It’s World Book Day!

By on March 7, 2013 in News 67

Did you know that there’s a World Book Day? Well it’s today, March 7th. We know that disinfonauts are avid readers, so if you’d like to share what you’re reading let us know in the comments section. And if you aren’t reading, here are some good books.

  • http://twitter.com/TedHeistman Ted Heistman

    At the recommendation of Calypso_1 I am reading “Athousand Plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia” By Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari

  • http://twitter.com/TedHeistman Ted Heistman

    At the recommendation of Calypso_1 I am reading “Athousand Plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia” By Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari

    • Calypso_1

      taking any notes?

      • http://twitter.com/TedHeistman Ted Heistman

        I don’t really do that. But I consider these guys kindred spirits, so I will probably remember a lot of it. I really like their take on Nietzsche.

        • Calypso_1

          My copy looks like a Baptist preacher’s pulpit thumper.

          “A fearsome involution calling us toward unheard-of becomings”

          • http://twitter.com/TedHeistman Ted Heistman

            Mine might look like that eventually too. It was impossible to get in the Library either here in Wisconsin, or in the State of Washington. So I had to break down and order it through the mail. It felt like hunting down a treasure!

            I am also rereading “I am a strange Loop by” Hofstadter

            also “the Wilderness reader” http://www.amazon.com/The-Wilderness-Reader-Frank-Bergon/dp/0874172500/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1362683049&sr=8-1&keywords=the+wilderness+reader

            It has an awesome account of a Shamanic Journey of Chief Plenty Coups, from when he was ten years old and predicted the extinction of the Buffalo and the rise of cattle. He saw this vision before he had ever seen a domestic cow! His spirit animal was the chickadee.

  • drokhole

    Mentioned it in another article’s comments, but “The Highest State of Consciousness” by John White. After that, either “The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World” by Iain McGilchrist, or Carl Jung’s “The Red Book”.

    • http://twitter.com/TedHeistman Ted Heistman

      Wow, good list! You know how to party!

    • http://twitter.com/TedHeistman Ted Heistman

      Wow, good list! You know how to party!

      • drokhole

        Thanks! Not enough hours in the day (considering I have a logjam of a dozen or so books after that). Have been sitting on “The Red Book” for quite some time, and every time I’m about to tackle it, another book sneaks in before it. The thing itself is gorgeous, but an absolute beast. “Highest State” has been getting me in the mood for Jung, though, so I think it’s time to crack open that fucker.

      • drokhole

        Thanks! Not enough hours in the day (considering I have a logjam of a dozen or so books after that). Have been sitting on “The Red Book” for quite some time, and every time I’m about to tackle it, another book sneaks in before it. The thing itself is gorgeous, but an absolute beast. “Highest State” has been getting me in the mood for Jung, though, so I think it’s time to crack open that fucker.

        • jnana

          I heard about this Theosophical group up in Seattle who used the Red Book as a sorta bibliomancy, opening it up @ random.

          • drokhole

            That’s interesting! I guess I could see why – its got stunning artwork with a lot of archetypal images, including a good deal of mandalas.

        • Calypso_1

          I’m using elements of the Red Book for the article I’m trying to put together for a realization of the faux ‘Einstein’s Last Project’.

          I thought RAW’s ‘Masks of the Illuminati’ was a good jumping off point given the interplay between Einstein, Jung, Joyce & Crowley – Hence the reading of ‘Hermes to His Son Thoth’.

    • Nirvanasteve

      The Red Book helped me a ton with dream work I was doing when I was trying to find my own personal versions of the archetypes. I recommend you read it like a religious tome (if you aren’t already doing so) – little bits at a time that you reflect on throughout the day.

    • Nirvanasteve

      The Red Book helped me a ton with dream work I was doing when I was trying to find my own personal versions of the archetypes. I recommend you read it like a religious tome (if you aren’t already doing so) – little bits at a time that you reflect on throughout the day.

      • drokhole

        Thanks for the advice. I sorta went that route with “The Exegesis of PKD”. It was densely packed – even at 900+ pages – with a ton to digest on a page-by-page basis.

