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A Good Read: Book Suggestions & Recommendations

Morning Gordon yeah I bought both books.
Do you remember the lady who gave a talk about witches in and around I think it was snainton and a couple of other villages
The places she mentioned are Paul Sinclair territory sightings of black dogs etc .
Perhaps they have been a hotspot for paranormal activity for hundreds of years
 
A very good book and free to download. I know some amateur things about theology and neurology and both seem to be OK in this book:

Hearing Voices, Demonic and Divine​

Scientific and Theological Perspectives
ByChristopher C. H. Cook

https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books...earing-voices-demonic-divine-christopher-cook

In the early chapters of Genesis, Friedman notes, “God speaks familiarly to the humans in conversation (3:9–19)”.25 In later chapters (as in stories about Hagar and Abraham), the words of God are spoken by an angel.26 At Mount Sinai, the voice of God is heard by all of the Israelite people,27 but is such a terrifying experience that they say to Moses, “You speak with us, and we will listen; but let not God speak with us lest we die.”28 For Friedman, this point in the biblical narrative marks the birth of prophecy. “After this scene in the Bible, Yahweh never again speaks directly to an entire community Himself. All communication from the deity is directed only to individuals, prophets, who then deliver the message to whomever they are told.”29 The personal experience of Moses is declared to be unique, and never to be repeated.30 Prophecy subsequent to Moses is less direct, and inferior to that of Moses.31
 
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I've been looking at cutting crap out my diet for quite a while now after reading about aspartame.

I bought this book a couple of days ago and have started reading it. It is indeed alarming:

Ultra Processed People by Dr Chris van Tulleken.

He recommends reading it whilst still eating as you would, as it will likely put you off touching the stuff again after reading it.

https://www.theguardian.com/science...foods-take-over-and-what-are-they-doing-to-us
 
ramonmercado said:
Just read this, Comstock is also a character in The Future Of Another Timeline.

In 1893, Anthony Comstock, special agent to the Post Office and secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, visited the Chicago World’s Fair and advocated for the closing of one exhibition: the “danse du ventre”—the belly dance. (Excerpted from Amy Sohn’s The Man Who Hated Women.)

___________________________________

By the time Ida Craddock traveled to the World’s Fair, there was plenty of sex information for progressive, curious young people. The German psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis, which coined the terms sadism and masochism, had been translated into English a year earlier. In 1894, Havelock Ellis, an English psychologist and doctor, would publish a volume on human sexuality titled Man and Woman: A Study of Secondary and Tertiary Sexual Characteristics. And the Illinois physician Dr. Alice B. Stockham’s popular Tokology: A Book for Every Woman (1883) provided anatomical details about male and female bodies, and promoted strategies for coping with labor pains. Physicians and free lovers published manuals on hygiene, child-rearing, pregnancy, and better sex—many advertised in radical journals such as New York’s The Truth Seeker, edited by D. M. Bennett, and the Kansas-based freethinker and free love journal Lucifer, the Light-Bearer, edited by Moses Harman. ...

https://crimereads.com/women-sex-radicals-comstock/
Click to expand...

Another article about Comstock and interview with Annalee Newitz.

... Kacsmaryk’s initial ruling and the Fifth Circuit decision cited a 19th-century law known as the Comstock Act of 1873, which made it illegal to send “obscene, lewd or lascivious” materials by mail—including not just nude drawings but also materials or information related to abortion or contraception.

That law was spearheaded by Anthony Comstock, a Christian moralist activist and head of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. Congress passed the law and appointed Comstock as a special agent of the U.S. Postal Service, giving him the power to arrest people for violations. Comstock ultimately became a public laughingstock for his prudishness, and the Supreme Court overturned the law’s restrictions on birth control in 1965. But the rest of the Comstock Act quietly remained on the books—and the lawsuit over mifepristone is likely to put Comstock’s antiabortion policies back on the Supreme Court’s docket.


ADVERTISEMENT
Science journalist and author Annalee Newitz spent years researching and interviewing people about the Comstock Act and Comstock himself for their 2019 novel The Future of Another Timeline, in which characters time travel to try to prevent Comstock from getting his law passed. Scientific American spoke with Newitz about what history their research uncovered and how a 150-year-old obscenity law is being used to restrict abortion and reproductive rights in the 21st century.

