Tag Archives: reading

100 (OR SO) BOOKS I HEARD IN 2016

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Author Image  100 (OR SO) BOOKS I HEARD IN 2016

I have written 8 books personally.  (See my author profile (https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/pan)   I also edited and published the international best selling book Alien Interview. (Get this audiobook FREE)

As a writer I am a reader.  I usually read (or re-read) at least 100 books a year.  I am 70 years old now and have developed severe arthritis is my neck which prevents me from reading printed books.  So, I download and listen to audiobooks from AUDIBLE.COM. I have discovered the experience of audiobooks to be much more satisfying than reading printed books.  What can be better than a well written story read to you by a professional voice talent?!  Anyway, I want to share with you a list of audobooks I listened to during 2016.  As you can see from the list my preferences lean heavily toward Fantasy, Science Fiction, Metaphysics and History.  Each book is a universe created by the “author gods” of Earth: universes of infinite imagination and fascination.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Book 5  THE HARRY POTTER SERIES (7 books) by J.K Rowling

Chapterhouse Dune  DUNE  (6 book series by Frank Herbert)

Ashley Bell  ASHELY BELL by Dean Koontz

Neverwhere  NEVERWHERE by Neil Gaiman  (second reading)

THE REPUBLIC OF PIRATES: BEING THE TRUE AND SURPRISING STORY OF THE CARIBBEAN PIRATES by Colin Woodard  The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down

Bag of Bones  BAG OF BONES by Stephen King

The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes  THE IMPROBABLE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES by John Joseph Adams (editor) , Robert J. Sawyer , Christopher Roden , Michael Moorcock , Anne Perry , Neil Gaiman , Anthony Burgess , Laurie R. King

THE DIAMOND AGE by Neal Stephenson

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World  GHENHIS KHAN AND THE MAKING OF THE MODERN WORLD By Jack Weatherford

Red Rising  THE RED RISING TRILOGY by Pierce Brown

Hunted: The Iron Druid Chronicles, Book 6  THE DRUID CHRONICLES (8 books) by Kevin Hearne

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe  HOW TO SAFELY LIVE IN A SCIENCE FICTIONAL UNIVERSE by Charles Yu

Proven Guilty: The Dresden Files, Book 8  THE DRESDEN FILES (15 books) by Jim Butcher

Fated: Alex Verus Series, Book 1  ALEX VERUS SERIES by Benedict Jacka  (7 books)

The Sudden Appearance of Hope  THE SUDDEN APPEARANCE OF HOPE by Claire North

The Everything Box: A Novel  THE EVERYTHING BOX by Richard Kadrey

Spell or High Water: Magic 2.0  MAGIC 2.0 (3 book series) by Scott Meyer

THE AERONAUT’S WINDLASS: THE CINDER SPIRES, BOOK 1 by Jim Butcher

The Many Selves of Katherine North  THE MANY SELVES OF KATHERINE NORTH by Emma Geen

THE CHRONICLES OF ST. MARY’S (book 1 and 2) by Jody Taylor

Ready Player One  READY PLAYER ONE by Ernest Cline

Tesser: A Dragon Among Us: A Reemergence Novel, Book 1  TESSER, A DRAGON AMONG US by Chris Philbrook

JONATHAN STRANGE AND MR. NORRELL by Susanna Clarke

THE DIRTY STREETS OF HEAVEN: BOBBY DOLLAR by Tad Williams  The Dirty Streets of Heaven: Bobby Dollar, Book 1

SLEEPING LATE ON JUDGEMENT DAY: Bobby Dollar BY Tad Williams

THE HIKE by Drew Magary

WHERE THE HELL IS TELSA: A NOVEL by Rob Dircks

The Android's Dream  AGENT TO THE STARS by John Scalzi

THE ANDROIDS DREAM by John Scalzi

ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE by Robert M. Pirsig

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy  ALL OF THE BOOKS OF DOUGLAS ADAMS (re-read for the 4th or 5th time)  Life, the Universe, and Everything: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Book 3

THE GODMAKERS by Frank Herbert

AWAKEN ONLINE by Travis Bagwell

SURVIVAL QUEST: WAY OF THE SHAMAN SERIES (1 and 2) by Vasily Mahanenko

No Good Dragon Goes Unpunished: Heartstrikers, Book 3  HEARTSTRIKERS (3 book series) by Rachel Aaron

