Category Archives: READING MATTER

Books I read & recommend

SHERLOCK HOLMES ON THOMAS PAINE

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Sherlock_Holmes_Front_Cover

“I read the most excellent treatise and critique of that superstitious body of mythology written by the American revolutionary, Thomas Paine. Although Mr. Paine is not a popular fellow in Britain, having fathered the uprising against King George which resulted in the loss of the greatest possession ever claimed by the throne of England, he is nonetheless a man of preeminent intellect and prodigious reasoning ability.

AGE OF REASON

His book, The Age of Reason; Being an Investigation of True and *Fabulous Theology, to my own system of logical assessment and evaluation represents the most thorough, factual and incontrovertible dissection of the Bible, which unfortunately serves our civilization as a guideline for survival.  After having read his preeminent work of logical vivisection upon the content of the Bible, and by abstraction, a commentary upon the paradigm of Western Civilization, it is no longer a mystery to me that humanity has endured so great an extent of war, misery, chaos, greed, destruction and mayhem inflicted by Western imperialism upon the Earth at the behest of, and with regal and religious blessings.

As for my personal observation and conviction concerning the matter of religion, I concur with the statement most ably stated by  Thomas Paine himself:

“I hope for happiness beyond this life. I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavouring to make our fellow-creatures happy.  I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.  I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise; they have the same right to their belief as I have to mine. But it is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.”  

— An excerpt from SHERLOCK HOLMES: MY LIFE, by Lawrence R. Spencer

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(Definition of the word “fabulous” — adjective:  based on or told of in traditional stories; lacking factual basis or historical validity)

“…THEY’VE BUILT THEIR OWN PRISON…”

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MY DINNER WITH ANDRE is a 1981 film starring Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn, written by Gregory and Shawn, and directed by Louis Malle, depicting a conversation between Gregory and Shawn (not necessarily playing themselves) in a chic restaurant in New York City. Based mostly on conversation, the film’s dialogue covers such things as experimental theatre, the nature of theatre, and the nature of life, contrasting Shawn’s modest, down-to-earth humanism with Gregory’s extravagant spiritual experiences.

TEXT ANNOTATIONS FROM THE SEGMENT OF THE FILM ABOVE:

“I mean, things don’t affect people the way they used to.
I mean, it may very well be that 1 0 years from now…
people will pay $1 0,000 in cash to be castrated…
just in order to be affected by something.
Well, why-why do you think that is? I mean, why is that?
I mean, is it just because people are lazy today, or they’re bored?
I mean, are we just like bored, spoiled children…
who’ve just been lying in the bathtub all day…
just playing with their plastic duck…
and now they’re just thinking, ”Well, what can I do?”
Okay. Yes. We’re bored.
We’re all bored now.
But has it every occurred to you, Wally, that the process…
that creates this boredom that we see in the world now…
may very well be a self-perpetuating, unconscious form of brainwashing…
created by a world totalitarian government based on money…
and that all of this is much more dangerous than one thinks…
and it’s not just a question of individual survival, Wally…
but that somebody who’s bored is asleep…
and somebody who’s asleep will not say no?
See, I keep meeting these people – I mean, uh,just a few days ago…
I met this man whom I greatly admire.
He’s a Swedish physicist. Gustav Bjornstrand.
And he told me that he no longer watches television…
he doesn’t read newspapers, and he doesn’t read magazines.
He’s completely cut them out of his life…
because he really does feel that we’re living in some kind of Orwellian nightmare now…
and that everything that you hear now contributes to turning you into a robot.
And when I was at Findhorn, I met this extraordinary English tree expert…
who had devoted his life to saving trees.
Just got back from Washington, lobbying to save the redwoods.
He’s 84 years old, and he always travels with a backpack…
’cause he never knows where he’s gonna be tomorrow.
And when I met him at Findhorn, he said to me, ”Where are you from?”
I said, ”New York.” He said, ”Ah, New York. Yes, that’s a very interesting place.
Do you know a lot of New Yorkers who keep talking about the fact that they want to leave, but never do?”
And I said, ”Oh, yes.” And he said, ”Why do you think they don’t leave?”
I gave him different banal theories. He said, ”Oh, I don’t think it’s that way at all.”
He said, ”I think that New York is the new model for the new concentration camp…
”where the camp has been built by the inmates themselves…
”and the inmates are the guards, and they have this pride in this thing they’ve built.
”They’ve built their own prison.
”And so they exist in a state of schizophrenia…
”where they are both guards and prisoners.
”And as a result, they no longer have – having been lobotomized –
”the capacity to leave the prison they’ve made…
or to even see it as a prison.”
And then he went into his pocket, and he took out a seed for a tree…
and he said, ”This is a pine tree.”
He put it in my hand and he said, ”Escape before it’s too late.”
See, actually, for two or three years now…
Chiquita and I have had this very unpleasant feeling that we really should get out.
We really feel like Jews in Germany in the late ’30s.
Get out of here.
Of course, the problem is where to go.
‘Cause it seems quite obvious that the whole world is going in the same direction.
See, I think it’s quite possible that the 1 960s…
represented the last burst of the human being before he was extinguished…
and that this is the beginning of the rest of the future, now…
and that from now on there’ll simply be all these robots walking around…
feeling nothing, thinking nothing.
And there’ll be nobody left almost to remind them…
that there once was a species called a human being…
with feelings and thoughts…
and that history and memory are right now being erased…
and soon nobody will really remember…
that life existed on the planet.
Now, of course, Bjornstrand feels that there’s really almost no hope…
and that we’re probably going back to a very savage…
lawless, terrifying period.
Findhorn people see it a little differently.
They’re feeling that there’ll be these pockets of light…
springing up in different parts of the world…
and that these will be, in a way, invisible planets on this planet…
and that as we, or the world, grow colder…
we can take invisible space journeys to these different planets…
refuel for what it is we need to do on the planet itself…
and come back.
And it’s their feeling that there have to be centers now…
where people can come and reconstruct a new future for the world.
And when I was talking to, uh, Gustav Bjornstrand…
he was saying that actually these centers are growing up everywhere now…
and that what they’re trying to do, which is what Findhorn was trying to do…
and, in a way, what I was trying to do –
I mean, these things can’t be given names…
but in a way, these are all attempts at creating a new kind of school…
or a new kind of monastery.
And Bjornstrand talks about the concept of”reserves” –
islands of safety where history can be remembered…
and the human being can continue to function…
in order to maintain the species through a dark age.
In other words, we’re talking about an underground…
which did exist in a different way during the Dark Ages…
among the mystical orders of the church.
And the purpose of this underground…
is to find out how to preserve the light, life, the culture…
how to keep things living.
You see, I keep thinking that what we need…
is a new language –
a language of the heart…
a language, as in the Polish forest, where language wasn’t needed.
Some kind of language between people that is a new kind of poetry…
that’s the poetry of the dancing bee that tells us where the honey is.
And I think that in order to create that language…
you’re going to have to learn how you can go through a looking glass…
into another kind of perception…
where you have that sense of being united to all things…
and suddenly you understand everything.”