[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]

Who was Anthony Comstock, and how did the Comstock Act come about?

Anthony Comstock was a very famous moral crusader based in New York [City] in the mid-19th century. His career started mostly because he was interested in stamping out obscenity—and by obscenity he meant any imagery [or literature] that contained nudity. He was extreme for his time, but at a certain point, he managed to connect with the New York City YMCA, which was also against what they were referring to as “obscenity.” By connecting with them, he got access to a lot of powerful New Yorkers who were able to fund his campaign. He got himself a position as a special inspector at the postal service. Much of the Comstock Act’s power comes from the ability to regulate communications across state lines.

The law forbids the sending of obscene materials through the mail. Comstock was enforcing the law by ordering thousands of items through the mail, from contraceptives and sex toys to erotic images and abortifacients [substances that end a pregnancy]. Then, after receiving the items, he would prosecute the people sending them. He was targeting people who were known to be selling the raw material but also, more importantly, people who were selling any kind of information that was education-related, not obscene—literally things like “Here’s how to make a baby” and also information about birth control and abortion. The Comstock Act was actually a First Amendment exemption law. It was a law about obscenity: what could be said and what could be passed through the mail. Under that, any information or material related to reproductive health or abortion or sex education was classified as obscene. ...

https://www.scientificamerican.com/...till-restricting-peoples-reproductive-rights/
 
Spudrick68 said:
I've been looking at cutting crap out my diet for quite a while now after reading about aspartame.

I bought this book a couple of days ago and have started reading it. It is indeed alarming:

Ultra Processed People by Dr Chris van Tulleken.

He recommends reading it whilst still eating as you would, as it will likely put you off touching the stuff again after reading it.

https://www.theguardian.com/science...foods-take-over-and-what-are-they-doing-to-us
Click to expand...

"industrially produced edible substances" mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

iu
 
Reverend D said:
Has anyone read Adam Buxton's autobiography?

If so, is it any good?

Have had a look at it and can't decide if it looks like an interesting and thoughtful read or trivial fluff. Or a bit of both.
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I’d not heard of Adam before but got it on audible cos it looked kind of quirkily interesting - I absolutely love it, it’s the only book I’ve listened to 3 times. Highly recommend it
 
Providence by Max Barry (London: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd, 2021)

Is Max Barry a saviour of contemporary written science fiction?

So the background to this is that I tend, by default, to regard science fiction as `my genre` because I loved it as a child and exclusively read it at that time. When I hit my late teens, however, I discovered other forms of writing and other genres (indeed I went on to study English Literature at college). Science fiction novels have since become something I orbit around, hungrily taking a peck at at cyclic intervals. And more often than not I am disappointed. All too often I lay aside a novel that I had begun with excitement I lay the blame on multibook space operas with clever-clever technical jiggery pokery which is not half as interesting (or comprehensible) as the authors seem to imagine, That and thin characterisation and general lack of suspense.

Barry, an Austrailian, has about five other novel's to his name and also author's an annoyingly breezy current affairs blog (which does nothing for me) Providence ought to be one more book I didn't really like. After all it's military S.F, sort of, and that's my least liked subgenre. But I finished this book and relished the process.

It is set in an unspecified future and an unspecified culture (which seems to be American). Humans, having developed interstellar travel, have made first contact with an alien species. However, this contact was a fatal one and resulted in the death of many crew members for reasions unknown (and which we humans seem to lack curiousity about). This has lead to a lengthy war with the aliens. An overwheening organisation called The Service has been set up with the sole intent of exterminating as many of these critters as possible. The critters are dubbed Salamanders because of a superficiaL similarity - and they have evolved to be able to function in deep space (yeah, I know).( Later in the novel we learn a bit more about them, and this forms the most intriguing part of it all, even though they never stop just being the Enemy)


We follow a group of young people who have been recruited to pilot oe of a new genration of AI controlled warships - the Providence of the title. There is a strong sense in which the presence of the human crew is something of a PR exercise as the ship itself is able to do most of the work without supervision. However, the war is becoming unpopular and figureheads are needed....

