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Thread: What are you reading right now and how is it affecting you? (our own book club, maybe :))

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    Ecuador Avalon Member Rosemarie's Avatar
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    Default Re: What are you reading right now and how is it affecting you? (our own book club, maybe :))

    Quote Posted by Mike (here)
    Quote Posted by Valerie Villars (here)
    That was a great book, Mike. I loved it.

    frankstein, "A Heritage of Stone" is now almost 30.00 for a paperback and the hardcover about 70.00 and up. They are calling it a "collectible". I ordered the paperback, much as I wanted the hardcover (I'm kind of a book snob about quality). Grab this one while you can. It's incredibly expensive.

    hi Val, where did you order it from?
    Hello Mike. I was just looking at prices too. In Amazon.com the paperback is $45.96 and the hardcover is $73.74 In ebay a first edition costs from $525 to $143. I am very curious now !
    "Be kind for everybody is fighting a great battle" Plato

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    Default Re: What are you reading right now and how is it affecting you? (our own book club, maybe :))

    The works of William Dean Howells, William James (including The Varieties of Religious Experience for a second time because it is so good!), novels and short works by NK Jemisin and The Origin of Otherworldly Life by JZ Tanquir.

    ¤=[Post Update]=¤

    I also just finished The Messengers by Mike Clelland but it was terrible - so much wishy washy speculation and make believe synchronicity. I wouldn't recommend it.

    I've also been privileged to read a draft of Bright Garlick's Interview with an Extraterrestrial : Naelsa, which I am doing to provide feedback to Bright. And thus far I'm finding it to be a remarkable book - unlike anything else I've ever read. I'm very much looking forward to seeing it finished and the follow up Conversations book.
    Last edited by Robert deTree; 6th June 2019 at 04:26.

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    Default Re: What are you reading right now and how is it affecting you? (our own book club, maybe :))

    Strat Jack London is a remarkable writer - all of his books are wonderful!

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    United States Avalon Member Valerie Villars's Avatar
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    Default Re: What are you reading right now and how is it affecting you? (our own book club, maybe :))

    Quote Posted by Rosemarie (here)
    Quote Posted by Mike (here)
    Quote Posted by Valerie Villars (here)
    That was a great book, Mike. I loved it.

    frankstein, "A Heritage of Stone" is now almost 30.00 for a paperback and the hardcover about 70.00 and up. They are calling it a "collectible". I ordered the paperback, much as I wanted the hardcover (I'm kind of a book snob about quality). Grab this one while you can. It's incredibly expensive.

    hi Val, where did you order it from?
    Hello Mike. I was just looking at prices too. In Amazon.com the paperback is $45.96 and the hardcover is $73.74 In ebay a first edition costs from $525 to $143. I am very curious now !
    I ordered it from Amazon because it looked like it would soon become inaccessible due to price. I have this notion in my head that many, many books (actual books and not kindle, etc.) are vital for some point in the future. Hopefully somewhere down the road someone will pick up what I and others have collected and a seed will be planted in the future. I can't explain how I feel this is true.
    "The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what we share with someone when we are uncool." From the movie "Almost Famous""l "Let yourself stand cool and composed before a million universes." Walt Whitman

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    Canada Avalon Member frankstien's Avatar
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    Default Re: What are you reading right now and how is it affecting you? (our own book club, maybe :))

    Quote Posted by Mike (here)
    Quote Posted by Valerie Villars (here)
    That was a great book, Mike. I loved it.

    frankstein, "A Heritage of Stone" is now almost 30.00 for a paperback and the hardcover about 70.00 and up. They are calling it a "collectible". I ordered the paperback, much as I wanted the hardcover (I'm kind of a book snob about quality). Grab this one while you can. It's incredibly expensive.

    hi Val, where did you order it from?
    I advise you to just check Amazon from day to day when you are hunting for a good price on a book. One day you can't find any deals and then suddenly bam!--you find one. Grab it when you can.
    https://www.amazon.com/Heritage-Ston.../dp/0399103988
    "If the media will show us airplanes disappearing into towers on 9/11--they'll show us ANYTHING and expect us to believe it."
    --frankstien

