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Aw jeez, my mom had these books. She wouldn't let me read them as a kid. I'll elaborate a bit, I don't think I'll dox myself, since she kept to herself a lot.
Unfortunately I don't have space for them, so her copies either got sold or trashed when she recently died of a very treatable illness that she elected to not treat or mention to anyone for several years.
I did keep her Clan of the Cave Bear books (Children of the Earth?) because the cover art always enchanted me, and I judge books by their covers.
I also kept a few of her romance novels. She never talked to me about sex beyond "wear a condom" type advice, and her and my dad completely hated each other for as long as I could remember. So it's funny to imagine her having a sex drive. She was pretty old when she had me, I guess usually you have to have some sex drive to get pregnant, and then it just faded after I came along.
I like to think that people will read meaning into my bookshelf when I die, but seeing it from the other side - No. The math books will get chucked. Maybe someone will keep a couple volumes of manga as a novelty. The book with a secret compartment will be worth a couple bucks. The books are worth more to me as decorations than to anyone else as anything. It's all right, I guess.
I don't know what to think. Mom's good parts deserved better than her bad parts. I guess there isn't much meaning to it all in the end. She died doing what she loved, playing with crystals and avoiding doctors.
> I don't think I'll dox myself, since she kept to herself a lot.
It took me very little detective work to determine that you ...(drum roll) are me.
No wonder I almost posted the above.
> I judge books by their covers.
On second thought, although I like great covers, you're not me. Carry on; you do you.
I always judge books by their covers - that's what covers are for! You look at the image they chose to use, read the blurb on the back, and decide whether you want to read it.
(Yes, I know - the phrase means "Look past surface details and see inner beauty" and so on. It's just that for books the heuristic works pretty well).
It's a good heuristic for pretty much everything.
"Thoughts about a thing" is a kind of cover too. Portable, personalized, communicable. Wildly popular.
Does it get at the inner reality? Maybe, maybe not. Is it useful? Yes.
Science could be called a cover optimizer.
It doesn't really, because a book cover is advertising, not information - it doesn't really tell you any more about the contents of the book than the pictures of food on a fast food menu accurately represent what you get on your plate.
A book with a cover is a collaboration of artists. Perhaps forced by the publisher, that the author and painter would never attempt on their own, but a collaboration nonetheless. Together, they have created something more than the sum of its parts.
And while it's true this can neither vouch for nor indict the writing itself, the rest of us are allowed to enjoy the art just the same.
Besides, the new digital era debunks your claim... cover images are still included in epubs even if those do not sit on the wire rack next to the cashier at the store.
Yes, it's marketing material.
Marketing material is often the best reference you have to discover what something is about. Also, the pictures of food on a menu usually inform you better what you'll get than a realistic picture.
Marketing has many functions, a large share of them are hindered by misleading you. A few are not. The result is usually very transparent (but effective).
That's actually a good analogy, because the pictures of food on fast food menus are still useful in most cases. You can see the lettuce poking out and ask for it to be removed, or ask for extra cheese.
The way a book is advertised absolutely tells you about the book, in most cases. There is a series of thought and decisions which go into making a cover, including finding a compatible artist and giving them a solid brief.
As with fast food, there are exceptions... But they are exceptions. It may be more of an heuristic than a rule, but it's undoubtedly often useful. The cover is part of the book, and an important part; both up to and beyond the advertisement.
It’s not a good analogy. Fast food images show the sandwich, even if a better version of it. This isn’t always the case for books, for instance in the expanse series the authors stated they write the book and send it off and then the publisher picks an image which has little relation to the books plot and was solely chosen to look cool alongside the books name.
I'm not a super fan, but searching for 'The Expanse book covers' looks about right to my eyes.
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=the+expanse+book+covers&atb...
You see they're in space, you get the impression that there's ships, that it's gritty, that it's sci fi, etc.
None of those images look a million miles from the tone of the series, much less outright misleading.
If there are exceptions to that, then they're exceptions to a clear general rule; much like with fast food menu pics.
It's a bit of both.
And there is taste to consider too. Good books get good cover art.
Or do they?
Agree about books but I've found you can judge a restaurant by the font they choose outside for their name (!).
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
My recollection is that the Children of the Earth series is basically soft porn in anthropological wrappings.
Basically yes. Back in the day they were one of the most popular books for "concerned parents" to try to get banned from school libraries because of the sex scenes. And the anthropology wasn't that accurate even for the time, although it was amusingly correct in its assertion that Neanderthals and early Homo sapiens were amorous together, long before people like Svante Pääbo showed that with actual genetics.
I read the first chapter and then got bored and read the synopsis on Wikipedia. That kinda ruined the magic for me.
Just like with video game skyboxes, it's more fun sometimes to look at the cover and imagine that the book is profound and would deeply resonate with one's soul. In Skyrim you can actually visit the mountains on the horizon, and they're just boring mountains. What a letdown!
If you only made in through one chapter you saved yourself a lot of time. The first book is by far the best of the ones I read, and the series goes downhill very quickly. But I know what you mean. It's an amazing concept.
I can't help but feel great empathy.. I wish you and your family all the best
“Cavendish had been the author of The Black Arts in 1967, a book which I still rate as one of the best general introductions to Western occultism.”
OMG, they had this book in our high school library and for some unknown reason I checked out and read it, interesting experience for a 15 year old! It was comprehensive and had excerpts from grimoires from Middle Ages on how to summon sprits. It had a strange green-black cover (https://www.chegg.com/textbooks/the-black-arts-40th-edition-...).
