Beneath the Surface

At every stage of my pagan journey, books have been an important part. I'm a loner and a do-it-yourselfer, so seeking out a person-teacher was something I never really considered. Add to that the fact that I discovered paganism in the 90s before the internet really hit it big, and books were easily the best option.

So we have several boxes of Llewellyn in the attic. Occasionally someone borrows them, and I would never get rid of them (they are books, after all) but I don't get a lot of use out of them these days.

We have also five full shelves of scholarly and modern heathen titles and three of Hellenic titles, and an uncertain number of Celtic and Egyptian texts.

These days I am more and more likely to go for a Kindle version due to aging eyes and the font-enlarging option on the ebook reader, but I really like a paper book I can hold in my hands.

I do find, though, that these days I find myself spending less time among the books (depending on what I am working on at any given moment, of course--certainly when I am doing ADF study program work I have stacks of books on hand at all times). A lot of this is just that I don't need them as reference as often as I did when I was less experienced. I don't generally need an external reference to write a group heathen ritual, I have written enough of them :); however, if I were called on to prepare a group Hellenic rite I would want to look over some references, because I haven't done one in over a decade. Sometimes it's that I've already read everything I can find on a given topic.

But some is that, for one sort of reading, the internet has in great part replaced the book: anecdotal material and personal experience. I have a few books featuring this sort of knowledge (for example, Being a Pagan by Ellen Evert Hopman and Lawrence Bond) but they were rare, and I suspect they are rarer now.

Actually, a lot of the books I buy now happen to be self-published, which is a wonderful thing--there are so many people with good information and knowledge to share whose work would never see paper if not for self-publishing. And not for a lack of quality--it's just that many of these books are never going to be of broad enough interest to attract a traditional publisher. But if you are someone who is interested in their comparatively narrow subject matter, they are like gold.

I'm now the happy owner of both of the Marx Brothers movie sets, which is entirely awesome. (I already had the Paramount set, now I've got the MGM/RKO set as well! :))

Also, Galina Krasskova's new book, Exploring the Northern Tradition. I've only just looked it over but so far I'm pretty impressed. Has a great long section about the gods, and "The Soul Matrix" contains an unusually clear discussion of the parts of the soul.

The Runes Workbook by Leon Wild. Looks pretty good despite being pretty :).

I finished reading the Grigson book on Aphrodite today. Lots of interesting stuff, with just about no documentation. There's a kind of a bibliography, but no notes of any sort, which is annoying, but of course the book isn't supposed to be scholarly, I get the impression it was supposed to be popular nonfiction. So, at least I have some stuff to try to dig up something firmer on!

I am soooo tired. I think I might read for a while. Dan has earmarked the new Beowulf for his next read, I think, so I'll have to find something else.

I've been reading American Gods before bed at night lately. I'm torn between reading it quickly because I want to see what happens next, and reading it slowly because one it's done, I've read it and can never read it new again.

I also get the impression that Dan is waiting, kind of vulture-like, to snatch it up as soon as I'm done :).

I don't read a lot of fiction--I always feel like there's something else I should be doing instead (probaby because there usually is!)--possibly the subject matter here fools the guilt section of my brain into thinking I'm studying :). I think when I'm done I'm going to look for some of Diana Paxson's books.