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    Canada Avalon Member frankstien's Avatar
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    Default Re: What are you reading right now and how is it affecting you? (our own book club, maybe :))

    And let us not forget Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski) Heart of Darkness is a classic novella, strange and thought provoking (Coppola's Apocalypse Now is loosely based on it), but the one I am currently reading and finding fascinating-- Under Western Eyes

    It was Conrad's answer to Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. The story starts in Russia before the 1918 revolution. If you have a taste for assassins, espionage, and unpredictable characters--this will be your cup of tea.
    "If the media will show us airplanes disappearing into towers on 9/11--they'll show us ANYTHING and expect us to believe it."
    --frankstien

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    Default Re: What are you reading right now and how is it affecting you? (our own book club, maybe :))

    Quote Posted by moonlight (here)
    As a keen walker and nature-lover, I'm reading THE WALKER'S GUIDE TO OUDOOR CLUES & SIGNS by Tristan Gooley.
    An 'ultimate' guide to what the land, sun, moon, stars, trees, plants, animals, sky and clouds can reveal - when you know what to look for...
    Read "The Hidden Life of Trees" by Peter Wohlleben.

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    Ireland Avalon Member aoibhghaire's Avatar
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    Default Re: What are you reading right now and how is it affecting you? (our own book club, maybe :))

    PIVOT, A MEMOIR by Machaelle Wright

    https://www.amazon.com/Pivot-Memoir-.../dp/092797889X

    https://www.perelandra-ltd.com

    I just finished an extraordinary book which I would highly recommend in our adventures in life.

    A pivot occurs when a person who has been traveling on a familiar, well-defined life path makes a sudden voluntary or involuntary turn that un tethers the individual from that path and propels him or her onto a new and often unrelated path that uproots the individual from his or her previous world.

    Once upon a time one encounters a person who lives their life on purpose. Most ordinary folk with societal conditioned, preconceived notions and mental models would be extremely challenged. From her young life in Maryland, unconventional 'family,' Catholic school, European 'gap' year, to Capitol Hill.

    And the combined life energy that emerges from the consistent view is breath taking, inspiring, profound. The first half of the book, up through the end of Pivot One, is a classic memoir of an extraordinary yet ordinary life.
    Pivot two you'll find to be an experience unlike any other. It's about life at its largest and what can happen when we recognize the unique possibilities in our own journey — our own life at its largest. Pivot two is all about having the courage and confidence to meet life on its own terms. It gives one a deeper insight into her journey in this life and the opportunity her work has provided to all of us to work with nature.

    If you have been looking back and thinking about your life lived so far, Pivot will give you a fresh perspective, a way to find new meaning and understanding in your own journey. If you are looking ahead to life in front of you, Pivot will inspire you to make the most of your adventures, opportunities and choices.

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    Default Re: What are you reading right now and how is it affecting you? (our own book club, maybe :))

    Next to my bed are three very different travel books. Two of them I‘ve read over and over again, the third one not finished yet. Jupiter‘s Travels in particular, has often taken me far, far away when I just needed it . . .

    1) Ryszard Kapuściński „The shadow of the sun“

    He has been voted the greatest journalist of the 20th century. In an unparalleled career, Ryszard Kapuściński transformed the humble job of reporting into a literary art, chronicling the wars, coups and bloody revolutions that shook Africa and Latin America in the 1960s and 70s.


    free copy: https://epdf.pub/the-shadow-of-the-sun.html

    2) Ted Simon „Jupiter‘s Travels“ and „Riding High“

    Ted Simon's astonishing 4 year motorbike journey around the world (1973-1977). He set off on a Triumph and rode 63,000 miles over four years through fifty-four countries. Through breakdowns, prison, war, revolutions, disasters and a Californian commune, he travelled into the depths of fear and reached the heights of euphoria. The trip became a journey into his own soul.

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6AmscXf13vk
    (video blocked in my country, I hope it is available elsewhere)

    3) William Least Heat-Moon „Blue Highways“

    "But in those brevities just before dawn and a little after dusk—times neither day or night—the old roads return to the sky some of its color. Then, in truth, they carry a mysterious cast of blue, and it's that time when the pull of the blue highway is strongest, when the open road is a beckoning, a strangeness, a place where a man can lose himself”.

