Saturday 26 February 2011

Bookish Temptation

The last week in February in Sweden means Book Sale, where ever in the country you happen to live. This tradition goes back to the 1930s or even earlier. It has changed a bit over the years. Originally  it was an opportunity to get odd copies of books going out of print; nowadays some books are even reprinted in new editions especially for the sale. Even in our digital age it is still quite a popular event though.

In recent years I have not been buying a lot of novels. My bookshelves are full; and having some problems with both neck and eyes I often prefer to listen to audio books now.

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What I’m mostly tempted by at the sales nowadays are illustrated fact-books. Books I wouldn’t buy at their original full price, and the kind I like to return to to look things up in, rather than read them straight through. Books on history, religion, mythology, symbolism, dreams… Last year I bought a book on dragons! (Been meaning to read that one but still haven’t got round to it…)

These are what I came home with yesterday:   

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Now there’s a challenge to get to the bottom of the mysteries!!!

7 comments:

  1. I love the big picture and informative reference books. I have read a few things on dream interpretation and symbolism, it is amazingly helpful to finally be able to make sense of what I thought were silly meaningless things in my dreams.

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  2. Yes. I've been fascinated by dreams since a couple of decades at least, which was when I had my first experiences of finding dream interpretation helpful. So I have read other books before but this one seemed extra fascinating because it's also full of wonderful pictures.

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  3. next time i have a weird dream i will email you the details and you can look up what it means for me. i warn you I have lots of really really weird ones.

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  4. The book is not quite a traditional dream lexicon. The authors seem to take much the same view as myself i.e. that we all have our own set of symbols but they also depend on our cultural context. Learning to interpret one's own dreams is one thing; with other people we can really one give suggestions. I find a similarity between dreams and poetry and visual art that way.

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  5. You wouldn't even want to start trying to interpret the nightmares I've been having recently. Even I don't want to do that!

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  6. Graham, I still think the best way to deal with most nightmares is to drag them out in the daylight. But I agree it is not always that one feels up to facing them. With the recent events in NZ in mind I can also imagine some nightmares of the kind that will not just dissolve in the daylight.

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  7. These look like great ones to take away information from. :)

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