  • http://www.facebook.com/echo.void.1 Process TwentyThree

    Journey To Ixtlan – Catlos Casteneda (third reading)
    I don’t recommend reading his books at all, it will either be seen as a bunch of bullshit or your life will be changed forever…

  • http://www.facebook.com/echo.void.1 Process TwentyThree

    Journey To Ixtlan – Catlos Casteneda (third reading)
    I don’t recommend reading his books at all, it will either be seen as a bunch of bullshit or your life will be changed forever…

    • Calypso_1

      : )

      In your last dance you will tell of your struggle, of the battles you have won & of those you have lost; you will tell of your joys & your bewilderments upon encountering personal power.
      Your last dance will tell about the secrets & marvels you have stored.

      And death will sit and watch you.

    • Calypso_1

      : )

      In your last dance you will tell of your struggle, of the battles you have won & of those you have lost; you will tell of your joys & your bewilderments upon encountering personal power.
      Your last dance will tell about the secrets & marvels you have stored.

      And death will sit and watch you.

      • http://2012diaries.blogspot.com/ tristan eldritch

        Castendeda captures all the stoic, elegiac beauty of the pagan poets in that passage you quote from. I think his great qualities as a writer will probably always be obscured by the trickerish “non-fiction” tag.

        • Calypso_1

          If i choose to have a grave stone, that will be on it.
          At the least it will be spoken in elegy.

  • http://www.zoboprepublic.wordpress.com/ zobop republic

    I’ve got two Disinfo books! :-)

  • grace92christine@aol.com

    A Song of Ice and Fire series by George R.R. Martin is the most epic fantasy series with real world social commentary. There are 5 books so far…and A Dance with Dragons (the 5th) is getting better and better with every page. PLEASE check ‘em out!

  • Calypso_1

    What Orwell Didn’t Know – Propaganda & the New Face of American Politics
    Ed. Andras Szanto

    Writing & Difference
    Jacques Derrida

    Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy from Peter the Great to the Abdication of Nicholas II
    Richard Wortman

    Dynamical Processes on Complex Networks
    Alain Barrat

    Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power
    Timothy Tyson

    Hermes to His Son Thoth: Joyce’s Use of Giordano Bruno in Finnegans Wake
    Frances Boldereff

    …among others

  • Andrew

    Most recently I’ve read, but not finished, Wilson’s Prometheus Rising, Jensen’s Language Older Than Words, and a collection of Shakespeare’s sonnets.

  • Kurtis Key

    On Monday I finished R. Buckminster Fuller’s “Critical Path” and started Carl Sagan’s “The Demon Haunted World – Science as a candle in the dark.”

    Happy world book day everyone!

  • jnana

    Against Civilization edited by John Zerzan
    Exegesis of PKD
    That Holy Anarchist:Reflections on Xianity and Anarchism
    Gnosis of the Cosmic Christ: A Gnostic Xian Kaballah
    Just finished The Office of Mercy which was an awesome brand new sci-fi novel written by Ariel Djanikian, I think, and sorta reminiscent of a PD novel.
    I have to say, you all read interesting books. This looks to be the place to do a book swap project, huh?

    • Calypso_1

      I try to read a little of the Exegesis before I go to sleep each night.

      • jnana

        I just started it, but I’ve read parts before. it seems to me he has one of the most valid and rational cosmogonies I’ve ever seen.
        I think he should be canonized.

      • http://twitter.com/TedHeistman Ted Heistman

        For real? Seriously?

        I love that shit.

      • http://twitter.com/TedHeistman Ted Heistman

        For real? Seriously?

        I love that shit.

    • drokhole

      Loved the Exegesis!

  • Eric_D_Read

    Folktales Told Around the World by Richard M Dorson
    Freedom: Credos From the Road by Ralph “Sonny” Barger
    The History of Torture Throughout the Ages by George Ryley Scott

  • Nirvanasteve

    The Secret Teachings of All Mankind – Manly P. Hall (thanks to Matt Stagg’s article for the suggestion)
    The Selected Writings of Paracelsus
    Dimensions – Jacque Vallee
    Raja-Yoga – Swami Vivekananda

  • JaceD

    This is fantastic! Scanning through the comments I’ve found some very interesting books I’ll be looking into. Currently I’m reading Death of the Liberal Class- Chris Hedges. The Grand Design (for the second time) by Stephen Hawking and The Hydrogen Sonata by Iain M. Banks (because I need my fantasy / sci-fi fix).