    He set out with little more than the need to put home behind him and a sense of curiosity about "those little towns that get on the map-if they get on at all-only because some cartographer has a blank space to fill: Remote, Oregon; Simplicity, Virginia; New Freedom, Pennsylvania; New Hope, Tennessee; Why, Arizona; Whynot, Mississippi."

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    United States Avalon Member Valerie Villars's Avatar
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    Default Re: What are you reading right now and how is it affecting you? (our own book club, maybe :))

    I have books laying all over the place, especially since I went to the Symphony book fair a few weeks ago. I like old books.

    So, two of them are laying on an wrought iron chair on my front porch, one open and upside down, where I left off reading it.

    For the past four days, a little tree frog sleeps under them all day, apparently rousing himself in the evening to catch flies or mosquitoes. Every day I have gone to move these books, but stopped because there he is, sleeping his little heart out. I gently put the books back down so I won't disturb him. I am convinced he is reading them through osmosis.

    The two books he is reading are "The Awakening" by Kate Chopin and an historical fiction novel about the pirate, Captain Henry Morgan. I named the little guy Henry.
    "The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what we share with someone when we are uncool." From the movie "Almost Famous""l "Let yourself stand cool and composed before a million universes." Walt Whitman

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    Ecuador Avalon Member Rosemarie's Avatar
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    Default Re: What are you reading right now and how is it affecting you? (our own book club, maybe :))

    Love your post Valerie. Henry found his little cave for siesta time !

    I am wondering what are the reading habits of people. I have to finish one book before starting another one. Also I have learned to let go of a book if I have started it and do not like it. I used to feel so quilty and would force myself to finish it. Not anymore. Time is to precious. Cannot read with music or background noises. Almost complete silence. Maybe I have a little of ADD. Find it difficult to read on a tablet. No kindle , ipad to read. Have to feel a book in my hands

    Also loveeeee libraries. Like this one.
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails Click image for larger version

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    "Be kind for everybody is fighting a great battle" Plato

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    United States Avalon Member Valerie Villars's Avatar
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    Default Re: What are you reading right now and how is it affecting you? (our own book club, maybe :))

    Rosemarie, I am constantly pulling books out, searching for information on tangents gone on from something else I am reading. I, more often than not, am reading three or four books at a time and pick them up depending on that moment's current mood.

    I, too, do not like reading online. I like real books, preferably hardcover and have a thing about old books. They seem purer and closer to source than the newer ones, probably because they were written and printed before the great propaganda machine took hold and began manipulating our perceptions. The further one goes back to the original source, the closer to the truth one is.

    I have a library like the one you have pictured above and it is my second favorite room in the house. The stable is my favorite room "in the house".
    "The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what we share with someone when we are uncool." From the movie "Almost Famous""l "Let yourself stand cool and composed before a million universes." Walt Whitman

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    Default Re: What are you reading right now and how is it affecting you? (our own book club, maybe :))

    I just finished "The Three-Body Problem" by Cixin Liu. Lots of physics. A bit about Humanity. A bit about Aliens.
    https://www.amazon.com/Three-Body-Pr...s%2C143&sr=8-3

    "they" will be here in 400-450 years. Just how do we prepare? Read the second volume of the trilogy. Fascinating science fiction by a Chinese writer translated into English for me to read.

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    United States Avalon Member Valerie Villars's Avatar
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    Default Re: What are you reading right now and how is it affecting you? (our own book club, maybe :))

    I'm reading Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay on Language as symbolism and metaphor. I wish all people spoke so plainly. I am putting it here in its' entirety as it is fairly short and very beautiful.

    Quote Complete Essay: Language
    Language is a third use which Nature subserves to man. Nature is the vehicle, and threefold degree.

