Suggestions For A Good Read

[uair01]

I'm probably going to buy this. The previous occult Putin Trump book by Gary Lachman was great "fun". So this could be great "fun" also:

https://www.newdawnmagazine.com/articles/the-return-of-holy-russiaThe Return of Holy Russia

By Gary Lachman

Putin finds his traditional values in his Orthodox belief, and it is in this role of defender of the true faith that, along with Eurasia and the thinkers of the Silver Age, the idea of Holy Russia seems to be making a comeback. This was an identity that Russia and her “God-bearing people” embraced practically from the start, from their earliest adoption of Orthodox Christianity, to the attempt at a theocratic rule during the Muscovite empire of the late Middle Ages, and to the idea of its being a “Third Rome,” after the downfall of the first one and the capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453. And it is here, perhaps, that we can find the roots of the notion that Russia has a “mission,” that special destiny that informs the different versions of the “Russian idea.”

 

[Spudrick68]

I've just noticed this free on Project Gutenberg: Throttled The Detection of the German & Anarchist Bomb Plotters by Thomas Tunney (1919): http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/61996
It may appeal to someone.

 

[Ogdred Weary]

https://thequietus.com/articles/28209-ramsey-campbell-interview-horror-weird-books

 

[ramonmercado]

My review for FT.

I Want To Believe: Posadism, UFOs And Apocalypse Communism.

By A.A. Gittlitz.

Pluto Press Apr 2020. 272 pages.Index. Pb ISBN: 9780745340777. £17.99.

This book doesn’t mock Argentinian Trotskyist Posadas (Homero Cristalli), it respects the genuine struggles he and his supporters engaged in. Posadas and his movement organised Trade Unions, Peasant Collectives and Guerilla Bands under circumstances of extreme oppression. Many of his militants were tortured and murdered. His son-in-law was disappeared by the Argentinian Junta. It does critique his politics and his more outlandish beliefs but sets them in context. I Want To Believe is also an interesting introduction to Latin American Trotskyism.

It is difficult to separate his politics from the Fortean though.The influence of Posadas had waned by the time Peron returned to Argentina in 1973 but when gun fights broke out between Left and Rightwing Peronists at the airport, Posadas was blamed. The shooting was really organised by Lopez Regas, a practitioner of Espiritismo, a religious syncretism similar to Santerre. He wanted to turn Peronism into an occult theology of the Argentinian Race to overcome modernity. He was also a member of the Propaganda Due (P2) Italian Masonic Lodge. HIs aim, which succeeded, was to drive Peron to the right.

Posadas supported a First Strike Nuclear Attack by the USSR believing that it would result in the final destruction of capitalism. The Posadist nuclei around the world would take a leadership role after the war to enable recovery. Rival Trotskyist leader Ernest Mandel was denounced as a “pussy who doesn’t believe in nuclear war”. The Posadists had some influence in Cuba but lost this when they called on the USSR to break the US blockade of Cuba. Castro was denounced as a reformist because he also wanted to avoid a nuclear conflagration. Ché was sympathetic to the Trotskyists and when he disappeared on his foreign adventures Posadas claimed that Raul Castro had personally killed Ché for becoming a Trotskyist. When Che was killed in Bolivia in 1967 Posadas said it was fake news.

Even back in 1917 the Bolshevik Futurists believed that advanced races existed elsewhere in the galaxy and it was our destiny to link up with them. The 1947 UFO wave convinced some Posadists that Intra-Galactic socialists were arriving but such discussion was discouraged. By 1967 Posadas had mellowed to the Red ET hypothesis. UFO’s had to come from advanced socialist societies to have developed interstellar travel. Posadas believed we should “appeal to the beings on other planets to intervene and collaborate with Earth’s inhabitants in suppressing poverty”.

Posadas wasn’t clear as to whether sentient dolphins would steer the UFO’s but he saw a role for these cetaceans alongside humans after he read John Lilly’s writings that: “dolphins were a second second terrestrial intelligence … capable of complex communication, planning and empathy”. The theories of Russian new age midwife Igor Charovsky also proved attractive. Children born underwater “ developed vastly superior mental and physical abilities”. Experimental births in the Black Sea attracted wild dolphins who formed a telepathic link with the mothers and acted as midwives. Posadas thought:such “ babies better able to withstand air shortages than adults” as they had been born in water. Together with dolphins they would form the new socialist wave,

Posadas died in 1981 and his international movement has faded into obscurity but he has won a new following online with memesters and pranksters spreading “his message”. The Men in Red stormed the stage at the Sixth World Ufology Symposium in 1998, demanding the “self determination of an interspecies evolution”. A 2016 board game called Trot Wars featured Posadas as a playable character. The Intergalactic Workers League - Posadist lampoons the Scientologists, offering socialist “stress tests” in the streets of New York. On the 2018 May Day parade they carried a Slavic-style icon of Posadas and wore t-shirts depicting different types of UFOs.