Haven’t thought about it in nearly 40 years and I see it on HN! Chance? I think not.
When I hear of the Black Arts I think of the German 'Schwarze Kunst'.
Despite what the literal translation might make you think, the German term does not refer to the occult. It relates to the art and craft of printing.
'Weiße Kunst', the white arts, apparently refers to paper making.
'Schwarze Kunst' can also be used as synonym for magic and all kinds occult stuff. Maybe because printing was something people didn't really understand back then.
Or it was just a pun?
but here I was thinking it had something to do with "blacksmiths are loud" hence we should vanish them to the outskirts of the city cuz they're annoying to be nearby
which spiraled into "black(smiths) go away" lol
No idea how this link ended up in HN, but (to put it somewhat strangely) it was exactly what I was looking for. Thanks.
> how this link ended up in HN
the submitter writes https://resobscura.substack.com/ which is also occasionally featured on hn and is generally well received.
And is generally awesome. Ben's one of the most interesting people I know of on HN.
indeed! i do miss the old newsletter that had random curious bits and links. anything similar nowadays?
I think the substack linked in the grandparent is a continuation of this?
I'd say magick, occult, and discordian content fits right in...
Hail Eris!
All Hail Discordia!
For some reason HN has been into the occult lately. Which is great for me, because I’m writing some fanfic for A Certain Scientific Railgun. I’ve been a bit unsatisfied with Crowley’s characterization therein and been and it’s useful to read other sources.
You might appreciate how silly this thought is - I watched a few episodes of Railgun and what bugged me most was that her weapon doesn't seem to be a railgun at all.
It is a silly thought, because it’s pretty small compared to other research errors in that show. “Roman Orthodox Church” gets me every time.
It is apparently possible to put a space elevator in Tokyo — as long as the center of mass is over the equator.
It's the magic of HN!
Any specific chapters people would recommend checking out?
I love all of this occult stuff but have never really dived in too much to the topic. Magic systems in general fascinate me, and after going through pretty much all major fantasy series I've started getting interested in "real world" magic systems. There's so much fascinating deep lore that rarely gets explored. Most recently I learned about these angels called Uthra [0].
Another one that interests me is the movement with magic rocks. There's tons of websites that talk about how certain rocks have these magical powers, but I wonder where it all originated from. Maybe the information evolved over time and was spread through word of mouth.
I think it's weird that some people seem so ready to completely dismiss any interest in these magic systems while also being huge fans of stuff like Harry Potter and other fantasy series.
Not specifically what you're asking for but the Esoterica channel and Modern Hermeticist on YT may be of interest to you[0].
[0]https://www.youtube.com/@TheEsotericaChannel
[1]https://www.youtube.com/@TheModernHermeticist/videos
>I think it's weird that some people seem so ready to completely dismiss any interest in these magic systems while also being huge fans of stuff like Harry Potter and other fantasy series.
People dismiss interest in them as realistic and plausible models that actually work in real life (or they're an Abrahamist who believes any representation of the occult, even fictional, invites satanic influence.) People die because they would rather trust alchemy and crystal woo-woo nonsense to cure their cancer more so than chemotherapy. Folklore and fantasy is a different thing, though.
Magical practice (and occultism and gnosticism in the wider umbrella) is such an interesting phenomena. So many modern activities are connected to or quietly very influenced by it, particularly therapy, along with many notable figures in the natural sciences, computer science, philosophy. It's my favourite bit of anthropology (which I seem to be drawn to more the older I get).
Some reading in this area I've enjoyed:
- Magic, Science & Religion - Malinowski
- Technic and Magic - Campagna
- Stolen Lightning - O'Keefe
- Ramon Lull (no specific recommendation)
> talk about how certain rocks have these magical powers, but I wonder where it all originated from
From the Stone Age, of course! Pun intended, but seriously, these beliefs about magical powers of stones, plants, stars, angels - their roots go deep and far back into the history of humanity, perhaps to the very beginning.
This is gold for my RPG fantasy campaigns. Thanks to OP for posting.
If anyone wants to see a good film adaptation of some of this stuff watch A Dark Song (2016).
And to a lesser extent You Are Not My Mother (2021) - this one is more folklore based.
I spent an unusual amount of time poring over my parents books. Not really perusing them, just browsing, looking at the titles, the pictures etc. My dad had a lot of these kind of occult books - as a bored and lonely kid in the countryside I kept coming back to them as a kind of power fantasy, reading some of them until the more ghost-story-like ones kind of freaked me out (eg Carlos Castaneda). The whole time is a mishmash of creaky floorboards, the smell of dust, the RPG magazines I collected, and metal albums.
The late 60s was a wild time! My mum had the full set, recently repurchased them off eBay and have enjoyed reading them.
Can see a lot of the counterculture mentality that drove early Silicon Valley and still sort of bubbles underneath in the writing from that time - eg. Talking to some younger devs about where the name “Slack” comes from.
Wow, I only knew the house classic by the same title [1]. My daughter would love these books.
There was also a fairly obscure table-top RPG of the title which was set in ancient (Greek/Roman/Egyptian) times rather than the typical medieval settings of RPGs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man,_Myth_%26_Magic_(role-play...
I had the Mysteries of the Unknown books as a kid instead. What a hoot.
I kinda wanna pick these up to pair with the set.
Picked up the set at a garage sale when I was a kid. Super formative stuff.