    1. Words are signs of natural facts.

    2. Particular natural facts are symbols of particular spiritual facts.

    3. Nature is the symbol of spirit.

    1. Words are signs of natural facts. The use of natural history is to give us aid in supernatural history: the use of the outer creation, to give us language for the beings and changes of the inward creation. Every word which is used to express a moral or intellectual fact, if traced to its root, is found to be borrowed from some material appearance. Right means straight; wrong means twisted. Spirit primarily means wind; transgression, the crossing of a line; supercilious, the raising of the eyebrow. We say the heart to express emotion, the head to denote thought; and thought and emotion are words borrowed from sensible things, and now appropriated to spiritual nature. Most of the process by which this transformation is made, is hidden from us in the remote time when language was framed; but the same tendency may be daily observed in children. Children and savages use only nouns or names of things, which they convert into verbs, and apply to analogous mental acts.

    2. But this origin of all words that convey a spiritual import, — so conspicuous a fact in the history of language, — is our least debt to nature. It is not words only that are emblematic; it is things which are emblematic. Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact. Every appearance in nature corresponds to some state of the mind, and that state of the mind can only be described by presenting that natural appearance as its picture. An enraged man is a lion, a cunning man is a fox, a firm man is a rock, a learned man is a torch. A lamb is innocence; a snake is subtle spite; flowers express to us the delicate affections. Light and darkness are our familiar expression for knowledge and ignorance; and heat for love. Visible distance behind and before us, is respectively our image of memory and hope.
    Who looks upon a river in a meditative hour, and is not reminded of the flux of all things? Throw a stone into the stream, and the circles that propagate themselves are the beautiful type of all influence. Man is conscious of a universal soul within or behind his individual life, wherein, as in a firmament, the natures of Justice, Truth, Love, Freedom, arise and shine. This universal soul, he calls Reason: it is not mine, or thine, or his, but we are its; we are its property and men. And the blue sky in which the private earth is buried, the sky with its eternal calm, and full of everlasting orbs, is the type of Reason. That which, intellectually considered, we call Reason, considered in relation to nature, we call Spirit. Spirit is the Creator. Spirit hath life in itself. And man in all ages and countries, embodies it in his language, as the FATHER.

    It is easily seen that there is nothing lucky or capricious in these analogies, but that they are constant, and pervade nature. These are not the dreams of a few poets, here and there, but man is an analogist, and studies relations in all objects. He is placed in the centre of beings, and a ray of relation passes from every other being to him. And neither can man be understood without these objects, nor these objects without man. All the facts in natural history taken by themselves, have no value, but are barren, like a single sex. But marry it to human history, and it is full of life. Whole Floras, all Linnaeus' and Buffon's volumes, are dry catalogues of facts; but the most trivial of these facts, the habit of a plant, the organs, or work, or noise of an insect, applied to the illustration of a fact in intellectual philosophy, or, in any way associated to human nature, affects us in the most lively and agreeable manner. The seed of a plant, — to what affecting analogies in the nature of man, is that little fruit made use of, in all discourse, up to the voice of Paul, who calls the human corpse a seed, — "It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body." The motion of the earth round its axis, and round the sun, makes the day, and the year. These are certain amounts of brute light and heat. But is there no intent of an analogy between man's life and the seasons? And do the seasons gain no grandeur or pathos from that analogy? The instincts of the ant are very unimportant, considered as the ant's; but the moment a ray of relation is seen to extend from it to man, and the little drudge is seen to be a monitor, a little body with a mighty heart, then all its habits, even that said to be recently observed, that it never sleeps, become sublime.

    Because of this radical correspondence between visible things and human thoughts, savages, who have only what is necessary, converse in figures. As we go back in history, language becomes more picturesque, until its infancy, when it is all poetry; or all spiritual facts are represented by natural symbols. The same symbols are found to make the original elements of all languages. It has moreover been observed, that the idioms of all languages approach each other in passages of the greatest eloquence and power. And as this is the first language, so is it the last. This immediate dependence of language upon nature, this conversion of an outward phenomenon into a type of somewhat in human life, never loses its power to affect us. It is this which gives that piquancy to the conversation of a strong-natured farmer or back-woodsman, which all men relish.