The echoes of Heinlen's Starship Troopers are obvious, yet Barry does not share that author's gung ho meatheadedness. The four protagonists seem vacuous at first (very like the characters in Voerhoven's satirical version of the Heinlen novel, in fact) but as we follow them one by one the character's get fleshed out. It develops into being a sort of Alien style creature-feature with added human interest.
In fact the novel juggles with a lot of hackneyed science fiction tropes - mismatched young people forced together on a space voyage, onboard computers being mysterious, marauding aliens needing to be zapped and so on, but somehow gets away with it.

Barry's style is spare and vivid, more like the prose of a thriller writer than a science fiction one and owing as much to film as to other writers. Some critics have chosen to see Providence as an anti-war novel. I would like to think so but it's not what I got from it. Indeed, the ending seems rather inconsequentail, though I may have missed something. There is an implied critique of over-reliance on A.I - with the ship's onboard compouter going rogue and doing its own thing (a la HAL) but this theme is not fully developed.

But, hey, it's a New Standalone Science Fiction Novel which I finished and read without feigned interest! It had rounded people in it and I didn't feel belittled by the author's sciency brilliance. That's why I'm putting this in the Goor Reads thread.

So in answer to my opening question I would say yes, perhaps - `perhaps` because I have yet to read anything else by the same author.
 
I've been reading The Death and Resurrection Show : From Shaman To Superstar by Rogan P Taylor. It's been getting traction recently with lots of talk about it from Russell Brand, who talked to Dua Lipa about it on her podcast At Your Service (which is where I heard about it - yep I'm a Dua Lipa fan!). It's out of print and prices are astronomical for this fairly academic tome, but so far I think it's got interesting things to say. The basic thing is that it tries to tie popular entertainment forms - theatre, magic, music, story - into the role of the traditional shaman place within their societies, and for Taylor this explains the power that entertainment arts have over people as modern forms tickle those same human needs to engage in the other worlds around us. For some reason, I'm seeing this as a companion to the kind of interesting connections made by Phyllis Siefker's Santa Claus, Last Of The Wildmen. In any case, so far it's pretty good!
rogan.png
 
Zeke Newbold said:
Providence by Max Barry (London: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd, 2021)

Is Max Barry a saviour of contemporary written science fiction?

So the background to this is that I tend, by default, to regard science fiction as `my genre` because I loved it as a child and exclusively read it at that time. When I hit my late teens, however, I discovered other forms of writing and other genres (indeed I went on to study English Literature at college). Science fiction novels have since become something I orbit around, hungrily taking a peck at at cyclic intervals. And more often than not I am disappointed. All too often I lay aside a novel that I had begun with excitement I lay the blame on multibook space operas with clever-clever technical jiggery pokery which is not half as interesting (or comprehensible) as the authors seem to imagine, That and thin characterisation and general lack of suspense.

Barry, an Austrailian, has about five other novel's to his name and also author's an annoyingly breezy current affairs blog (which does nothing for me) Providence ought to be one more book I didn't really like. After all it's military S.F, sort of, and that's my least liked subgenre. But I finished this book and relished the process.

It is set in an unspecified future and an unspecified culture (which seems to be American). Humans, having developed interstellar travel, have made first contact with an alien species. However, this contact was a fatal one and resulted in the death of many crew members for reasions unknown (and which we humans seem to lack curiousity about). This has lead to a lengthy war with the aliens. An overwheening organisation called The Service has been set up with the sole intent of exterminating as many of these critters as possible. The critters are dubbed Salamanders because of a superficiaL similarity - and they have evolved to be able to function in deep space (yeah, I know).( Later in the novel we learn a bit more about them, and this forms the most intriguing part of it all, even though they never stop just being the Enemy)


We follow a group of young people who have been recruited to pilot oe of a new genration of AI controlled warships - the Providence of the title. There is a strong sense in which the presence of the human crew is something of a PR exercise as the ship itself is able to do most of the work without supervision. However, the war is becoming unpopular and figureheads are needed....

The echoes of Heinlen's Starship Troopers are obvious, yet Barry does not share that author's gung ho meatheadedness. The four protagonists seem vacuous at first (very like the characters in Voerhoven's satirical version of the Heinlen novel, in fact) but as we follow them one by one the character's get fleshed out. It develops into being a sort of Alien style creature-feature with added human interest.
In fact the novel juggles with a lot of hackneyed science fiction tropes - mismatched young people forced together on a space voyage, onboard computers being mysterious, marauding aliens needing to be zapped and so on, but somehow gets away with it.