WIZARD DEFIANT: INTERGALACTIC WIZARD SCOUT CHRONICLES by Rodney Hartman

THE LEGEND OF ELI MONPRESS (5 book series) by Rachel Aaron  The Spirit Thief

WAKE OF VULTURES: THE SHADOW BOOK 1, by Lila Bowen

THE SHEPARD’S CROWN by Terry Pratchett

Watchers  WATCHERS by Dean Koontz

SOLARIS by Stanislaw Lem

The Mote in God's Eye  THE MOTE IN GOD’S EYE by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

We Are Legion (We Are Bob): Bobiverse, Book 1  WE ARE LEGION (WE ARE BOB) BOBIVERSE BOOKS 1 AND 2 by Dennis E. Taylor

BY THE LIGHT OF THE MOON by Dean Koontz

Columbus Day: Expeditionary Force, Book 1  COLUMBUS DAY: EXPEDITIONARY FORCE (book 1) by Craig Alanson

QUANTITY OR QUALITY?

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I’m not a very fast reader, but I’m a very thorough reader.  As a writer of books I learned to hard way that it is vitally important to use the exact word, in the correct context, you intend your reader to understand.

Therefore, I take care to understand each word I’m reading.  What’s the point of reading if you don’t understand — or misunderstand — what you’ve read?

When was the last time you used a dictionary?  If you don’t know the meaning of each word in the sentence, you won’t understand the sentence.  Simple.

Reading is a form of communication.  Our environment is saturated with verbal, visual, musical and printed communication.  Too much communication prevents communication. We can’t process all of it, so we begin to ignore it, reject it and treat it all the same.  When that happens we loose are ability to differential, which is our ability to reason and make rational judgements.

A good rule of thumb about reading is this “QUALITY IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN QUANTITY“.

The “Dumbing Down of America” (and the world) is happening because we are reading more quantity, but the quality is dwindling grammatically.  The content of Twitter, television, films and popular media is diminishing our ability to evaluate the relative value and validity of information.  Are minds are literally being drowned in drivel!  The Draconian education policy of  “No Child Left Behind” is designed to drag everyone down to a level of  dim-witted incompetence.

Don’t fall for this bullshit.  Understand what you read.

Here is a great tool to measure your reading speed and comprehension:

ereader test

HOW MANY BOOKS HAVE YOU READ?

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In human experience, written symbols (letters, numbers, musical signs, etc. ) are physical representations of an idea or thought.  Symbols organized into sentences, songs, compositions, formula,  articles or books convey many complex ideas.  These symbols enable communication between people in the physical universe.  Although there a many forms of non-physical communication which we refer to as “emotion” or “telepathy” or “empathy” or “intuition” or “knowing”, the common denominators of human experience or culture is often expressed in books.  When these have been read, understood and compared to other thoughts, we can assume points of view of the various universes we inhabit. When we agree on a our perception of these universes, we call this “reality”.

Which books have helped to shape your reality?  How many books have your read in your life, so far?  How many more books are on your “must read” list?  According to Google, that is busily scanning every book they can get their digitizing hands on, there are about 130 million book titles in the world.  There are more than 2 million NEW book titles published every year (in all languages) . There are approximately 8 billion people in the world.  That is more than 65 book titles per every person in the world.  So, theoretically every person needs to read a minimum of 65 books to reach an “average” level of literacy.  Of course this does not include the avalanche of words available to read that have not been organized into an actual book title, like Twitter and Facebook posting, newspaper and magazine articles and other “non-literature” such as scientific papers, and school textbooks and other propaganda published by governments and corporations.

The largest bookseller on-line is Amazon.com, which has an inventory of only about 1,750,000 titles in English.  That’s only 13 percent of all the book titles  in the world!  This a critically small number of books available to read.  How can one possibly consider themselves to be a literate person?  This does not even include the fact that the majority of books written in the ancient world (prior to 400 AD) were burned by the Christian church!  If you read one book every week 50 for years you would have read only 2,600 books!  According to Google, the average book is 300 pages.  That’s about 75,000 words per book.

As a writer, I am also a reader.  I have often read several books each week during the 50+ years of my reading life, as well as a lot of  printed material, etc.. All together I estimate I’ve read about 4,000 books, so far.  That’s a lot of words — not including the millions of words on the internet — that are not in the form of a book.  Fortunately, there are more than 100,000 book titles available as spoken books — narrated for you by professional actors — on  Audible.com, Librivox.com and sites on the internet.  Now, I can “read” a book with my ears, instead of my  eyes, a fact that I appreciate more and more as I grow older.  I can “read” while I’m walking, driving, jogging, cooking, cleaning, waiting and doing a lot of things that would prevent me from reading with my eyes.  It’s a wonderful age we live in!

