Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai

Category Archives: Pulp hero’s library


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Making tea and magic

japanese-tea-ceremony1Doing research is always a source of delight.
In a true zen way, sometimes we don’t find what we are looking for, but we do find what we needed to find.
For reasons long to explain, I’m reading a few articles about tea – its history and diffusion.
And I chanced upon an article published in 2013 in the magazine Explore :

Metaphisics of Tea Ceremony: a randomized trial investigating the roles of intent and belief on mood while drinking tea.

… By two researchers called Shiah and Radin.
Strong stuff, eh? Continue reading →


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Clark Ashton Smith on Fantasy

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’ve been perusing the wondrous halls of The Eldritch Dark, a website devoted to the writings of Clark Ashton Smith.
Sometimes I like to go back to Smith’s fantasies, as his voice and his approach to prose – while impossible to equal – are a great source of inspiration.
The Eldritch Dark collects the stories and poetry by Smith, but also an ample selection of his letters and essays.
The following is a short recap of the author’s position regarding the narrative of the imagination.
It is well worth reading. Continue reading →


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A somewhat pagan Easter…

Easter eggs

OK, this will sound weird, but it’s not that weird.
Well, maybe a bit. You judge for yourself.
For Easter, I got a gift – a well thumbed second hand copy of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Wicca and Witchcraft.
See?
Told you it would sound weird.
I mean, it’s Easter!
Witchcraft? Wicca?
C’mon!

But the thing does make a weird sort of sense: Continue reading →


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Routining

7182aI do collect books about writing – and I say I collect them meaning that I have a cartload of those, and I normally find something interesting and useful in each and every one of them.

On the other hand, my definition of book about writing is becoming quite flexible1, and I have already mentioned in the past that Hugard & BrauĂ©’s The Royal Road to Card Magic is not just one of the best stage and card magic books out there, but it’s also a damn good writing book, if you can read it with the right attitude.

Consider the following: Continue reading →


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Movin’ the River

So watch me hawk eye, understand
The force of will, the sleight of hand
Movin’ the river,

No, not a post about the Prefab Sprout (altho’ I might, one of these nights…)
No, fact is I went through All About Shanghai, A Standard Guidebook 1934-35, which was reprinted by Earnshaw Books and is absolutely great. Continue reading →


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Mysterious book

9780007783892_p0_v2_s260x420Ok, so this strange thing happened last Sunday afternoon, as I took a break and tried to put some order in the stacks of books that are slowly evicting me from my bedroom.

As I dug in a box filed with hardbacks, out of it came The Element Encyclopedia of the Psychic World.
Written by Theresa Cheung, and presented by the cover tagline as “the ultimate a-z of spirits, mysteries and the paranormal.”
And no kidding.

And I have no idea of how this thing came to be here. Continue reading →


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Edna Kenton and the Shape of the Earth

titleI tried to track down some info on Edna Kenton, but there’s no wikipedia page about her.

There’s a very short bio – three paragraphs – in Anne Innis Dagg’s The Feminine Gaze: a Canadian Compendium of Non-Fiction Women Authors and their Books 1836-1945, and the first paragraph goes like this

Kenton, Edna 1876-1954. Edna Kenton is known best for her editing the Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents (Relations dej jésuites), voluminous annual reports describing all manner of conditions and experiences sent home in the 1660s to France by priests of the Society of Jesus stationed in Canada. She never married.

OK, maybe it’s just me, but that last line kills me, really.

So, why looking into the life of an unmarried woman (gasp!) editing Jesuit letters?

Because Edna Kenton wrote The Book of Earths. Continue reading →