So Posadas is remembered in memes of mushroom clouds, leaping dolphins and whizzing UFOs. But he was once a professional footballer. I can imagine an alternate history where Posadas managed Argentina and Camus led France as they met in the 1966 World Cup.

Four Stars out of Five.

PO’C.

 

[ramonmercado]

My review for FT.

Ireland’s Forgotten Past
A History of the Overlooked and Disremembered
by Turtle Bunbury
Thames & Hudson 2020
Hb, 224pp, £14.95, illus, bib, ind. ISBN 9780500022535

Turtle Bunbury’s family have farmed in County Carlow since the 1660s; he grew up and lives in a Victorian house stuffed with curios which inspired some of these tales. A ring fort, a ruined abbey, a dolmen and barrow graves are all close to his home. He is determined to ensure that as new narratives emerge the old ones will not be forgotten.

So his cycle of stories opens with a Devonian Tetrapod’s fossilised tracks and closes with Operation Shamrock when orphans were brought to Ireland from a devastated Europe in 1946. Some of these pieces could make for grim reading but Turtles light-hearted style wafts you along as he seamlessly provides background information to the tales.

By 1308 The Knights Templar controlled New Ross port and possessed estates and castles across Ireland. Their downfall was less bloody than elsewhere; they lost their estates but not their lives as the charges of consorting with Satan were not proven.They were sentenced to penance and even given small pensions. Better than being burned at the stake like their brethren on the continent.

Ireland played host to two pretenders to the English Throne. Perkin Warbeck claimed to be one of the Princes in the Tower. The Earl of Desmond and John Walter, Mayor of Cork, took up his cause but the rebellion collapsed when they failed to take Waterford. Desmond made his peace with the King but Warbeck and Walters were executed. Lambert Simnel also had his Standard raised in Ireland, by the Earl of Kildare, but this too ended in disaster with the Earl in the Tower of London. The luckier Simnel was pardoned and ended up as a Royal Falconer.

Lord Rosse, Irish Grand Master of the Freemasons, lived a life of debauchery. He toured Europe becoming a sorcerer and dabbler in the Dark Arts. He wrote Dionysus Rising, supposedly based on scrolls looted from the library of Alexandria. Around 1720 Rosse and rowdies known as the Bucks, set up the Hell-Fire Club in a lodge in the Dublin Mountains. They held black masses, orgies and reputedly sacrificed black cats. The Devil even dropped in one night to play cards with Rosse. This was playacting, they were really just a bunch of young Protestant rakes, the Bullingdon Boys of their day. Their masquerade though, extended to the burning of Catholic churches. Being non-sectarian they also disrupted Protestant services, streaking in front of Bishops. Dean Jonathan Swift declared them to be “monsters”.

Ireland had it's 18th Century Gold Rush in the Glen of Avoca, the largest nugget found weighed 682 grams and was turned into a snuffbox for George III.The veins were long exhausted by the late 19th Century when Charles Stewart Parnell spent long hours panning in the Gold Mines river but only found enough gold to line a wedding band for his fiance.

Prince Bertie (later Edward VII) joined the Grenadier Guards at the Curragh Army Camp in 1861. He formed a close relationship with one of the "Curragh Wrens", the local ladies of the night who built their homes in the gorse bushes. His scandalised parents brought him home. As King he revisited the Curragh and may well have reflected on his lost love.

An entertaining collection covering diverse aspects of Irish history including: the wily Catholic tailor who made his fortune outfitting Cromwell’s soldiers; Queen Victoria's visit to Ireland; and the Statutes of Kilkenny. Also a few more fortean gems: the Bear Cave; how the Bleeding Horse Pub got its name, the Big Wind of 1839; and The Cherokees whose antics rivaled those of the Bucks. The 100 Woodcut illustrations are evocative of the stories they accompany, bringing to life a paleolithic bear and an angry mob amongst others.

4/5

 

[MorningAngel]

I’ve just published this on kindle (paperback coming soon).

‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’ Hamlet

Department 49’s was set up to protect the public from those things. Be it ghosts, aliens or sea monsters the Department will be there.

It was just a normal night when the train crash happened. It was a horrible accident. But there was more to it. There was something strange about one of the trains, it was Victorian and shouldn’t have been there.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Phantasmagoria-Time-Again-Dawn-Duval-ebook/dp/B07NYS7G53

Please don’t tell me if you think it’s crap. I’ve spent years on it.

 

[MorningAngel]

I’ve just published this on kindle (paperback coming soon).

‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’ Hamlet

Department 49’s was set up to protect the public from those things. Be it ghosts, aliens or sea monsters the Department will be there.

It was just a normal night when the train crash happened. It was a horrible accident. But there was more to it. There was something strange about one of the trains, it was Victorian and shouldn’t have been there.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Phantasmagoria-Time-Again-Dawn-Duval-ebook/dp/B07NYS7G53

Please don’t tell me if you think it’s crap. I’ve spent years on it.

I’ve even made a little ‘advert’.

 

[uair01]

He wanted to turn Peronism into an occult theology of the Argentinian Race to overcome modernity.
Even back in 1917 the Bolshevik Futurists believed that advanced races existed elsewhere in the galaxy and it was our destiny to link up with them.
The Men in Red stormed the stage at the Sixth World Ufology Symposium in 1998, demanding the “self determination of an interspecies evolution”.

Fascinating! This sounds like some of the strange post-postmodern ideas like: afrofuturism, accelerationism and acid communism:
https://my-blackout.com/2019/04/25/mark-fisher-acid-communism-unfinished-introduction/

 

[MorningAngel]

I’ve just published this on kindle (paperback coming soon).

‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’ Hamlet

Department 49’s was set up to protect the public from those things. Be it ghosts, aliens or sea monsters the Department will be there.

It was just a normal night when the train crash happened. It was a horrible accident. But there was more to it. There was something strange about one of the trains, it was Victorian and shouldn’t have been there.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Phantasmagoria-Time-Again-Dawn-Duval-ebook/dp/B07NYS7G53

Please don’t tell me if you think it’s crap. I’ve spent years on it.

Just a note to say the paperback is out now.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Phantasmagoria-Department-D-M-Duval/dp/B088N3TLG4

 

[uair01]

A very good explanation of riot formation:
https://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2020/05/on-days-of-disorder.html?m=1

 

[Spudrick68]

I have been looking at the book reviews of the FT from back issues from over the last 25 years to make myself as book wishlist. Sometimes I want something to read but don't have the inspiration.

Today I bought 3 books for around £13 from Amazon, including post and packing and personally I think that they are great value. So I thought that I'd share them here:

Life After Death & The World Beyond - Jenny Randles & Peters Hough - £3.13 including p & p.
Banvards Folly Tales of Renowned Obscurity Famous Anonymity & Rotten Luck - Paul Collins £7.06 including p & p.
Mysterious Ancient America - Paul Deveraux - £3.13 including p & p.

These are UK only of course.

 

[ramonmercado]

Inventing Loreta Velasquez: Confederate Soldier Impersonator, Media Celebrity, and Con Artist.
by William C. Davis

A great conwoman who if she didn't invent "The Nigerian Bank Scam" was at least one of it's first exponents. She would have an ad placed in newspapers announcing that she was sought as the beneficiary of a will, due gold estates etc. She then would obtain credit on the basis of the announcements. She was born in Cuba of French or Spanish grandees or she was born in Nassau, West Indies daughter of a British Admiral or Colonel depending on which tale you believed. More likely she was born in Louisiana but even this scholarly work (63 pages of notes) cannot conclusively determine that. Her cons started during the US Civil War when she appeared in Confederate uniform, later conning money as a widow.wife of Confederate soldiers. She never fought in battle but claimed to have done so. Her later cons included fake emigration/immigration schemesto Venezuela and North Carolina as well as a long running Mexican rail line scam. A grand read.



.

 

[Spudrick68]

This little eccentric gem has appeared on Project Gutenberg: The Moon Hoax - A Discovery That The Moon Has A Population Of Human Beings As seen By Lord Rose's Telescope :

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/62779

 

[Spudrick68]

The Huey Long Murder Case by Hermann B Deutsch is available on Project Gutenberg : http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/62864

I didn't know about it before I looked at the new additions but it looks like an interesting case: https://ordinary-times.com/2020/01/...nate explanation relates to Huey’s bodyguards.