    A man's power to connect his thought with its proper symbol, and so to utter it, depends on the simplicity of his character, that is, upon his love of truth, and his desire to communicate it without loss. The corruption of man is followed by the corruption of language. When simplicity of character and the sovereignty of ideas is broken up by the prevalence of secondary desires, the desire of riches, of pleasure, of power, and of praise, — and duplicity and falsehood take place of simplicity and truth, the power over nature as an interpreter of the will, is in a degree lost; new imagery ceases to be created, and old words are perverted to stand for things which are not; a paper currency is employed, when there is no bullion in the vaults. In due time, the fraud is manifest, and words lose all power to stimulate the understanding or the affections. Hundreds of writers may be found in every long-civilized nation, who for a short time believe, and make others believe, that they see and utter truths, who do not of themselves clothe one thought in its natural garment, but who feed unconsciously on the language created by the primary writers of the country, those, namely, who hold primarily on nature.

    But wise men pierce this rotten diction and fasten words again to visible things; so that picturesque language is at once a commanding certificate that he who employs it, is a man in alliance with truth and God. The moment our discourse rises above the ground line of familiar facts, and is inflamed with passion or exalted by thought, it clothes itself in images. A man conversing in earnest, if he watch his intellectual processes, will find that a material image, more or less luminous, arises in his mind, cotemporaneous with every thought, which furnishes the vestment of the thought. Hence, good writing and brilliant discourse are perpetual allegories. This imagery is spontaneous. It is the blending of experience with the present action of the mind. It is proper creation. It is the working of the Original Cause through the instruments he has already made.

    These facts may suggest the advantage which the country-life possesses for a powerful mind, over the artificial and curtailed life of cities. We know more from nature than we can at will communicate. Its light flows into the mind evermore, and we forget its presence. The poet, the orator, bred in the woods, whose senses have been nourished by their fair and appeasing changes, year after year, without design and without heed, — shall not lose their lesson altogether, in the roar of cities or the broil of politics. Long hereafter, amidst agitation and terror in national councils, — in the hour of revolution, — these solemn images shall reappear in their morning lustre, as fit symbols and words of the thoughts which the passing events shall awaken. At the call of a noble sentiment, again the woods wave, the pines murmur, the river rolls and shines, and the cattle low upon the mountains, as he saw and heard them in his infancy. And with these forms, the spells of persuasion, the keys of power are put into his hands.

    3. We are thus assisted by natural objects in the expression of particular meanings. But how great a language to convey such pepper-corn informations! Did it need such noble races of creatures, this profusion of forms, this host of orbs in heaven, to furnish man with the dictionary and grammar of his municipal speech? Whilst we use this grand cipher to expedite the affairs of our pot and kettle, we feel that we have not yet put it to its use, neither are able. We are like travellers using the cinders of a volcano to roast their eggs. Whilst we see that it always stands ready to clothe what we would say, we cannot avoid the question, whether the characters are not significant of themselves. Have mountains, and waves, and skies, no significance but what we consciously give them, when we employ them as emblems of our thoughts? The world is emblematic. Parts of speech are metaphors, because the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind. The laws of moral nature answer to those of matter as face to face in a glass. "The visible world and the relation of its parts, is the dial plate of the invisible." The axioms of physics translate the laws of ethics. Thus, "the whole is greater than its part;" "reaction is equal to action;" "the smallest weight may be made to lift the greatest, the difference of weight being compensated by time;" and many the like propositions, which have an ethical as well as physical sense. These propositions have a much more extensive and universal sense when applied to human life, than when confined to technical use.

    In like manner, the memorable words of history, and the proverbs of nations, consist usually of a natural fact, selected as a picture or parable of a moral truth. Thus; A rolling stone gathers no moss; A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush; A cripple in the right way, will beat a racer in the wrong; Make hay while the sun shines; 'T is hard to carry a full cup even; Vinegar is the son of wine; The last ounce broke the camel's back; Long-lived trees make roots first; — and the like. In their primary sense these are trivial facts, but we repeat them for the value of their analogical import. What is true of proverbs, is true of all fables, parables, and allegories.

