Princess Tuvstarr's 2022 Reading List Recommendations.

[𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr]

I thought next year I would try to expand my reading horizons, so here is your chance to all recommend some books to me.
They don't just have to be horror, or sex comedies, they can be anything you feel would be a worthwhile read. Fiction and non-fiction.
Everyone is encouraged to recommend a book or two. Don't be shy!
Here is the rules: Everyone on here can recommend a single fiction book and a single non-fiction book, or just one if they want, so get your recommendations in early before someone else steals your thunder!
They can be short story selection too!
But if someone got there first, you can't copy and will have to offer up another suggestion.
Maybe we will all discover new books this way, let's try shall we?
Off we go!

[Dr Strange]

Dec 22, 2021 13:16:59 GMT 𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr said:

I thought next year I would try to expand my reading horizons, so here is your chance to all recommend some books to me.
They don't just have to be horror, or sex comedies, they can be anything you feel would be a worthwhile read. Fiction and non-fiction.

I'm going to suggest a couple that have some links to Vault-related topics.

FICTION: Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco (1989). A satire on The Holy Blood & The Holy Grail, secret societies, conspiracy theories, and other aspects of contemporary occulture. It is quite long, but it is also very funny and now seems more relevant than ever. It's hard to believe that it was written more than 30 years ago now.

NONFICTION: Stranger Than We Can Imagine: Making Sense of the Twentieth Century by John Higgs (2015). Does a pretty good job of it, and is also very funny. Takes in Einstein, Freud, D.H Lawrence, Crowley, Picasso, fascism, surrealism, existentialism, objectivism, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, quantum mechanics, Marie Stopes, Thatcher... His previous books (both excellent) were The KLF: Chaos, Magic & The Band Who Burned A Million Pounds (2013) and I Have America Surrounded: The Life of Timothy Leary (2006), which will give you some idea of where he is coming from - he's often described as being a "historian of the counterculture". His most recent book (which I haven't read) is William Blake vs. The World (2021).

[Dr Strange]

Here's an interview with John Higgs from Sept. 2020. Topics discussed include Aleister Crowley, Robert Anton Wilson, William Blake, The Manic Street Preachers, James Bond, Dion Fortune, Ozzy Osbourne, George Clinton, T.C. Lethbridge (the band, who have links to Spiritualized and Julian Cope), The Avengers (the TV series), Quatermass, H.G. Wells, David Bowie, and Iron Maiden.

[helrunar]

That sounds like quite the intriguing interview, Dr Strange! Mr Higgs and I have some interests in common, it would seem.

cheers, Hel

[Shrink Proof]

FICTION - Pretty much any collection of stories by Robert Aickman. Pick any of the anthologies as many folk find that, having read one, they have to read them all. There isn't one that's not worth a punt. Many of his stories are like dreams - and not just the good ones....

NON-FICTION - "Head On" by Julian Cope. Discussed in the Vault here.

[Swampirella]

I've been super busy over the last few days, so only had time to come up with these today:

Non-fiction: The Cameo Conspiracy by George Skelly (3rd edition 2019) This one (as well as the author's Murderers or Martyrs) really gripped and astounded me. From Am*z*n:

The definitive book on the case which led to a posthumous pardon. A classic within the True Crime genre.

The notorious Cameo Cinema murder case of 1949 is one of Britain’s legal cause célèbres. But for over half a century the convictions of two young men, George Kelly and Charles Connolly, went unchallenged, until — following publication of The Cameo Conspiracy — both were exonerated by the Court of Appeal in 2003. This made it the longest-running miscarriage of justice in British legal history.

In this powerful, meticulously-researched account the author painstakingly exposes the evil police conspiracy which sent Kelly to the gallows and Connolly to ten years’ imprisonment. He recounts how the men were framed by corrupt investigators and condemned by an amoral legal establishment, making it a terrible indictment of human wickedness by those supposed to uphold the law.

This revised third edition of the definitive book on the case not only reveals a diabolical miscarriage of justice but comprehensively describes the arrests, trials and execution as well as Kelly’s successful posthumous appeal. It also authentically chronicles 1940s Liverpool, its pubs, post-war rationing, shebeens, black market and the colourful and seedy characters of the city’s underworld.

Fiction: Look Who's Back by Timur Vermes & Jamie Bulloch (translator) 2016. The movie version wasn't bad either. From Amazon:

"HE'S BACK AND HE'S FUHRIOUS!"

"Desperately funny . . . An ingenious comedy of errors." --Janet Maslin, The New York Times

"Satire at its best." --Newsweek

In this record-breaking bestseller, Timur Vermes imagines what would happen if Adolf Hilter reawakened in present-day Germany: YouTube stardom.

[jamesdoig]

Gee, I can't remember anything I read during the year, but I have been going through this book, which I picked up from the junk shop a few months ago for 2 bucks.



Joseph Wright's Grammar of the Gothic language. It's one of those languages where only a few fragments survive, mainly passages from the Bible. Here's a parallel text of passages from St Mark:



Tolkien acquired a copy of Wright's grammar when he was at school and it had a huge impact on him - in fact he started to invent 'missing' Gothic words, which presumably led to his other language inventions and to think about who may have spoken them. I think Joseph Wright ended up teaching Tolkien at Oxford, and looms large in that recent film about Tolkien and his wartime experiences.



The copy I picked up has the bookplate of Ralph Elliott, first cousin of Olivia Newton-John, who was a well-known runologist and medievalist.



He was born Rudolph Ehrenberg, and fled the Nazis with his parents as a kid, and studied at St Andrews, as inscribed in the book. He's also well known for figuring out some of the actual places mention in Gawain and the Green Knight. I must have picked up a couple of boxes of his books at the junk shop (10 books for 2 bucks, instead of the usual 3), which somehow ended up there. The Australian National Library kept his rare books for its collection. Anyway, half of the fun of collecting books is the research you can do on them and the connections you can find.

[Jojo Lapin X]

Dec 23, 2021 20:00:11 GMT jamesdoig said:

Olivia Newton-John, who was a well-known runologist and medievalist.

Not to denigrate her contributions in these fields, but surely the general public knows her better for her singing and dancing?

[helrunar]

I'm just imagining some of Olivia Newton-John's pop songs rewritten to be Rune themed. Funny!

H.

[helrunar]

"Fuhrious"... ... .... sigh.

H.