So, how do we select the most cherished, life-giving, knowledge-quenching word droplets from the ocean of words?  Having read more than my share of books I can say without any doubt that reading a lot of books does not  make a person “smart”, or “wise”, or “literate”.  However, for me, reading books is usually a more gratifying experience, mentally and spiritually, than watching television or movies or videos.  Books are usually more thoroughly researched, planned, crafted, edited and perfected than other forms of communication.

In this electronic age, when more books are available to us — thanks to digital technology —  than during all of the history of humankind combined, can we expect that humanity would be more well informed and intelligent that ever before?  Books themselves are not wisdom.  If books are not read by people, the knowledge contained in them remains hidden.  They might has well not have been written.

My personal recommendation for your reading or listening book list are the books I’ve written, of course. My view of “reality” is different than most.  My universe is unique, as is yours.  I invite you to share my universe, through my books.

— This blatant self-endorsement is brought to you by Lawrence R. Spencer —

MY PERSONAL READING LIST

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Decline and Fall of Rome

Here is a list books I read (I usually listen to the audiobook version) during the last two years (in no particular order).  There may have been others, but these are most worthy of mention.  I have read many of these books more than once, as I consider them to be seminal works of English literature, or fundamental to an understanding of Life, Universes and Other Stuff.

I have discovered that not all “spiritual” books are necessarily spiritual.  Likewise, I find that some books in the science fiction and history genre reveal a profound

Age of Reasonunderstanding of the nature andbehavior of humans.  For example, there is no doubt in my mind that foibles and follies described in The Decline and Fall of The Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon reveal in painfully absurd detail the reality that the humans who populate modern Western civilization of Europe and the United States are the very same beings who built and destroyed the civilizations of Rome and it’s immediate predecessor, Greece.  And, we are the very same spiritual beings who build and destroy every civilization, life after life, again and again, in the Eternal Now.

The more things change, the more humans remain the same.  If you have read the book Alien Interview, you will understand the cyclical nature of human insanity and the wicked wizards and witches
behind the “curtain of lies” that perpetuate our stupidity,  brutal depravity and the inability to confront the evil beings who perpetuate our pain.  Factually,  the serpentine parasites who enslave the “untouchables of Earth” are terrified that innocent and honest inquiries of children and small dogs will expose and depose them from their brutal thrones of power, control and possession of the physical universe, without which they would perish in the  frigid, eternal dark from which they were spawned!  Likewise, The Age of Reason, by Thomas Paine and the books of E.E. Doc Smith and Robert Heinlein reveal profound understandings of philosophy and spirituality that are forbidden, and  unknown, in religious texts on Earth. Reading the autobiographies of Yogananda, and Gandhi, and Nikola Tesla and Mark Twain exposed me to “Spiritual Skyscrapers” who tower with magnificent wisdom and courage above the barren landscape of human inhumanity.

612vWYLI0PL._SL175_Such beings, who demonstrate the most powerful empathy for their fellow beings, are magnified in contrast to a race of spiritual monstrosities (the “Edorians” of The Lensman Series, for example) as elucidated with demonic eloquence by Hitler in Mein Kampf.  Although the “bad guys” are just as powerful and “intelligent” as any “good guy” they are utterly and irreversibly antipathetic to every spiritual entity in every universe, including themselves!  I suspect that the game of “good guys” versus “bad guys” is simply an eternal, intergalactic struggle for survival between two equally opposed races of spiritual beings who originated in different times and places, but who now coexist in the space / time continuum of the physical universe.

Alien Interview coverPersonally, I have grown weary of mortal games.  I write books that suggest alternatives to the physical universe logic of dichotomies:  life /death, good /bad, black / white, life / death, up /down, in / out, etc.,.  I prefer the “illogic” of immortal spirits, infinite possibilities  and unlimited imagination!  Life, and Universes, and Other

Stuff are created from and sustained by the “no-thing” of Eternal Spiritual Beings.  However, I have read that the spiritually ignorant physicists of western universities are finally beginning to “grok” that Quantum Mechanics has been known and understood by the Vedic sages and gurus of India for more than 10,000 years.  Light, energy, matter, forms and spaces are contrivances of our own imaginations.