Barry's style is spare and vivid, more like the prose of a thriller writer than a science fiction one and owing as much to film as to other writers. Some critics have chosen to see Providence as an anti-war novel. I would like to think so but it's not what I got from it. Indeed, the ending seems rather inconsequentail, though I may have missed something. There is an implied critique of over-reliance on A.I - with the ship's onboard compouter going rogue and doing its own thing (a la HAL) but this theme is not fully developed.

But, hey, it's a New Standalone Science Fiction Novel which I finished and read without feigned interest! It had rounded people in it and I didn't feel belittled by the author's sciency brilliance. That's why I'm putting this in the Goor Reads thread.

So in answer to my opening question I would say yes, perhaps - `perhaps` because I have yet to read anything else by the same author.
Click to expand...
About the only new science fiction I read these days is Adrian Tchaikovsky, who has an obvious fascination with non-human intelligence that pervades his novels. His books aren't consistently great, but the best really are very good.
 
The chapter on the Hitler diaries is very detailed and good. The rest of the chapters didn't fit my interest much.

Hoax: Hitler's Diaries, Lincoln's Assassins, and Other Famous Frauds
Edward Steers Jr., Joe Nickell
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16286331-hoax?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=AYK7DcJpQR&rank=1

This is a solid analysis of the usual Fortean subjects. I liked the chapters on spirit paintings and stigmata. This is a book in the skeptic, debunking style.

Real-Life X-Files: Investigating the Paranormal
Joe Nickell
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/825652.Real_Life_X_Files?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_11
 
A few days ago I had Amazon's book deals pop up on my Kindle, and The Invisible Library by Geneveive Cogman popped up for a couple of quid. Upon investigation, Prime would allow me to read it for free; I wasn't really expecting much and was prepared to abandon it rapidly. I'm three-quarters of the way through and enjoying it immensely. From the description: Irene is a professional spy for the mysterious Library, which harvests fiction from different realities. And along with her enigmatic assistant Kai, she's posted to an alternative London. Their mission – to retrieve a dangerous book. Well, any book with an interdimensional library was going to grab my attention. It's fast-paced, crazily unpredictable and fun. I think if I quote a paragraph it will give a sense of the flavour:

Irene felt a desperate nostalgia for her Library. Her life was more than just airship chases, cyborg alligator attacks, and hanging out with this universe's nearest analogue to Sherlock Holmes. She was a Librarian, and the deepest, most fundamental part of her life involved a love of books. Right now, she wanted nothing more than to shut the rest of the world out, and have nothing to worry about, except the next page of whatever she was reading.

A sentiment that I agree with entirely. First in a series, not sure how it will wrap up at the end of the book so who knows if it will stand alone. Nevertheless, lots of fun from an author I've never heard of.
 
While I have nothing specifically to recommend book wise, I do suggest that you all go and have a look at this unique bookstore in Utah. The owner specializes in rare books, first editions, signed copies and dark, Fortean based themes.

There are plenty of rarities for sale but TikTok is where you'll see all of the goodies.

Moon's Rare Books

Moon's Rare Book on TikTok
 
May I recommend “K-Pax” by Gene Brewer? Apologies if it’s been suggested before, but I’ve found it on several readings over the years to be a fascinating study and description of mental states, of how our minds may work to cope with trauma, how a psychiatrist has to deal with what can seem fantastical, but also wanting to help and all inside of a darn good sci-fi novel... and ( slight spoiler alert) it doesn’t baulk at the end, either....
 
Oh and while I’m here... one of my very fave Sci-fi novels is “ Fade Out” by Patrick Tilley...
Though written in the mid ‘70s, the impact of how the alien craft (?) effects the World then, pre internet, smart phones etc would, if applied to now really hit home in today’s ultra connected/ OMG, I can’t stand being offline for a minute, “ social” media drenched society... its well told, with characters you can relate to and understand.
An original setup and treatment that keeps you interested until the end, and stays with you afterwards... would make a terrific thoughtful, intelligent film, if say done by Chris Nolan.

