many subjects have my interest. My eyesight is not what it used to be so I do not read as much as I used to.

Am considering scanning mine into a searchable PDF format, not quite the same but it helps when traversing references and saves on space.... can actually tell if a writer has real world knowledge of the topic they write about, if I read a book and leave feeling more confused than beforehand I'm likely to assume that the author didn't have a clue what s/he was on about and decided to pad it out/waffle a bit. Going by this ethos there are only a few 'authorities' in many subjects, ie: those I feel a connection to and hence can learn from.

I haven't scanned any of my books onto the computer, but I have found a few sites that have a lot of ebooks for free that have many different subjects and categories. Even here on this site we have a library of ebooks. I bought a kobo last year and am using it a fair amount. I'd say half of the books I read these days are ebooks. They do save on shelf space and I just bought a new an external with 2 terrabytes of space. I have purchased a few ebooks, but mostly I get them for free. If there is a particular book that I'm lusting for and can't get at the library or want a copy to keep permanently then I will buy it. I do love books. You have to do more than read books to learn a skill, but books can be a useful adjunct to practicing by yourself or practicing under a good teacher. There is always the danger of only reading books about a subject and never practicing enough to develop yourself.