  • emperorreagan

    My current active reading list:

    Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing – Kierkegaard
    The Perennial Philosophy – Huxley
    Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology & Debt: The First 5,000 Years – Graeber
    The End of War – Horgan

  • Jiro M. Trismegistus

    Just finished Supergods by Grant Morrison and The Filth by Grant Morrison / Just Started Robert Anton Wilson’s Sex Drugs and Magic, Extreme Islam by Adam Parfrey and High Weirdness By Mail by Ivan Stang

  • echar

    The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies? by Jared Diamond

    I just started it.

  • echar

    The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies? by Jared Diamond

    I just started it.

  • echar

    The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies? by Jared Diamond

    I just started it.

  • echar

    The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies? by Jared Diamond

    I just started it.

  • http://2012diaries.blogspot.com/ tristan eldritch

    Been reading Peter Levenda’s contemporary conspiranoid classic Sinister Forces: A Grimoire Of American Political Witchcraft (part’s 1 and 2), Anthony Summer’s Conspiracy: Who Killed President Kennedy (a real page-turner), also dipping into Barnes and Nobles’ HP Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction (a very handsome edition, imo) and The Occult by Colin Wilson (picked up a great vintage paperback with the hokey but irresistible tagline THE ULTIMATE BOOK FOR THOSE WHO WOULD WALK WITH THE GODS!) Prior to that I had a real blast reading The Family by Ed Sanders.

    • drokhole

      I picked up The Occult recently from a local St. Vincent de Paul’s store (one of those religious charities that sells donated goods) and got the worst, most disapproving stink-eye from the cashier. Also, on the Kennedy front, I haven’t had a chance to read Summers’s work, but the book “JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters” by James Douglass is phenomenal.

    • drokhole

      I picked up The Occult recently from a local St. Vincent de Paul’s store (one of those religious charities that sells donated goods) and got the worst, most disapproving stink-eye from the cashier. Also, on the Kennedy front, I haven’t had a chance to read Summers’s work, but the book “JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters” by James Douglass is phenomenal.

    • drokhole

      I picked up The Occult recently from a local St. Vincent de Paul’s store (one of those religious charities that sells donated goods) and got the worst, most disapproving stink-eye from the cashier. Also, on the Kennedy front, I haven’t had a chance to read Summers’s work, but the book “JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters” by James Douglass is phenomenal.

  • http://2012diaries.blogspot.com/ tristan eldritch

    Been reading Peter Levenda’s contemporary conspiranoid classic Sinister Forces: A Grimoire Of American Political Witchcraft (part’s 1 and 2), Anthony Summer’s Conspiracy: Who Killed President Kennedy (a real page-turner), also dipping into Barnes and Nobles’ HP Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction (a very handsome edition, imo) and The Occult by Colin Wilson (picked up a great vintage paperback with the hokey but irresistible tagline THE ULTIMATE BOOK FOR THOSE WHO WOULD WALK WITH THE GODS!) Prior to that I had a real blast reading The Family by Ed Sanders.

  • echar

    I am going to have to write all these down. I was unaware of the majority of them.

  • echar

    I am going to have to write all these down. I was unaware of the majority of them.

  • BuzzCoastin

    reading is fun-damental and I’ve read a lot of books over the years
    but I’ve noticed that since about 2005 most of the books I read are digital copies
    I’ve also been listening to books since about 1999 (Shakespeare is a better listen than)

    it’s now easier for me to collect a book’s worth of scattered info on the internet
    than it is to find one or two books that delivers the same depth & scope of any google search

    originally I had a personal library of about 3000 paper books until about 2001
    then I started traveling around & got rid of the books and what housed them too
    and now I have about 3000 digital books
    which are far easier to lug around

    • Monkey See Monkey Do

      yeah I’ve been listening to alot more audio-books lately but i’m a bit suspicious about it. Listening to the books instead of reading seems to have a different effect to how i imagine the scenery, less involvement in the language etc, but i dont know each reading type probably has its benefits.

      • BuzzCoastin

        for years I traveled a lot by car and I listened to sales training tapes
        it got me used to listening for information
        and listening happened to be an essential sales skill
        eventually I graduated to audio books in the late 90′s
        Shakespeare is better as an audio book
        Ferryman’s Lectures on Physics too, forget his math, he usually get’s it wrong
        once I was doing Salvia and fell into The Hobbit, that was Bilboish trippy
        recently I listened to Candide & it was a great listen

    • Reuben_the_Red

      I went through the same conversion with my music collection, now it all fits on two ipods. But I sometimes wonder, what would happen if all books and literature in the next 100-200 years are digital electronic format, and then the grid crashes–maybe a solar flare or something, or just a failure of fossil fuel/nuclear electricity… What would happen to a culture that lost the last 200 years of its own science, history, and literature?