I’ve probably read it 20 times over the years...
 
This has just been published and looks very interesting:

FyLufgpWYAAEBB5.jpeg.jpg

  • April 2023·256 pages·216x138mm
  • ·Hardback - 9781786839916
  • ·eBook - pdf - 9781786839923
  • ·eBook - epub - 9781786839930

About The Book​

This book asks why so many authors drew on Cornwall for inspiration across the long nineteenth century, and considers the seismic cultural changes in Cornwall that spurred this interest – from the collapse of the mining industry to the developing national rail network; from the birth of tourism to the neomedieval rise in interest in King Arthur. Understanding frequently overlooked Cornwall in this period is vital to understanding Gothic literature, the Victorian imagination, intellectual and creative networks, and attitudes towards regionality. The first part of the book considers landscape and legend, defining a mining Gothic tradition, exposing the shipwreck as Gothic mastertrope, and demonstrating how antiquarians drew from Cornish legends and lore. The second part explores encounters with modernity, investigating the impact of railway expansion on access to Cornwall, the development of a Cornish King Arthur as a key figure of Victorian masculinity, and the specific features of the Cornish ghost story.

Contents​

Introduction: Corpses, Coasts and Carriages
Cornwall: A Brief Introduction
The Cornish Gothic
The Regional Gothic
Cornish Gothic Criticism
Part One - Landscapes and Legends: Preserving and Confronting the Past
Chapter One: ‘The dead lay buried and yet unburied’: Minescapes and the Subterranean World
The Subterranean Gothic
Wheal Darkness by H. D. Lowry
Chapter Two: ‘If there’s got to be wrecks, please send them to we’: Seascapes and Shipwrecks
Shipwreck as Gothic Master Trope
The Dead Secret and Wreck Media
Bram Stoker and ‘The Coming of Abel Behenna’
Chapter Three: ‘Hear the most curious stories’: Folklore, Antiquarianism and Gothic Rewritings
In the Roar of the Sea by Sabine Baring-Gould
Part Two – Travel and Tourism: Cornish Identity and Encounters with Modernity
Chapter Four: 'Out of the sound of the railway whistle': Gothic Travel and the Expansion of the Railway
Victorian Gothic Travel
Victorian Travel in Cornwall
The Jewel of Seven Stars and Gothic Travel into Cornwall
‘Colonel Benyon’s Entanglement’
Chapter Five: ‘The poet gives all his votes to us’: King Arthur and Arthurian Tourism in Tintagel
Nineteenth-Century Medievalism
Arthur in Cornwall
Case Studies
Chapter Six: ‘A phantom to proclaim their hoary and solitary age’: Cornish Ghosts and Hauntings
Visiting Haunted Cornwall
Economic Spectres
Haunted Shores
Conclusion

About the Author(s)​

Joan Passey is a lecturer in English at the University of Bristol, specialising in the cultural history of coasts and seascapes.

Source:
https://www.uwp.co.uk/book/cornish-gothic-1830-1913/
 
A while back, I was given a most fantastic book as a gift. It's an exhibition catalog, really, from an exhibit called Supernatural America - The Paranormal in American Art. I wasn't able to see the exhibit myself as it was far away, but the book has photos and prints of all the pieces, as well as text about the artists. (It's massive, too, it must weigh around 5 lbs.) I'd never really thought about my country having a real paranormal tradition until seeing it laid out like this. You can buy it online and I highly recommend it.
I don't want to post any pics due to copyrights, but here's a link from the NEH that includes a few photos: https://www.neh.gov/article/supernatural-america
and a brief video showing some of the exhibits:
 
Unusual Ways to Die: History's Weirdest Deaths
James Proud

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show...e?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=CC4yHsdTp1&rank=1

In 1567, Hans Steininger, the mayor of Braunau, Austria, died after tripping over his magnificent six-foot beard. He usually rolled it up to keep it out of the way, but one day a fire broke out, and in his hurry to escape he tripped over his facial hair and broke his neck. Steininger's beard is still on display in the town today.
 