    This relation between the mind and matter is not fancied by some poet, but stands in the will of God, and so is free to be known by all men. It appears to men, or it does not appear. When in fortunate hours we ponder this miracle, the wise man doubts, if, at all other times, he is not blind and deaf;

    ——— "Can these things be,
    And overcome us like a summer's cloud,
    Without our special wonder?"

    for the universe becomes transparent, and the light of higher laws than its own, shines through it. It is the standing problem which has exercised the wonder and the study of every fine genius since the world began; from the era of the Egyptians and the Brahmins, to that of Pythagoras, of Plato, of Bacon, of Leibnitz, of Swedenborg. There sits the Sphinx at the road-side, and from age to age, as each prophet comes by, he tries his fortune at reading her riddle. There seems to be a necessity in spirit to manifest itself in material forms; and day and night, river and storm, beast and bird, acid and alkali, preexist in necessary Ideas in the mind of God, and are what they are by virtue of preceding affections, in the world of spirit. A Fact is the end or last issue of spirit. The visible creation is the terminus or the circumference of the invisible world. "Material objects," said a French philosopher, "are necessarily kinds of scoriae of the substantial thoughts of the Creator, which must always preserve an exact relation to their first origin; in other words, visible nature must have a spiritual and moral side."

    This doctrine is abstruse, and though the images of "garment," "scoriae," "mirror," &c., may stimulate the fancy, we must summon the aid of subtler and more vital expositors to make it plain. "Every scripture is to be interpreted by the same spirit which gave it forth," — is the fundamental law of criticism. A life in harmony with nature, the love of truth and of virtue, will purge the eyes to understand her text. By degrees we may come to know the primitive sense of the permanent objects of nature, so that the world shall be to us an open book, and every form significant of its hidden life and final cause.

    A new interest surprises us, whilst, under the view now suggested, we contemplate the fearful extent and multitude of objects; since "every object rightly seen, unlocks a new faculty of the soul." That which was unconscious truth, becomes, when interpreted and defined in an object, a part of the domain of knowledge, — a new weapon in the magazine of power.
    "The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what we share with someone when we are uncool." From the movie "Almost Famous""l "Let yourself stand cool and composed before a million universes." Walt Whitman

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    Canada Avalon Member frankstien's Avatar
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    Default Re: What are you reading right now and how is it affecting you? (our own book club, maybe :))

    Next on my reading list--Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment



    The story of Raskolnikov, a student tormented by his own thoughts after he murders an old woman. Overwhelmed by guilt and terror, he confesses and goes to prison. Guilt is a theme that the previous book I posted by Joseph Conrad "Under Western Eyes" uses to give his salute to Dostoyevsky's famous book.
    "If the media will show us airplanes disappearing into towers on 9/11--they'll show us ANYTHING and expect us to believe it."
    --frankstien

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    Avalon Member Hym's Avatar
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    Default Re: What are you reading right now and how is it affecting you? (our own book club, maybe :))

    T.B.Pawlicki's "How To Build A Flying Saucer" 'And other proposals in Speculative Engineering'. This is a serious, fact-based fiction full of silly ideas and conjectures with such chapters as:

    'Megalithic Engineering: How to build Stonehenge and the Pyramids with bronze age technology',

    'Beyond Velikovsky: Einstein's relativity demonstrated, mining pure energy from empty space and the green hills of Mars'

    'Time Travel: How to navigate the streams of time through hyperspace'.

    etc.

    I quote the final paragraph with it's singular sentence:

    "When we meet the gods, we shall find that they are us."
    --------------------------------
    I am also searching for the short primer given to me by some of my science-ish friends, given out of compassion to me in respect for my complete lack of schooling.

    Something about gravity, Maxwell's equations, Tesla, Tommy Bearden, electro-gravitics. Time and space kinda stuff.

    First I gotta find a really good magnet to attract the book.
    Last edited by Hym; 28th June 2019 at 16:30.

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    Avalon Member Frankie Pancakes's Avatar
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    Default Re: What are you reading right now and how is it affecting you? (our own book club, maybe :))

    For the second time.
    Name:  418p+NDThgL._SX329_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg
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    Biography
    Former newspaper editor and investigative reporter, Jim Frazier, with a BS degree in psychobiology, was attending USC's film school in Los Angeles when he met UFO contactee Brian Scott in 1976. Frazier interviewed witnesses and began to document parnaormal events on a daily basis. Five UFO/paranormal research organizations were involved with Brian documenting an orange ball of light in his house in Garden Grove, California.