THE BIG BLEEP – Audiobook

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John Bell is a master of voice characterization! His narration of dozens of fictional characters in The Big Bleep audiobook include many of the most popular trees, potted plants and super heroes, including Elvis! Take a trip to a Different Universe and find out how and why the human species will become extinct! Listen to a free sample:

THE BIG BLEEP Audiobook

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READ WITHOUT EYES

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As lovers of learning and literature know all of the best fantasy, science fiction, history, romance, imagery, imagination and revelation are contained in books.  The content of movies and TV shows are often spewed from minds who pander the prurient interests to the lowest common denominators of money and mayhem.  The finest thoughts, the highest aspirations and the flightiest heights of imagination are dreamed and written by artists who write books.

Unfortunately, as my body grows older, I find that it is increasingly difficult to read books.  Diminishing eye sight, arthritis in my neck, bad back and insufficient time makes reading books more difficult.  Thank the gods, and technology for the wonderful inventions of MP 3 players and AUDIO BOOKS!

Now I can download and listen / read a vast array of literature on audio books, read to me by the some of the most talented actors:  it’s better than a bed-time story!  And I can listen to books while driving, waiting in the dentist office, walking around, sitting in the park and muti-tasking in general.  Personally, I’ve listened to more books during the past two years than I read in the previous five years.

Thanks to audio books I’ve been able to read books that I probably wouldn’t have read previously due to the sheer size and expense of the books, some of which are several thousand pages in length! Free audio books, in the public domain, are available from www.Librivox.org.   And, a vast library of books read by professional actors is available from www.Audible.com.   The most important (FREE) source of audio books is your local public library.  More and more books are available of CDs and cassette tapes every day.  I use and recommend all of these.

As for subject matter, here are some of the books I listened to recently that are my personal favourites:

All 7 books of THE LENSMAN SERIES, written by E.E. “Doc” Smith  (I consider these to be the finest science and science fiction books ever written). I listened to most of them twice!

All of the Sherlock Holmes books written by Arthur Conan Doyle  (most of these I read previously, but audio books make them more fun)

American Gods and The Anansi Boys by the magical Neill Gaimon.

Enders Game by the marvellous science fiction writer, Orson Scott Card

The Autobiography of Mark Twain, a compilation of his autobiographical writings and commentary.

Any of the legion of electrifyingly frightening books by the fantastic fiction writer, Dean Koontz.

Under the Dome by Stephen King.

The Decline and Fall of The Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon.  One of the finest works of historical commentary ever produced.

The Republic by Plato is the pre-eminent discussion of the philosophy and culture of Western Civilization, written in 368 B.C.E.

Mien Kamph by Adolph Hitler.  This is a ‘must’ read if you care to understand the demented ‘logic’ of a demonic Germanic mind.

The Confession by John Grisham.  This is a damning diatribe, written as fiction, on the subject of capital punishment.

The Story of Philosophy by Will Durant. This is a marvelous perusal of the entire subject of Western philosophers.

The complete writings of the Father of the American Revolution,  Thomas Paine.

The Tao Te Ching by Lao-Tze.  (The new English translation)

At the moment I’m listening to Fall of Giants by Ken Follett.

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Good listening!  Lawrence R. Spencer