I'd like to know
@william_kent 's top ten.
So would I...
it's a pretty difficult task - some books made a big impression when younger, but I have never re-read them and I am unsure whether I would like them now ( Herman Hesse comes to mind ) as tastes change over time, then there is the temptation to only list books that promote a certain image rather than the books I actually enjoy ( leaving out the genre fiction, true crime books, only listing highbrow literature )...once I tried to make a list of 10 it spiralled out of control which makes this list inaccurate as I've left loads out...but here goes..
Chambers English Dictionary
It doesn't get any use nowadays, it fell apart, but pre-internet was always at my side. I would have preferred the OED but the price was prohibitive.
Marseilles Tarot ( Swiss 1JJ Variant )
The ultimate avant-garde cut up novel. Stories are revealed by shuffling the cards, each representing a personality, archetype, state of being, or situation - when laid out their positions within the spread denote the relationships between them.
Burroughs Live: The Collected Interviews of William S. Burroughs
The Job is easier to find and considerably cheaper, but if you can't get enough of WSB pontificating on the same subjects over and over, again and again, then this is the one to get.
Kenneth Grant - Hecate's Fountain
One of the most accessible volumes of the
Typhonian Trilogies. Grant recounts various rituals and ceremonies performed by his Nu-Isis lodge, all of which seem to invariably end in some sort of "tangenital tantrum": the officiating priestesses end up being violated by bat demons, penetrated by multiple tentacles, drowning in slime, and all sorts of other Lovecraftian style sticky endings. I am still trying to work out if Ithell Ccolquhoun is one of the participants - she was involved with the Nu-Isis lodge but unfortunately the recent
Genius of the Fern Loved Gully book fails to mention it. The third part of the book deals with Michael Bertiaux which leads me to...
Michael Bertiaux - Voudon Gnostic Workbook
Insane example of creating your own personal magickal universe - subjects covered include: Zothyrian Metapsychology, Nemirion Physics, Transyuggothian Power Secrets, Magnetic Materialsm and Gnostic Genetics, Synchronistic Robotics, The Shintotronic System of Gnostic Magick, Metamathematical Pneumatology, and Esoteric Thermodynamics. I like the way the first chapter deals with mundane lucky Hoodoo ( pick a winning horse, etc ) but suddenly by chapter two there are instructions for turning yourself into a were spider capable of traversing time and space...
Egil's Saga
Icelandic badman descended from a line of shape shifters commits his first murder aged 7 years old, takes no shit, can destroy you with his hands or tongue - he is like the original battle rapper, reducing his opponents to rubble with his superior bars..one of the best Icelandic Sagas..
James Joyce - Ulysses
worth a read
Eric Hansen - Orchid Fever
This is a highly entertaining look at the Orchid world which is populated by some of the weirdest, most obsessive collectors out there, despised by enthusiasts of other plants. If you read between the lines then there is an implied conspiracy involving Kew Gardens and control of the supply of orchids with particular medicinal properties..I've bought this book several times as it gets lent out and never returned...
Theodore Roszak - Flicker
Gnostic thriller following a film enthusiast's discovery of a secret society that has been using cinema as a means of indoctrinating the general public into dualism, using the interplay of light and dark to demonstrate the conflict of the Demiurge with the true bringer of light..I've bought this novel several times as it gets lent out and never returned...
Ed Sanders - The Family
Occult crime thriller where a NY yippie travels to California and discovers a network of snuff film producing occult groups, one of which travels about with a portable crematorium to dispose of their ritual human sacrifices, all connected to a LSD crazed psycho cult leader who leads his Dune Buggy Attack Battalion into Death Valley in search of a hidden entrance to a chthonic paradise. Suffers from an overuse of the hip lingo of the time, but in turn that does give it a period feel. The UK first edition is the one to get as after publication there was a lawsuit where one of the cults objected to the way they were portrayed and the reprints are all missing the juicy stuff.