Mrs. Wakeman vs. the Antichrist: And Other Strange-but-True Tales from American History - Robert Damon Schneck

In Vermont, the Dorrilites were sexually promiscuous vegetarians who wore wooden shoes and sang songs “that would defile a brothel.”2 By 1800, their leader, William Dorril, was claiming to be invulnerable and while preaching that “No arm can hurt my flesh,” a man stood up, punched Dorril in the face, and kept punching him until he admitted that it hurt; they disbanded soon after. Eighty years later, the spirit of Jesus entered red-haired George Jacob Schweinfurth and he set up a “heaven” at Rockford, Illinois, where several female disciples “conceived by the Holy Ghost” and had redheaded babies (Schweinfurth later joined Christian Science and became a life insurance salesman).3

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show...arch=true&from_srp=true&qid=AJlSfNJ9eo&rank=1

I don't know what to think of this book yet. Some parts are fascinating, but some parts are very American cult stuff, that is weird but predictable. I still think 4 stars for the effort of compiling the strange cases. I have never heard of the exact cases in this book, so there is some original research here.

There's a chapter on autodecapitators, people who built machines to cut their own head off ...
 
uair01 said:
Mrs. Wakeman vs. the Antichrist: And Other Strange-but-True Tales from American History - Robert Damon Schneck

In Vermont, the Dorrilites were sexually promiscuous vegetarians who wore wooden shoes and sang songs “that would defile a brothel.”2 By 1800, their leader, William Dorril, was claiming to be invulnerable and while preaching that “No arm can hurt my flesh,” a man stood up, punched Dorril in the face, and kept punching him until he admitted that it hurt; they disbanded soon after. Eighty years later, the spirit of Jesus entered red-haired George Jacob Schweinfurth and he set up a “heaven” at Rockford, Illinois, where several female disciples “conceived by the Holy Ghost” and had redheaded babies (Schweinfurth later joined Christian Science and became a life insurance salesman).3

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show...arch=true&from_srp=true&qid=AJlSfNJ9eo&rank=1

I don't know what to think of this book yet. Some parts are fascinating, but some parts are very American cult stuff, that is weird but predictable. I still think 4 stars for the effort of compiling the strange cases. I have never heard of the exact cases in this book, so there is some original research here.

There's a chapter on autodecapitators, people who built machines to cut their own head off ...
Click to expand...
Robert gave a talk to the Edinburgh Fortean Society on autoerotic asphyxiation

 
This looks a great read:

"The 1970s were significant for the development of UFO lore. The ‘Pascagoula Abduction’ took place in 1973. In 1974 John Lennon witnessed strange lights flying over his Manhattan residence. The following year, Travis Walton went missing for a standard work-week after his infamous forest encounter with a UFO. “Contactee” Billy Meier released his first UFO photos in 1976. Charles Berlitz’s The Bermuda Triangle(1974) popularized ideas about supernatural phenomena manifesting across our planet while Betty and Barney Hill’s abduction story was broadcast to a mass audience in a made-for-TV movie (The UFO Incident, 1975).

Amidst this resurgent interest in unexplained mysteries, the International Fortean Organization (INFO) took the hint and repackaged some of their old magazine articles into a book: Extraterrestrial Intervention: The Evidence (1975).

Extraterrestrial Intervention doesn’t break any new ground, but it offers a glimpse into the paranormal topics that were trending in the 1970s. Unsurprisingly, they’re some of the same “mysteries” we see rehashed and reanimated in today’s books, magazines, and shows."

https://theobservermagazine.substack.com/p/books-your-parents-warned-you-about-702
 
Because I'm easily bored and distracted I asked ChatGPT-4 for some outlier book suggestions. These ones look interesting:

"Shaman of Oberstdorf: Chonrad Stoeckhlin and the Phantoms of the Night" by Wolfgang Behringer - This book tells the story of Chonrad Stoeckhlin, a 16th-century herdsman who had strange and terrifying visions of the night world, marking him as a social outcast and a target of witch persecution.

"Crowley: The Beast in Berlin: Art, Sex, and Magick in the Weimar Republic" by Tobias Churton - A look into the life of Aleister Crowley during his time in Berlin in the early 20th century. Crowley was a controversial figure in the occult and an emblem of eccentricity.

