Despite the name of the blog, books don't get mentioned a lot on here. So I thought it was time to mix it up a little, and chuck this up on here, inspired by this article from The Surfing Pizza.
Sunday afternoon is not one of my favourite times of the week. It’s usually too late to start any major new undertakings, but too early to go to bed. The spectre of work looms over the forthcoming week, its ominous presence casting a gloomy shadow over the enjoyment you might otherwise get from simply not being at work.
The evening is usually better – church, dinner with friends
or simply watching TV are all great ways to alleviate this. But these are all
night-time activities, with the possible exception of TV – and free-to-air TV
on a Sunday afternoon is usually a black pit of despair in and of itself. the
hours between 1 and 5pm can be a grim time.
A lot of this probably stems from high school. Though I had
many friends, I rarely hung out with them outside the confines of school. There
was “nothing to do” at my place (though to be fair, you can extend that
criticism to just about anywhere as a teenager), so I didn’t invite people
around and I didn’t often take the initiative to go and hang out at a friend’s home
instead. So more often than not, solace was found in the confines of the local library.
Open from 1-4 on a Sunday afternoon, it served as a place for me to read books
and comics – and perhaps most importantly, it helped stave off the Sunday
afternoon blues.
So
I’ve put together a list of books that I find great for Sunday reading. Some are old,
some are new. All are specific to my peculiar set of interests, so your own
mileage with them will probably vary. But most of these books are not
particularly rare or expensive, and a bit of second-hand bookshop or eBay
scouring should see you being able to track most of them down easily, should
you be so inclined.
Most of these books are structured in a short, easy-to-read, article-style fashion. This is perfect for Sudnay afternoon reading, when you want to be distracted, but don't want to invest too much time into something.
*The Complete Book of Dinosaurs (2006)
Picture from Amazon.com |
However, I have still retained my interest in dinosaurs into adulthod, and that's why I handed over the cash for this book. Divided up into short articles that covered all known dinosaurs (at the time of publication), it's full of great information and (almost equally importantly in such a book) loads of illustrations. If you have a favourite dinosaur, odds are strong you'll find something about it in here. The $15 I paid for it was an absolute bargain.
*30 Years of Adventure:
A Celebration of Dungeons and Dragons (2004)
Picture from Amazon.com |
Not long after I started playing, I came across this book in
my local library. Not quite a straight history of the game, it’s more of a love
letter to the franchise, as penned by various TSR and Wizards of the Coast
employees, and numerous celebrities (including Vin Diesel and Stephen Colbert!)
Best of all, it’s packed with a huge amount of artwork
that’s rarely seen now – I love TSR’s 1980s/early 1990s fantasy artwork. Lots
of it is quite crude by today’s standards, but it has a charm and atmosphere that more modern
iterations are hard-pressed to compete with -- in my opinion anyway.Being published in 2004, the book finishes around the time of the 3.5 release. 4th and 5th edition were still years away, so it’s time for an update. I’d definitely pick it up an updated version if Wizards of the Coast decide to do one.
*Communion – Whitley
Strieber (1987)
Picture from Amazon.com |
My parents were always fine with me reading books about UFOs, aliens, the paranormal etc as a kid, but they were a little bit funny about Communion and consequently I didn’t read it until I was probably in my mid-teens. But I do remember the cover image frightening me as a child; in hindsight it was probably the first time I had really seen an image of a grey – they were an uncommon sight in a pre-X-Files world. Ted Seth Jacob’s rendering gave it an almost photorealistic appearance, which made it seem much more real and therefore all the more disturbing. I’d seen alien illustrations before, but they were just that – illustrations, easily dismissed as unreal or non-threatening. This was different.
The content within the book is almost as disturbing as its
cover – though pretty standard stuff to those familiar with UFO and abduction
literature, Strieber’s background as a horror author lends it a more unsettling
tone than most. Incidentally, there's also a film adaptation starring Christopher Walken as Strieber -- apparently it's not great, though I've never seen it myself.
*Mysteries of the
Unknown: Alien Encounters (1992)
Picture from Amazon.com |
An absolute plethora of books on UFOs, aliens and the broader
“unexplained” were published from the 1970s to the 1990s – just go check out
your local second hand bookstore if you don’t believe me. Time-Life’s Mysteries of the Unknown series was one
of the most prominent in the genre, spanning a whopping 33 volumes from the
late 1980s through to the mid 1990s.
I only read maybe 4 or 5 of these – that was all that my library
had, and most of them didn’t interest me – but they have remained as something
of a personal gold standard for books on the unexplained. Classy, black
faux-leather covers, lavish illustrations (many printed with metallic ink) and
filled with interesting (if highly questionable) tales, it’s not hard to see
why they were such a hit on release or why they're still so entertaining today. Look at that ominous cover -- it's worth the price of admission alone!
Though I’m sure I read this title as a kid, I recently ordered
a 2004 reprint from eBay and found most of it quite
unfamiliar. Perhaps it’s been longer than I remember between reads, or maybe I just never read it at all (SCREEN MEMORY ALERT). But it’s
pretty much what you’d expect – alien abductions, the evolving nature of the phenomenon over the 20th century, comparisons with folk tales of
fairies – and of course, ancient astronauts, with a heavy emphasis on the theories of Zecharia Sitchin. Though I haven’t seen any references
to reptilians in there, which would be almost unthinkable were an updated version published today.
I also spent a lot of time with its companion volume, The
UFO Phenomenon, which I’ll hopefully cover in the next part of this
series.
BONUS MATERIAL: You can
watch one of the ads for the Mysteries of the Unknown series here – and Julianne Moore
showed up in another.
Well, that's it for part one. Hope you enjoyed it! Part two hopefully to come soon.
Good selection of boyhood books. The only one missing (according to a friend who was a school librarian) would be the Guinness book of records (for the nerds), and a horse book for girls. -- Seymour Knutts
ReplyDeleteThe Guinness Book of Records is indeed a classic for this sort of read.
ReplyDelete