My Reading Page
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I was a great reader all my life, as soon as I learned at age 5 I always had my nose in a book. Until I met Wolf. Because he was blind I began to feel uncomfortable at sitting and reading in his presence. It wasn't just that, though. Before I met him I had gone through an intensive period of writing about my life, and as I am a kind of chameleon, I too easily pick up writing styles (along with accents) and had to make a conscious decision to stop reading fiction until my work was done. Then, too, life really changed after meeting him, with so many other activities and interests, it became that I only had time to read what really mattered, like astrology which I was studying at the time, and necessitated absorbing a great deal of information. So as our 17 years together went on, I got out of the habit of reading for pleasure. Even after he walked out, I found I could not concentrate for long (hardly surprising as most of my thoughts concerned battering to death the woman he had gone off with). So it is only over the last couple of years that I have rediscovered the pleasure of losing myself in someone else's life. Because you might enjoy the books I have read, I would like to tell you about them here |
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I was wondering how I came to read this book, then I remembered that I had come across a reference to George Borrow's Romany Rye, and decided to re-read it. As a young woman it had largely passed me by, but now I found it riveting. It made me want to know more about gypsies, and I put in a search on Yahoo, and came up with this. It has that quality that science fiction has, of taking you into a totally unknown yet completely believable world. It is fascinating to find out how other people live, and this shows you everything on the page, and you are part of it and you are there. To be King of the Gypsies is to be essentially a bareknuckle fighter that no one can beat. Once you start winning it gets harder. You can be challenged out any time of day or night, and once challenged you have to fight, there and then, or within a short distance of the place you are challenged. So you can never let up. As you get older, it gets harder. There is nothing 'nice' about the way they fight, anything goes, and it was interesting to see how important it is to get the advantage right at the start - in one instance Bartley is arriving in a landrover to a waiting opponent, he knows he would be at a disadvantage getting out of the vehicle, so he hangs on the outside, and has the element of surprise as he leaps off and pitches into his opponent. I am as much against blood and gore as the next pacifist, but it's not about that so much as about the way of life the gypsies live. Only one thing I found lacking, he says nothing about his private life, his loves are not laid bare for us to look at. We have to respect that, and appreciate what this remarkable man has given us. I loved every page, and when the book was ended, felt the sadness of separation. I had been part of his life while I was reading, and now I wanted to get back to him, to learn more. I found some videos on the web, poor quality, but wonderful to see and hear him. I was surprised he appeared to have no discernible accent - I was expecting Norfolk, don't know why! I wonder if all that moving about makes for a neutral accent. |
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Barbara Hand Clow - Mayan Code - I have to say I was disappointed in this book - it started off well with some good general stuff, but it got too bogged-down in the author's theories about the Mayan time-periods which really I couldn't follow and more to the point didn't think it worth getting my head round. She tells us that she got most of her stuff from John Major Jenkins and Carl Johann Calleman. Only one thing I got out of this, a more thorough understanding of what the Mayan Calendar and the End of Time is about and the interesting theory that time is speeding up as we come to the end of several cycles - time exists in interlocking cycles ranging from very long to very short, and they all end on the 2012 date. This time speeding up thing I thought was a feature of old age, so I'd be interested to hear from people of different ages as to whether they feel time has accelerated. Apart from that, I really would not recommend plowing (as the Murricans say) through this book. One to miss. |
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Scofield and Orr - Mayan Astrology - I was disappointed in this book too. Having learnt something about Mayan astrology already, I expected more than this book had to offer. More than half of it consisted of the Mayan Calendar, useless to me as I have constructed my own Aztec calendar and the rest was a rehash of books by Scofield I had already read. A total waste of time and money. |
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Barbara Tedlock - The Woman in the Shaman's Body - I liked this book very much! Tedlock sets out to prove that the fact of women's shamanism has been kept from us for a very long time. Most early explorers and anthropologists were men, and where they came across women shamans they either failed to report it, or if the women could not be written out of the picture, described them as "shaman's assistant". The fact is/was, shamans often work in pairs, celebrating the male/female duality, and in most cases are married. But Tedlock shows us by reference to ancient pictures and cave paintings that women played the prominent role, the man being the helper. She has also lived and worked with women shamans of today, about whom little is known outside of their culture, district or village. Her insights are remarkable and her stories fascinating. Highly recommended. www.bookdepository.co.uk; www.amazon.co.uk |