"Stranger in a Strange Land: Searching for Gershom Scholem and Jerusalem" by George Prochnik - Prochnik explores the life and thoughts of Gershom Scholem, a nonconformist scholar who was one of the pioneers in the serious study of Jewish mysticism.

"The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe" by David I. Kertzer - The story of the contentious relationship between Pope Pius XI and Benito Mussolini, both nonconformists in their own ways, shaping the rise of fascism in Italy.

"Eccentric Orbits: The Iridium Story" by John Bloom - Although not a biography of an individual, this book tells the story of the creation and near-doom of the satellite system known as Iridium, which was a radical departure from established space and telecommunications practices.

"Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman" by Robert K. Massie - An intimate and insightful biography of Catherine II of Russia, exploring her life, reign, and legacy.

"The Pope Who Would Be King: The Exile of Pius IX and the Emergence of Modern Europe" by David I. Kertzer - A dramatic tale about the collapse of the papal states and the emergence of modern Europe.

"The Art of Forgery: The Minds, Motives and Methods of Master Forgers" by Noah Charney - A captivating exploration into the world of art forgery, its history, and the psychology of the artists and collectors involved.

"Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need To Know About Global Politics" by Tim Marshall – This book explains how the geography of countries shapes their political situations and relations with other countries.

"How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence" by Michael Pollan – This book explores the renaissance of psychedelic science and the potential of these substances to improve mental health and enhance our understanding of consciousness.

The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary" by Simon Winchester - An engrossing biography of two remarkable men involved in the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary: Professor James Murray and Dr. William Chester Minor, an inmate at an asylum for the criminally insane.

"Shah of Shahs" by Ryszard Kapuściński - Kapuściński chronicles the final years of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran, whose flamboyant lifestyle and autocratic rule brought down a revolution.

"The Mad Boy, Lord Berners, My Grandmother and Me: An Aristocratic Family, a High-Society Scandal and an Extraordinary Legacy" by Sofka Zinovieff - This book offers a wild, eccentric, and scandalous journey through British high society of the 20th century, starring the peculiar Lord Berners.

And added:

  1. "Nostradamus: How an Obscure Renaissance Astrologer Became the Modern Prophet of Doom" by Stéphane Gerson - A thoughtful exploration of the life of Nostradamus, a 16th-century apothecary and seer whose cryptic prophecies continue to be widely interpreted and disputed.
  2. "The Magus of Freemasonry: The Mysterious Life of Elias Ashmole--Scientist, Alchemist, and Founder of the Royal Society" by Tobias Churton - Elias Ashmole was a 17th-century antiquary, astrologer, alchemist, and one of the founding members of the Royal Society. This biography explores his mysterious life and contributions to Freemasonry.
  3. "Dark Star Rising: Magick and Power in the Age of Trump" by Gary Lachman - While not a biography of a single individual, this book explores the influence of mysticism and esoteric beliefs on contemporary politics and figures like President Donald Trump.
  4. "The Perfect Heresy: The Revolutionary Life and Death of the Medieval Cathars" by Stephen O'Shea - The Cathars were a Christian dualist or Gnostic movement in the 12th to 14th centuries which was exterminated by the Inquisition. Their story is full of visionaries, heretics, and eccentric figures.
  5. "John Dee: The World of an Elizabethan Magus" by Peter J. French - A biography of John Dee, adviser to Queen Elizabeth I, who was a scholar, magician, and one of the first advocates of the British Empire.
  6. "Madame Blavatsky: The Mother of Modern Spirituality" by Gary Lachman - Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was a controversial figure and a leading mystic and spiritualist of the 19th century who co-founded the Theosophical Society.
  7. "Swedenborg: Life and Teaching" by George Trobridge - A study of the life and mystical teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg, the 18th-century Swedish scientist, philosopher, theologian, revelator, and mystic.
  8. "The Life of Milarepa" translated by Lobsang P. Lhalungpa - One of the most famous saints in Tibetan Buddhism, Milarepa’s life story is a tale of murder, redemption, and enlightenment.
  9. "Carlos Castaneda: The Man, His Work, His Critics" by Ruth L. Bunzel - A biography of the controversial anthropologist and mystic Carlos Castaneda, who introduced the spiritual teachings of a Yaqui Indian sorcerer to the Western world.
 
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