The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, No. 13 : Alchemical Studies


Freud opened the door to the subconcious... Jung painted it's content, in blue shades of genius.

Reading for the 3rd time The Crying of Lot 49 and it seems to be more relevant than it ever was.

"Kafir Boy" by mark mathabane. well, not yet, but it's next on the list

by
Edward Abbey

Fulcanelli: Mystery Of The Cathedrals

Thomas Ligotti

The Nightmare Factory

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Under the Banner of Heavan by Jon Krakauer

'bout them crazy mormo fundies in and around utah.

I think half the SOMB has read that by now, mostly due to raves in this thread. (or the old thread anyway) Great book. Scared the hell out of me.

Could it be that the current heavy activity of this thread stems primarily from the weeklong server crash?

or perhaps it the threads that include the idea of tjenz and bhickie...(shudders)

Just finished Book Two of the Sleeping Beauty trilogy by Anne Rice...looking forward to Book Three, which I should be receiving tomorrow.

Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare

It can get a bit drab, but overall, this is a fascinatingly thorough inspection of the different ideas on who Shakespeare was and how he got to be there. Its filled with fantastic little tidbits for all the English history buffs out there, too. Highly recommended...

I just finished The Cell, a history of Al Qaeda and anti-American Islamic terrorism rushed out after 9/11. Visit my blog to help me sort out a small mention near the book's end that has me shaken.

Crashlander, Larry Niven. A collection of short stories about Beowolf Schaffer from the "Known Space" stories.

Having blazed through Lot 49, now I will tackle Pynchon's V again.

I'm about 80 pages into James Risen's new book about the NSA/spook community ('State of War', maybe?). And my oh my what a colorful 80 pages it's been so far.

Recommended.

Colorful how exactly crease...

Started this morning on the train, got through the first couple chapters. Very enjoyable so far.

Unnamed sources calling George Tenet a p***y. Unnamed sources calling Condi the worst NSA director ever. Unnamed sources recounting a heated phone convo between W and his daddy concerning the influence of the neo-con in setting foreign policy (W reportedly hung up on his old man in anger). Unnamed sources recounting how W peeked his head into a meeting of Condi and four senators to say, during the run-up to the war, 'F*** Saddam. We're taking his ass out.' and then departing.

It's a very entertaining read.

^awesome.

sounds like a kitty kelley bio!!!... I will check it out. I am thinking it won't do much to restore my faith in government however...

The first of the three was best, imo.

edit: a friend had these as books on tape. Can you imagine listening to them in the car?

Can You Feel The Silence?: A New Biography by Clinton Heylin.

Even if you're not that interested in Van Morrison, this book is hi-larious. It's amazing how someone can write and record Astral Weeks, Moondance, Veedon Fleece, Into The Music, etc. and be the supreme asshole of the world.

Checked out of the library:

Hickman, what do you think of Simon's big brick book? He's so positively Oxford I could see it driving you nuts.

This is for school; so far, it's...interesting...


Saw the movie first and it was awesome. The book is pretty good as well.


A friend got me this for Hannukah, and I put it down after seventy-something pages because it was all stuff I heard before and not funny, unlike his last book. I intend to finish it someday.

One of the best endings I've ever read; you might have to re-up this in the books-that-blew-your-mind thread.

Ghostrider #5

Very, very few books written by comedians stand up well (no pun intended).

gambit & the x-ternals was my shit growing up.

Basically the reasons why the Department of Homeland Security's IT department is going to fail, but written as fiction. They need the best & brigtest but they won't give them the pay they deserve, they need to give them enough power to give the orders to get things done but that'll step on the wrong toes, and they need to be able to alter the IT infrastructure but departments won't cooperate with them, or with other departments, or even with other facilities within their own departments. When you politicize IT security & CYA for your sacred cows, and then blame the guys trying to fix this for it not being fixed, is a surefire way to end up with the Script Kidz pwning your ass.

so i picked up the curious incident of the dog in the nite-time book based on its mentions in another thread, and so far it's great.

that might be the most-read book on this board. that, or atlas shrugged. they've gotten the most comments in the last year or so.

i cracked open barton biggs' 'hedge hogging' while i was in the bookstore a few days ago. tasty collection of anecdotes about the outsized egos/insecurities of the hedge fund world. there's definitely a satisfying element of schadenfreude when it comes to reading about some of these type-a world-conqueror types.

helmet: you'd like this.