      Maybe comparable to when the vast libraries at Alexandria were burned (4th century?)–we are products today of that library burning, and others like it and it’s hard to know how different our culture might be today without that enormous gap and discontinuity in collected information and knowledge…

      • BuzzCoastin

        > it’s hard to know how different our culture might be today without that enormous gap and discontinuity in collected information and knowledge

        it seems to be human destiny
        to have the slate wiped clean every few thousand years or so

      • BuzzCoastin

        > it’s hard to know how different our culture might be today without that enormous gap and discontinuity in collected information and knowledge

        it seems to be human destiny
        to have the slate wiped clean every few thousand years or so

        • Reuben_the_Red

          Ha ha, maybe you’re right, maybe we have to hit the reset button sooner or later, I guess I’m not that cynical. My understanding of the burning of the libraries of Alexandria, the largest known accumulation of writings since writing began, was that the Christians wanted to make their own book The World Book, by virtue of elimination, and it seems they largely succeeded, plunging Europe into a rather tenacious dark/illiterate age by destroying almost all of the competition. Or at least all competition until the Qur’an, which I understand is still a sore point? Even today most people who aren’t even Christians assume that at some point in the distant past Christianity eventually won out on the strength of their intellectual and theological arguments, while it seems that intellectual and theological opposition was exactly what the ones who burned the libraries were trying to avoid and suppress. We didn’t exactly hit the reset button that time. I suppose this is all appropriate to discuss in honor of World Book Day, though I’m a day late.

          I have to add, I really appreciate so many of the ideas and books and authors that I’ve been introduced to here, that I might not have encountered otherwise, and it’s all due to the passion of all ya disinfonauts for the same: the weird, the uncommon, the fringe, the suppressed, the censored, and the under-discussed ideas and books and authors that shape our world today in ways known and unknown. And yes, now that I think of it, I first found disinfo on the shelves at the library, You Are Being Lied To, a decade ago now! How could I not read it?! Yay for libraries! Three cheers for disinfo, for publishing the weird and the subversive, and for daring to gaze into the abyss of the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns.

          Yes that was a Nietzsche reference combined with a DH Rumsfeld reference.

          • BuzzCoastin

            the destruction of the Alexandrian library is only one of many such destructions
            we have no verifiable histories that go back further than 500BCE
            the archaeological record does not coincide with the written historical record
            except in a few cases above 500BCE

            how is that cynical?

            it always amuses me that a statement of fact is perceived as cynical

          • Reuben_the_Red

            Oh yeah, well I don’t believe there’s any such thing as human destiny. It’s a crapshoot. It can’t be a knowable fact, unless you’ve been to the future and back (in which case, Welcome back, hope you had a nice trip), and even then you could have been in an alternate time continuum. Some humans do good things, some humans do bad things with good intentions, some humans do bad things with bad intentions. I don’t believe it must all balance out, I don’t believe optimism guarantees success, and I don’t think we’re doomed to failure, in the Biblical sense.

            “The great advantage to the Future is that no man can lay his hands on it.” (D. Lehmkuhl)

            On the other hand, I suspect that belief in a concept of predestination, or human destiny–whether positive or negative–could result in mass passivity, which in turn might be very beneficial those bent on taking over the world. But, you know, that’s just my opinion, man :)

            “You making haste haste on decay: not blameworthy; life
            is good, be it stubbornly long or suddenly
            A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than
            mountains: shine, perishing republic.” (Robinson Jeffers)

          • BuzzCoastin

            the archeological record shows that from time to time
            mind-boggling cataclysms happen
            like the time North America was flooded miles deep
            in matter of days about 10,000ish BCE
            that’s not destiny, that’s archeology

            the last 10,000 years have seen
            an exceptional period of global warming
            which wiped clean those civilizations now buried at sea
            that’s not destiny, that’s archeology