    Investigator J. Allen Hynek began consulting with director Steven Spielberg on CE3K after meeting Brian, and numerous parallels are in the movie. Frazier obtained literary rights, stopped all publicity and began to help Brian by meeting requests made to visit exact locations given as latitudes and longitudes. Scott had produced over 100 pages of automatic drawings and writings with detailed information on UFO craft, advanced technology and sites in South America. In the writings, Scott was asked to accept on December 22, 1976, a "sudden evolution" to a higher level of mind: to Mind Level 10. Frazier took Scott to South America and documented the transformation in detail. Scott had developed paranormal powers on his 33rd birthday, prior to the transformation. The powers and knowledge increased greatly after the transformation which is fully described in the book. The people of the USA, and the people of Peru and Bolivia were linked thru the process as Brian carried out numerous spectacular events. Over the next four years Frazier documented each step in the process with photos, tape recordings, video and film. Headlines were collected and in February of 1980, Scott and Frazier were commended at the White House by President Jimmy Carter and many documents were placed into the National Archives to mark the date of February 7, 1980 as a "turning point in the history of America and all mankind" because Brian had suceeded in passing all tests, and surviving the transformation process. The tests, like an initiation, were administered by joint interactions with tall, blond haired beings, and short, dome-headed grays. Brian was considered the "man in the middle" between the two groups and their competing agendas for the future of mankind.

    Scott's involvement ended in March of 1980 after he gave two "gifts to mankind" which are to be used to "transform our culture and civilization." Scott, supposedly, is the first contactee to complete a full transformation since 110 B.C. This book is in "a class by itself," a true "documented chronology of human transformation" and perhaps truly is the "transformational drama of our age" as some experts have said. Brian's story is a perfect fit to the "classic hero" as described by Joseph Campbell and other experts in cultural anthropology.

    No other person has gone thru a complete transformation, supposedly, since 110 B.C. when a common man from the Island of the Sun was transformed in the same way and became known as Tikki Viracocha, builder of an empire around Lake Titicaca. Brian's story is a parallel to the life of Viracocha and is "carved into stone" in South America. Numerous ancient statues, temples and rock carvings provide an explanation of the story and show a parallel over 2000 years ago to alien intervention with the pre-Incan empire around lake Titicaca.

    No other story like this one exists in modern time. This is a "legend in the making..." Scott participated in editing and wrote a testimonian of the book before he died, "This book is NOT FICTION," he stated. Brian Scott passed away, at age 65, on January 20th, 2009.

    The rest of the transformation is "up to mankind." What happens next to mankind is based on how many people can go to a higher level of mind by December 24, 2011, Scott said in his final weeks. Frazier and Scott remained friends to the end, and Frazier has recently developed advanced technology based on Brian's designs and and ncient examples given in South America about succesfull methods for "sudden evolution" to a higher level of mind.

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    Ecuador Avalon Member Rosemarie's Avatar
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    Default Re: What are you reading right now and how is it affecting you? (our own book club, maybe :))

    Quote Posted by frankstien (here)
    Next on my reading list--Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment



    The story of Raskolnikov, a student tormented by his own thoughts after he murders an old woman. Overwhelmed by guilt and terror, he confesses and goes to prison. Guilt is a theme that the previous book I posted by Joseph Conrad "Under Western Eyes" uses to give his salute to Dostoyevsky's famous book.
    Frankstein. Thank you, I have read 3 of Dostoyesky’s books which I really did enjoy in my college years and still have in my library. Should read them again. Crimen y Castigo as it is called in spanish. Hopefully was a good translation. Read The Brothers Karamazov and Notes from Underground.

    Crime and Punishment still as relevant today as is was in 1866. All about human nature, its complexities and the philosophy of good and evil. Highly recommended.