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Snagged this at the library already, and I'm about 45 pages in. America goes amok as cellphone users turn into raving, bloodtirsty maniacs. Intense and gory, a big tip of the hat to George Romero. King has still got the goods.

Great thriller about book dealers, The Three Muskateers, and the devil.

Lots of clever literary references, too.

This was adapted by Polanski into the Ninth Gate, which I have not seen, but have heard is not very faithful to the book at all.

Worth a look...Johnny Depp in full-on nerd mode. Has its moments.

A good read, but like Peter Guralnick's Elvis biographies, too long by at least a third (700+ pages for a guy that lived 33 years). Sometimes I think he's just showing off as far as much research and how many interviews he's done. Too often the narrative just becomes a morass of contact details and backstories of musicians playing on Sam's sessions, and you get lost in sea of names, dates and numbers. But when he's on, and it's often enough, he gets to the heart of Sam Cooke's talent and art (and what an asshole he could be too).

From somebody who helps build up the house, I'm finally getting around to this.

I remember reading some critic who said he thought that PG sourced himself too closely to Cooke's former manager and created a distorted picture. Not being an expert, I'm hardly the guy to judge his claim's veracity, but I'm curious to hear what you think.

Have you ever seen a recording of Cooke's Ed Sullivan performance of "You Send Me?" There's an .mpg floating around the Web.

To be honest, I either haven't yet read or merely skimmed through this period of the book. I'm about halfway through a straight read, but I've skipped ahead to chapters as I hear or think about a particular song. That said, I think the distorted picture complaints are greatly overstated.

As a brief backstory, the infamous Allen Klein is a primary source for a lot of Guralnick's research for the 1962-1964 period when Sam Cooke was setting up his own SAR label and the Tracey publishing arm of his business. Klein now owns both of those as part of his ABKCO empire, which were supposedly intended to be set up in trust to his children. As with his ownership of the Rolling Stones 1962-1971 catalog, most outside observers contend this was done largely through deceit.

The reviews I've seen in publications usually have my criticism about the exhaustive and exhausting detail, but didn't mention Guralnick's glossing over the Klein contractual matters. However, there's a few reviews on Amazon that have given the book zero or one star, essentially rendering the book worthless due to what they consider PG's bias. That and the fact that long before this book was published (and it's been at least 12 years in the making), Guralnick has been in ABCKO's employ penning liner notes for all of their reissues of Sam Cooke's catalog suggest there was some funny business going on.

I really don't care. I think the reminisces and archival info Klein and ABKCO contibute to the book are more valuable than a thesis that sets Allen Klein to be a thief and a liar. This book is not about Allen Klein. Plus it's only 2 or 3 years in Sam Cooke's life. And Klein is hardly Guralnick's only source. Hell, about 80 of the book's 740 or so pages are notes and sources. Sam's wife Barbara, his brother L.C. and Bobby Womack, who had little if any involvement in Daniel Wolff's recent Sam Cooke biography (which I haven't read so I can't compare), contribute heavily, and they don't always look particularly good doing it. Nobody does, frankly, and that's long before Allen Klein shows up.

I've seen that Ed Sullivan clip before in some history of rock documentary on TV. Apparently it's also on a DVD with a bunch of Sam Cooke's performances out there. According to Dream Boogie, it was the second of two performances of "You Send Me". The first one, about a month previous, was cut off after a minute. After charges of racism and lots of pressure, he was invited back. The second Sullivan shot had the same effect on Sam's career that Elvis and the Beatles' appearances had on theirs: the song quickly went to #1.

Trivial fact from the book: "You Send Me" was the b-side of a cover of Gershwin's "Summertime," but in a tale all too familiar, all the DJs started turning it over and played "YSM" instead.

Hey Bob, thanks for dropping your science.

Have you ever read Arthur Kempton's Boogaloo? It contains the only indepth piece on Cooke I've ever read.

Adolf Hitler - 'Mein Kampf'

This edition:

It is the Pimlico edition. Translated by Ralph Manheim and an introduction by D.C. Watt.

It's a very interesting read. His bombast is still there, although his speeches were more emotionally charged.

He was an orator, so I don't blame him for his style.

As for the actual content, some ideas (the Fascist ones) appeal to me. Then, he goes on a racist tirade, usually against the Jews and I feel disgust.

Well worth a read.

Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac

This is incredible.