          • BuzzCoastin

            the archeological record shows that from time to time
            mind-boggling cataclysms happen
            like the time North America was flooded miles deep
            in matter of days about 10,000ish BCE
            that’s not destiny, that’s archeology

            the last 10,000 years have seen
            an exceptional period of global warming
            which wiped clean those civilizations now buried at sea
            that’s not destiny, that’s archeology

          • Reuben_the_Red

            Agreed. Yep. I’m with ya. In complete agreement. I just hope that we don’t do it to ourselves, i.e. nuclear war, or some other kind of entirely avoidable destruction that makes virtually all life on earth impossible. We humans haven’t even been here long enough to be considered an evolutionary success, according to some. It’s true. To me, success means that when we die we leave behind a planet that is conducive to further and ongoing evolution for all lifeforms, as all other lifeforms have done before us.

  • Reuben_the_Red

    Winter plus unemployment equals lots of reading time equals free education:

    Getting Busted: Personal Experiences of Arrest Trial and Prison – ed. Ross Firestone (featuring Johnny Cash, Tim Leary, Billie Holiday, Ken Kesey, Norman Mailer, Malcom X, Wilhelm Reich, lots more)
    The Insanity of Normality – Arno Gruen, mythbusting Freud and most of Western civ. on human nature
    Sex At Dawn – Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha, mythbusting human monogamy and Hobbes
    The Ideology of Slavery – ed. Drew Gilpin Faust, pro-slavery arguments in their own words, you’ll never look at capitalism the same way ever again
    Herman Hesse – Steppenwolf, Demian
    PKD – Timothy Archer, Valis, Man In the High Castle (recently reread), and YES the Exegesis, but I just open it at random and read a little, like a Bible.

    Tom Robbins – Skinny Legs and All, a cultural striptease in an Israeli/Palestinian restaurant

    Chaos, Gaia, Eros – Ralph Abraham
    Inner Paths To Outer Space – Strassman, Wojtowicz, Luna, Frecska – recommended for Terrence McKenna/tryptamine readers
    The Continuum Concept – Jean Liedloff, mythbusting Western/modern child-rearing
    The Guru Papers: Masks of Authoritarian Power – Joel Kramer, Diana Alstad

    Evolution, Creation, and other Modern Myths – Vine Deloria Jr.

    The Technology of Orgasm – Rachel P. Maines, mythbusting the history of the vibrator and the female orgasm, previously known as hysteria
    Not In His Image – John Lamb Lash, crazy book about gnosticism, PKD, DH Lawrence, Gaia, etc.

  • Reuben_the_Red

    Winter plus unemployment equals lots of reading time equals free education:

    Getting Busted: Personal Experiences of Arrest Trial and Prison – ed. Ross Firestone (featuring Johnny Cash, Tim Leary, Billie Holiday, Ken Kesey, Norman Mailer, Malcom X, Wilhelm Reich, lots more)
    The Insanity of Normality – Arno Gruen, mythbusting Freud and most of Western civ. on human nature
    Sex At Dawn – Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha, mythbusting human monogamy and Hobbes
    The Ideology of Slavery – ed. Drew Gilpin Faust, pro-slavery arguments in their own words, you’ll never look at capitalism the same way ever again
    Herman Hesse – Steppenwolf, Demian
    PKD – Timothy Archer, Valis, Man In the High Castle (recently reread), and YES the Exegesis, but I just open it at random and read a little, like a Bible.

    Tom Robbins – Skinny Legs and All, a cultural striptease in an Israeli/Palestinian restaurant

    Chaos, Gaia, Eros – Ralph Abraham
    Inner Paths To Outer Space – Strassman, Wojtowicz, Luna, Frecska – recommended for Terrence McKenna/tryptamine readers
    The Continuum Concept – Jean Liedloff, mythbusting Western/modern child-rearing
    The Guru Papers: Masks of Authoritarian Power – Joel Kramer, Diana Alstad

    Evolution, Creation, and other Modern Myths – Vine Deloria Jr.

    The Technology of Orgasm – Rachel P. Maines, mythbusting the history of the vibrator and the female orgasm, previously known as hysteria
    Not In His Image – John Lamb Lash, crazy book about gnosticism, PKD, DH Lawrence, Gaia, etc.

    • Calypso_1

      nice

    • Calypso_1

      nice

  • Anarchy Pony

    Oh Jeez, I forgot world book day!? I didn’t get my books anything!