General Non Fiction – A miscellaneous selection

I’ve spent the last week since Christmas scanning the fiction shelves on the left hand side of the large bookcase. It was a task that involved unforeseen toil and trouble. I was wondering why I ended up in the evening with a sore throat, then finally realised today that it was the dusty state of the books that was causing this. The shelves, I must admit have not been dusted for over twenty years. This exercise has at least cleaned them up.

Anyway, before I get stuck into fiction, I’ll finish off the non fiction.

First Andre Breton’s Manifestos of Surrealism and Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With A Thousand Faces (which book I discovered in the fiction shelves).

Next – a few books relating to psychology. Ego And Archetype and The One Dimensional Man.

A stray Pelican on Existentialism and The Highest State of Consciousness

Literature & Biography – The Bloomsbury Group, both books by Quentin Bell.

A biography of Oscar Wilde by Philippe Jullian

It has been many years since I last heard Findhorn mentioned, but apparently the community is still going. The New Agers of the 1970s were of course fascinated by its claims of giant vegetables and fairies at the bottom of the garden. Being a new ager of the 1970s I of course have a book on the subject.

And Celtic fairies…

Finally a biography of Marie Stopes and a facsimile of colonial Australian history titled Town Life In Australia.

Coming soon – mass market paperbacks of the 60s, 70s and 80s.

Arthurian Britain

After shamefully neglecting this blog from August, I was suddenly overcome with an urge to continue it, as I assure you I have always intended to do so.

It has been bubbling up inside me for a couple of weeks and I’m steeling myself to scan some of the fiction shelves on the large bookshelf whilst I’m on leave over Christmas.

So tonight, I present for your delectation various books on King Arthur and an ancient Britain theme, which obviously fascinated me at one time. I do have an Everyman’s edition of “Le Morte D’Arthur” somewhere or other which will be shown later.

A stray Pelican first, and a few popular titles to complement it.

I can’t say I’ve seen these books around in the stores lately…

Next : Archaeology

Feminism & Anarchy

Do the two above social philosophies go together? For me they do, as I recall that when I first discovered feminism, I also was a member of TREASON, the Anarchist Club at Melbourne University in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Consequently I collected books on these subjects as below.

Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch was for me probably the most influential of the various feminist texts published in the 1970s. It was a book that everyone read at the time, both men and women. I also remember being impressed by Ingrid Bengis’ Combat in the Erogenous Zone.

Then there is The Dialectic of Sex by the wonderfully named Shulamith Firestone.

Emma Goldman actually provides the link between Feminism and Anarchism. I did have both volumes of her biography, but Volume One has gone astray.

A couple of other books on Anarchism…

Next – more New Age type stuff.