    To all the others, please keep sharing. I read everyone of your post, even if some of them take me a little while longer because english is not my native language.
    "Be kind for everybody is fighting a great battle" Plato

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    Canada Avalon Member frankstien's Avatar
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    Default Re: What are you reading right now and how is it affecting you? (our own book club, maybe :))

    Quote Posted by Hym (here)
    T.B.Pawlicki's "How To Build A Flying Saucer" 'And other proposals in Speculative Engineering'. This is a serious, fact-based fiction full of silly ideas and conjectures with such chapters as:

    'Megalithic Engineering: How to build Stonehenge and the Pyramids with bronze age technology',

    'Beyond Velikovsky: Einstein's relativity demonstrated, mining pure energy from empty space and the green hills of Mars'

    'Time Travel: How to navigate the streams of time through hyperspace'.

    etc.

    I quote the final paragraph with it's singular sentence:

    "When we meet the gods, we shall find that they are us."
    --------------------------------
    I am also searching for the short primer given to me by some of my science-ish friends, given out of compassion to me in respect for my complete lack of schooling.

    Something about gravity, Maxwell's equations, Tesla, Tommy Bearden, electro-gravitics. Time and space kinda stuff.

    First I gotta find a really good magnet to attract the book.
    It's a wonderful book! He has a sequel that's also VERY interesting--How You Can Explore Higher Dimensions of Time and Space

    https://www.amazon.com/Explore-Highe...SIN=0134440358
    "If the media will show us airplanes disappearing into towers on 9/11--they'll show us ANYTHING and expect us to believe it."
    --frankstien

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    Avalon Member Hym's Avatar
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    Angry Re: What are you reading right now and how is it affecting you? (our own book club, maybe :))

    I've been reading "Ruby Leaving Texas" by Dale Lotreck. It's the only book I have read that I can open at any page and get drawn in to either read what came before, or follow the road to it's current end. or go along with the author as he merges into some other colorful, even dangerous encounter.

    Knowing the author means that this is all based on his life, with very little need to change a thing, except the names of those characters he travels with, so as not to encounter any lawsuits.

    A well known actress, nameless now without her permission-and one with a loved reputation, picked the book up while at a friend's house. Her reaction to reading it, or even part of it (my guess) was "F***! This is my life!"

    I won't ever ask her what part of her life she was referring to because I'm sure that if she were this good of an author and if she was this honest with her life, it would make a fantastic read. That's up to her. In fact I wonder what that book would become if she had Dale co-write it or help her edit it.

    Looking back on those books that would make interesting movies, or creative mini-series, or colorful, seasonal series, "Ruby" would be well worth the production. Who knows if the entertainment world could take that much truth?

    Wouldn't you like to have stood next to an author whose writing you enjoy and hear some of his or her day to day musings?

    I have enjoyed my times listening.

    -----------

    There are so many different scenes in this true-to-life journal-turned-novel that before I include a little from the book I must say that "Ruby" could be written as a series of connected novels, much like a digital series and not unlike the narrative choices some popular authors choose. It is that rich.

    (Note: If this next section is against any PA policy I'm cool with the moderators removing it. If not... enjoy.)

    Here is a random page I opened to, at 10:14 PM, mountain standard time, Saturday, June 29, 2019:

    On the page before, ending the previous chapter, is this final sentence...

    "People in Texas are damn proud of their guns."

    On the next open page it reads:

    "I came home from work one night, early morning actually, about Three-thirty, to find Ruby out in the driveway, wearing shorts and cowboy boots and nothing else, holding the .45 in both hands, shooting determined, into the woods. The scene seemed perfectly normal to me, but I thought I'd ask anyway. Ruby said there was a pack of wild dogs, or coyotes, that came to take the puppy away. I went into the kitchen for a cold beer. No big deal. After all, a woman's gotta have a hobby."


    My comments, continued:

    Those of us living in these semi-rural areas recognize an author's truth to our surroundings when we have personally had some of the same experiences with coyotes, cats and hawks, careless pet "owners", too many guns to mention and way too many crazy neighbors to do anything but be heavily armed ourselves. The addition of colorful women only makes the experiences more the worth while.
    Last edited by Hym; 30th June 2019 at 05:34.

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