In spite of all the books I’ve read, I have, as yet, not discovered the solution to escaping the “Wheel of Life”, or the Cycle of Birth and Death.  I hope that the books I am planning to read during the next year will provide me with some real answers, as I’m not getting any younger.  Religious lies and rhetoric notwithstanding, not a single author of a book I’ve read has died and returned to tell us how to “escape from Earth”.  If you have read a book that verifiably solves this problem, please let me know.  I will add it to my list of “must read” books.

— Lawrence R. Spencer. October, 2013.

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The History of The Decline and Fall of The Roman Empire (Unabridged), by Edward Gibbon

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein

The Cat Who Walked Through Walls, by Robert Heinlein

Strangers in A Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein

Animal Wise: The Thoughts and Emotions of Our Fellow Creatures, by Virginia Morell

The Art of Happiness, by Howard C.Cutler, with the Dalai Lama

Mein Kampf, by Aldolph Hitler

Vermeer: Portraits of A Lifetime, by Lawrence R. Spencer

The Skylark of Space: Skylark Series #1, by E.E. Doc Smith

Skylark Two, by E.E. Doc Smith

Skylark of Valeron (#3), by E.E. Doc Smith

Skylark DuQuesne: Skylark Series #4,  by E.E. Doc Smith

The Lensman Series, (6 books) by E.E. Doc Smith

Triplanetary

First Lensman

Galactic Patrol

Gray Lensman

Second Stage Lensman

Children of The Lens

The Spacehounds of IPC, by E.E. Doc Smith

The Oz Factors, by Lawrence R. Spencer

Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

Valis, by Philip K. Dick

Alien Interview, Edited by Lawrence R. Spencer

The Dying Earth, by Jack Vance

An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth, by Mohandas (Mahatma) K. Gandhi

1,001 Things to Do While You’re Dead: A Dead Persons Guide to Living, by Lawrence R. Spencer

The Bhagavad Gita, by Phoenix Books , Barbara Stoler-Miller (translator)

The Big Bleep: Mystery of A Different Universe, by Lawrence R. Spencer

Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla: Biography of a Genius, by Marc J. Seifer

Autobiography of a Yogi, by Paramahansa Yogananda

Our Occulted History: Do the Global Elite Conceal Ancient Aliens?, by Jim Marrs

My Inventions, by Nikola Tesla

Flatland, by Edwin A. Abbott

Sherlock Holmes: My Life, by Lawrence R. Spencer

Ubik, by Phillip K. Dick

Vermeer: Portraits of A Lifetime, by Lawrence R. Spencer

The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break: A Novel, by Steven Sherrill

Winter of the World: The Century Trilogy, Book 2, by Ken Follett (partial)

Coming of Conan The Cimmerian, by Robert E. Howard

A Game of Thrones: A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 1, by George R. Martin

The Dispossessed: A Novel, by Ursula K. Le Guin

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo: The millennium Trilogy, Book 1, by Steig Larsson

The Vortex Blaster, by E.E. “Doc” Smith

The Republic, by Plato

Fall of Giants: The Century Trilogy, Book 1, by Ken Follett

The Confession: A Novel, by John Grisham

Sherlock Holmes: My Life, by Lawrence R. Spencer

Anansi Boys, by Neil Gaiman

Enders Game, by Orson Scott Card

Autobiography of Mark Twin (Unabridged), by Mark Twain

American Gods, by Neil Gaiman

Tao Te Ching: A New English Version, by Loa Tzu, translated by Stephen Mitchell

The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the Greater Philosophers, by Will Durant

You See But You Do Not Observe, by Robert J. Sawyer

The Age of Reason, by Thomas Paine

The Complete Stories of Sherlock Holmes, Volume 1 and 2, by Arthur Conan Doyle

The Valley of Fear, by Arthur Conan Doyle

His Last Bow, by Arthur Conan Doyle

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Under the Dome, by Stephen King

The Rape of The Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing, by Joost A. M. Meerloo, M.D.

The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters, by Frances Stonor Saunders

The Magus of Strovolos: The Extraordinary World of a Spiritual Healer, by Kyriacos C. Markides,

1984, by George Orwell

Animal Farm, by George Orwell

The Foundation Trilogy, by Isaac Asimov

The Rise of The Fourth Reich, by Jim Marrs

The Face, by Dean Koontz  (and, about a dozen of his other books in years past! )

Meditation on Living, Dying and Loss, by Graham Coleman with the Dalai Lama

Tick Tock, by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge

Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus, by Mary Shelley

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson

Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson

Dracula, by Bram Stoker