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Elena Avilar - Woman Who Glows in the Dark - This is the best book I have read in a long long time - I love it! Unlike most Murrican books, it is not full of waffle. Every well-placed word is worth its salt. Hard facts and information are what we get. This is a "true-talking woman" - a woman who knows her stuff. Led by inspiration and intuition, Elena has followed her true destiny down some hard paths. She has learnt through life's knocks, but her sole purpose and ambition has been to help others by following the true path. She has tried to work within the orthodox health system, and she does not knock it, it taught her a lot but her heart ached as she saw how it failed people by not treating the whole body and spirit as one entity, With her special gifts and vision she was able to see people fading away for want of soul restoration - they needed time, love and understanding in order to recover, and the system was not giving it to them, In spite of being welcomed as an indigenous practitioner, and asked to give lectures on her heritage, she was not allowed to practise what she preached, so eventually she went it alone, setting up as a curandera - healer. This book contains so much that is valuable. I respect this woman and salute her for her courage, wisdom and compassion. www.bookdepository.co.uk; www.amazon.co.uk |
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Jenkins and Matz - Pyramid of Fire - Jenkins, a self-styled expert on the Mayan and Aztec Calendars and End of Time scenarios, became interested in the case of Marty Matz, a beat poet in the sixties who took off into the Mexican desert while under the influence of various drugs. He didn't know where he was half the time, he kept taking a bus to the 'end of the line' - ie a terminus somewhere out in the desert, then kept on walking. He told Jenkins he was trying to get away from three things he considered the curse of the modern age - Coca Cola, Singer Sewing Machines, and transistor radios. He figured if he could walk his way to a place where these three things didn't exist, he had reached the real Old Mexico. The point of the book is to bring us the text of an unknown Aztec codex given to Matz by the obligatory Mexican Shaman. Jenkins keeps us on the edge of our seats for the first half of the book, telling us about Matz, his life, the Aztecs, the Indian way of life - he holds out on the actual codex until the second half, then lets us have it straight. At which point I gave up reading as I simply didn't believe a word of it. You might. The excerpts from Matz's poetry and poetical prose are fantastic and make me want to go straight to the source. However I think his 'codex' was the hybrid by-product of his long studies into the Aztecs and Mayans, his amazing imagination, and whatever he was on at the time. Hey ho! Just one of those things. Another bum steer. |
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Angie Kruger - Diary of a Trance Medium - Absolutely rivetting book - sat and read it right through in an hour and half. I met Angie in Penzance in 2004 and attended her trance workshop. She impressed me then with her down to earth attitude and her straightforward sincerity. A far cry from floating scarves and crystals, she was dressed in combat pants and vest and had short cropped hair. She took us through a meditation to meet our spirit guides and that was the day Umbaba came to me. In the book she fills in all the gaps - her life before Richard, how Richard came to her, how hard that was for her, and how Richard trained and taught her the way they would work together. She includes many examples of work they have done together, hauntings they have solved and so on. Her sense of fun shines through her work. Well done Angie - shame about the cover! www.bookdepository.co.uk; www.amazon.co.uk |
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Everyone, or at least everyone with a social conscience, should read this book. It is a modern day version of the Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, written by one who was there when it happened, as it happened, and who tells his own story in a simple, poignant way. There are no wasted words, and this is a very short book. I read it in a single sitting, not much more than an hour, after the postman delivered it. I bought it after hearing some excerpts from it on Radio 4 and it did not disappoint, as did 'Driving Over Lemons' bought for the same reason. It made me want to stand up and cry out for the rights of the working man, that are being taken away from us daily; it made me want to man the barricades, sell the Socialist Worker (if that organ still exists) it made me want to shake people and say, look what is happening to us! The book maintains that we can still stop the rot - I for one do not think so. But I urge you to read this book, to buy lots and give them away to your friends. It will live in your mind forever. www.bookdepository.co.uk; www.amazon.co.uk | |
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Asclepius: Collection and Interpretation of the Testimonies/Volumes I and II in One | |
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