 

[Spudrick68]

From India To The Planet Mars by Theodore Flournoy is available on Project Gutenberg - http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/63092

 

[packshaud]

Now published. First of four parts. Second is scheduled for autumn, I think.

View attachment 24393

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rise-Fall-...781087555/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8
https://www.bookdepository.com/Rise...087558?ref=grid-view&qid=1584978541077&sr=1-1

Perhaps someday we will see Storm fully translated into English. Translation in Brazil reached #10; all the ones drawn by Lawrence are available in English, but I wouldn't mind seeing the rest like that.

 

[Mythopoeika]

Perhaps someday we will see Storm fully translated into English. Translation in Brazil reached #10; all the ones drawn by Lawrence are available in English, but I wouldn't mind seeing the rest like that.

If they all get translated, I want to finish buying the collection. I have the first 2 books, but am frustrated with the foreign language versions.
Same with Moebius's work - now, there is very little available in English. Baffling.

 

[Spudrick68]

This may appeal to someone into historical Forteana: The Sweating Sickness In England by Francis C Webb-

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/63376

 

[Ogdred Weary]

To my knowledge I've only read one M John Harrison story- The Great God Pan, yes, it half-inches Machen's title. It's a tribute and evocation of the atmosphere of that singular Weird Tale and as haunting as the original if very different content wise. I own a collection of his novel(la)s and another of stories languishing upon my shelves. Seems he has a new novel and anthology out:

https://thequietus.com/articles/290...d-the-sunken-land-begins-to-rise-again-review

 

[dr wu]

I'm enjoying the Jasper Fforde books...just discovered them...the Thursday Next series set in an alternate reality on earth. I'm starting the second book tonight....hope it's as good as the first.

***I like quirky weird books...a question for all here....which is better , the Laundry Files series by Crouch or the Rivers Of London books by Aaronovich?***

 

[Spudrick68]

The Roswell Report: Case Closed by James McAndrew free on Project Gutenberg:

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/63659

 

[Lord Lucan]

Be honest, who owns a copy of this?

 

[Spookdaddy]

Who you gonna call?

Well, first off probably a gynaecologist. Then maybe the fire brigade.

Then, and only then I possibly might call Ghostbusters.

 

[FunkyTT]

That haunted vagina book ... That's so weird, I was just reading that same good reads page myself the other night . I might check out some of his - Carlton whatsits the thirds - books , "bizarro fiction". Interesting.


I've been reading a lot of dystopian novels of late. Brave New World (finally got around to it after years!) . Tender is the flesh ( human meat is now legal dystopia ) and Oryx and Crake. OnC was SPECTACULAR and I've started the next In the trilogy. Margeret Atwood of Handmaids tale fame is the author. Writing from male perspective this time. The SarahTomo recent review is me.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/46756.Oryx_and_Crake?from_choice=false&from_home_module=false

 

[maximus otter]

Be honest, who owns a copy of this?
View attachment 31568

Yes, and its sequel: My Hoop is a Hellgate.

maximus otter

 

[Lord Lucan]

Yes, and its sequel: My Hoop is a Hellgate.

maximus otter

This does not surprise me.

 

[Spookdaddy]

The last couple of days I have been listening to a lot of spoken word, bookmarked for future reference over the summer.

Just been listening to L P Hartley's ghost story, A Visitor From Down Under. A title which, it has just struck me, might in a more creatively euphemistic age have done as an alternative for the previously discussed authorial work.

(As indeed, now I come to think of it, might the title of Hartley's most famous published work.)

 

[Ogdred Weary]

The last couple of days I have been listening to a lot of spoken word, bookmarked for future reference over the summer.

Just been listening to L P Hartley's ghost story, A Visitor From Down Under. A title which, it has just struck me, might in a more creatively euphemistic age have done as an alternative for the previously discussed authorial work.

(As indeed, now I come to think of it, might the title of Hartley's most famous published work.)

Wouldn't it be more The Don't Go Between?

 

[Spudrick68]

Spectropia; or, Surprising Spectral Illusions by J.H. Brown.

Unsophisticated by todays standards but may keep someone's kids amused for about 30 seconds:

Spectropia; or, Surprising Spectral Illusions by J. H. Brown - Free Ebook (gutenberg.org)

 

[dr wu]

Well..no one ever commenetd on my question on the Rivers of London series by Aaronovich so I bought the first 3 anyway....so far I am enjoying the first one ...Midnight Riot as it's called in the US.