Books
-
This is another one of those books that wasn’t what I thought it was. I’ve had it on my shelf for a while. I thought it was an archaeology book about early humans. It sort of is, but mostly Ancient Traces by Michael Baigent is a conspiracy theory book. The central premise is that evidence…
-
This book is the findings of a research project asking whether there has been a fundamental shift in Western cultures away from religion towards spirituality. The Spiritual Revolution posits that the decline in attendance at formal church services and in those describing themselves as members of congregations is matched by a rise in people describing…
-
I read a lot of fantasy fiction (amongst other things) and write some too. Fantasy worlds are overwhelmingly based on medieval European societies and the genre does come in for criticism for its lack of diversity. I love to read fantasy with other sources of inspiration. And I love really good medieval Europe style fantasy,…
-
I think I bought this book looking for a text on magickal practices in Viking society. Seidways by Jan Fries isn’t that, for the good reason that there isn’t much known about those practices. Sometimes I skim the blurbs of books and make quick purchases, so I come away with a wrong idea about the…
-
Consciousness is a tricky subject and how we come to be aware of ourselves is something not well understood. In Consciousness Explained Daniel C. Dennett explores the idea that consciousness is not something extra in us, that it is, instead, a by product of how our brains work. First, Dennett dismantles the ghost in the…
-
This is a book about setting yourself free to live the life you really want to have. In Strip off your Fear, Betsy Talbot talks about the reasons we keep our dreams small and hide ourselves away. Each chapter focuses on a body part: hair, face, breasts, stomach, genitals and legs. The chapters talk about…
-
In Physics of the Impossible, Michio Kaku tackles some of our favourite technologies from science fiction and parapsychology to see whether they are actually possible. It includes chapters on force fields, telepathy, robots, time travel, perpetual motion machines and lots more. The chapter on robots was particularly interesting, because robots is something that we’re talking…
-
I picked this up because I’d become aware I wasn’t really enjoying what I was eating and I needed a reminder about working through feelings rather than suppressing them with food. Eating in the Light of the Moon by Anita Johnston addresses eating disorders through folklore and mythology. Each chapter looks at the various motives…
-
Talking about the Elephant by Lupa is an anthology of essays on neopagan perspectives on cultural appropriation. The essays cover various paths from Celtic Reconstructionism to Egyptian mysteries to eclectic paganism. Cultural appropriation is where members of a dominant culture take sacred aspects of another culture and appropriate them for aesthetic purposes. A good, and…
-
I’ve been watching the series The Borgias and enjoying it enough to want to find out more about the actual Borgias. Because, you know, TV tends not to be terribly historically accurate and I was curious to know what it was all based on. There’s not a lot out there, unless you want to pay…
Boudica Marginalia 