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)
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| Picture from Amazon.com |
Like many children, I was deeply obsessed by dinosaurs. I was going to be the first person to discover
dinosaur soft tissue – or more specifically, dinosaur skin. It seemed like the
logical progression – we had found bones, skin impressions and even evidence of
feathers, but no actual soft tissue as far as I was aware. Soft tissue has
since been found, and though I think skin is still up for grabs, my palaeontology
days are probably behind me.
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)
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| Picture from Amazon.com |
I first played Dungeons and Dragons in 2006, when I was at
one of my absolute lowest points of life. Desperately poor, attending uni and
living out of home, it was the closest I ever came to Dickensian living. I don’t
recommend it. So I do not exaggerate when I say that Dungeons and Dragons –
among other pen-and-paper RPGs – was an absolute lifeline during this period.
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)
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| Picture from Amazon.com |
Selling a huge number of copies in the late 1980s, Communion is a seminal work in UFO
literature and probably best known to the general public today as the book that
popularised the image of the “Grey”.
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)
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| 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.
Minifigures are one of my favourite things about Lego – and series 12 is on the way (possibly even out in your country by the time you read this). So to celebrate this upcoming release, every day this week, we’ll be looking at a different minifigure from the series that have come before. This is by no means a comprehensive overview – nor even necessarily a look at my favourites – but it’s an example of some of the unusual figures the line has produced since it debuted back in 2010. Today, we look at a figure from series 6 -- the Classic Alien. 
Fortunately, this particular alien is a little less disturbing, and
more on the cutesy end of the spectrum. Considering my youthful (and partially
ongoing) obsession with UFOs and the possibility of extra-terrestrial life, it
was a given that I’d pick this guy up. Indeed, I would like to pick up several,
and build a miniature invading force of them. Also, I need a Lego Pyramid and
Lego Stonehenge built, so they’d be helpful for that too. But nowadays they’re
a wee bit more expensive than when they were first released (though not much more!), so I’d best
restrain myself. 
