Friday, May 24, 2024

Basic Reading: Mysterious World

 










Basic reading. A memory collection of books, comics, and magazines I read from elementary (McQueeney) through middle school (Briesemeister). Ranging from very simple to what I would describe as ‘cusp books’, that would lead to more adult reading. They will come in batches; some are representative parts of series. Some we had; some we saw in libraries. Most have appeared on the blog before, but I think arranged here by category and time they can be more illuminating of certain aspects of my childhood.

When we were kids, it seemed quite obvious to us that there were vast patches of the unknown where the mysterious and wonderful could still be lurking. Maybe not the centaurs, satyrs, and dragons of old myth and lore, but creatures whose provenance might yet be proved. While ghosts, haunted houses, and poltergeists were ‘occult’ and ‘demonic’ (didn’t things like the Manson Family murders prove the ‘Satanic’ was real?) and therefore not to be trifled with, there were vast forests where Bigfoot might yet lurk, the depths of the sea could hide any number of monsters, and the unfathomable regions of space might spew any amount of aliens and UFOs. Even fairies could possibly exist in some nearby spiritual dimension. Who knows what oddities from the Ancient World might have been forgotten or misinterpreted? While our arid and somewhat sterile form of religion might deny us any sense of wonder, we stretched our imaginations pondering the possibilities of the unknown, which especially in the Seventies seemed not unlikely. 

I remember that when I checked out Werewolves and Other Monsters sometime in McQueeney (we were still mired in the Jehovah’s Witnesses) Mom actually went in to complain that the school was making an ‘occult’ book available to children. Although I read Haunted Houses at McQueeney, I never got my own copy until years later, for the same reason. I checked out Irish Earth Folk (fairies) every summer at the public library (it was more Celtic Twilight mysticism than folklore). And Briesemeister brought me The Mothman Prophecies and The Alchemists.


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