Tips and experiences ordering recommended books

This thread is meant to discuss mainly the ordering of recommended books as well as related tips and experiences.

To begin with and to my knowledge there are two lists of recommended books.

The first and oldest one is posted by Johnno: Recommended Books from the QFS for reference called: QFS list.

The second which differs slightly from the first, probably because it was intended for a different purpose, is compiled/posted by Laura: Spirit board - Ouija Video for reference called: SB list.

A fair number of books on the QFS were already ordered and read, but still many were waiting, and the way things look in the world, the thought came to do the research and most necessary shopping now and read later, rather than wait now and and maybe repent later. This is an individual choice. Along the way discoveries came and what follows is a review.

Sources that are helpful for purchasing are of course.
_http://www.amazon.com (U.S.A.)
_http://www.amazon.de (Germany)
_http://www.amazon.co.uk (The United Kingdom)
_http://www.amazon.fr (France)

Be aware that that not all listed book sellers send outside of their own country. If you need it good to find out if International Shipping is available. (Learned this the hard way.)

Not all books are easily available through Amazon; or they do not have a seller with International Shipping. This led to the search for other sales networks.
The following were helpful:
_http://www.abebooks.com/
_http://www.alibris.com/

Sometimes a book in English will be lying around in a book shop of a non-English speaking country, even as new, though out of print elsewhere.

If a bookshop is not doing international shipping according to the sellers network page, one may try to contact a seller directly and find out if he can help. We are trying to do that in one case that proved difficult. The alibris pages will list the name of the seller with a hyperlink but one will still stay within the alibris web site. To go out and find the contact details, take the name of seller and put it in the Google search engine, it might help.



COSTLY BOOKS FROM THE SB LIST
A few books are expensive, some even very much so. A couple of titles worthy of mentioning.
(If these book in spite of price are worthy of purchasing is still for me an open question.)

The Origins of Biblical Israel - Philip Davies
_http://www.amazon.com/Origins-Biblical-Library-Testament-Studies/dp/0567043819/ref=sr_1_23?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1221737283&sr=1-23 has it for $ 115, POUNDS 54 ON AMAZON UK. Above book is published by _http://www.continuumbooks.com
Their catelogue: _http://www.continuumbooks.com/download/TTC.pdf has:

The Origins of Biblical Israel
Philip R. Davies
The book starts from the problem defined recent archaeological discovery about the societies that formed the backbone of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, their origins and their relationship. It has become clear that the biblical notion of a 12-tribe nation united descent and religion does not correspond to these findings. The challenge is not to argue endlessly about how far the differing accounts can be reconciled, as a prolongation of an old debate about biblical historicity, but to try and understand what historical, social and cultural process led to the production of the biblical portrait of an Israel of 12 tribes embracing two kingdoms. Davies argues for the importance of the role of Bethel as a royal sanctuary, then a central sanctuary of the Neo-Babylonian and Persian province of Judah.

Philip R. Davies is Professor of Biblical Studies in the University of Sheffield.
The Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies, 485 December 2007 • 192 Pages
HB 978 0 567 04381 8 $115 (C $145) £55 T & T Clark International

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All the books from this company are costly, and since there are other books on similar subjects in the SB list, I am wondering if it is essential buying considering the 192 pages. Fortunately we found it in a library.

Where Troy Once Stood - Iman Wilkens
_http://www.amazon.com/Where-Troy-Once-Stood-Revealed/dp/0312059949 122 $, AMAZON UK POUNDS 54 AND UP. But you might be able to get the new edition from the authors home page: _http://www.troy-in-england.co.uk/troy-books/troy-books.htm

The Cosmic Serpent - Victor Clube and Bill Napier
_http://www.amazon.com/Cosmic-Serpent-Victor-Clube/dp/0876633793 had it for 93$, though AMAZON UK were selling it from £19.90 _http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_ss_b/026-6910181-7954040?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=The+Cosmic+Serpent+-+Victor+Clube+and+Bill+Napier&x=9&y=24

The Cosmic Winter - Victor Clube and Bill Napier
_http://www.amazon.com/Cosmic-Winter-Victor-Clube/dp/0631169539 275$, 240 POUNDS ON AMAZON UK! (available in French on Amazon.fr)
For this costly book there is a good review by Cyre: _http://cyregray.newsvine.com/_news/2008/05/17/1495355-book-review-the-cosmic-winter-by-victor-clube-bill-napier

Occult & Scientific Mentalities in the Renaissance - Brian Vickers (editor)54 $

Power of the Pendulum - T.C. Lethbridge 75 - 100 $ but found an informative review on _http://www.thewhitegoddess.co.uk/articles/dowsing.html
see also: _http://www.tc-lethbridge.com/anthological_review/the_power_of_the_pendulum/
However looking at the global library network there were 201 copies: _http://worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n50-50363

Comments
On the SB list there is: "Evidence of Survival After Death by Sir William F. Barret and James H. Hyslop", I ordered it but it turns out to be a booklet of only 20 pages of printed matter extracted from a book called "On The Threshold of the Unseen" available from the same publisher for 25 $. So $ 9.44 plus $ 12.49 in postage for the 20 pages, is it worth it? And was it only that chapter that Laura had in mind, or was it the whole book, or something else?

Some books are available in several editions. One such example is The Secret Teachings of All Ages by Manly P. Hall where I ended up with a new, simple, black and white version from A & D Publishing, Radford Va (Virginia, USA) from 2007, whereas a friend got one from 2003 with a few reprints of the beautiful original color plates.

The shops vary quite a lot in terms of, to what length they go in making sure one gets the book. Some come within a week, that was from US to SA! Some send email notifications for every order received and every order dispatched. Some send as priority mail and with custom declarations. Here in SA it means these parcels go as registered and a slip appears in the mail that books are ready to be picked up at the post office counter.

Some shops wrap the books very carefully, others put it in a very simple paper envelope that gets into the mailbox slightly opened! If I had been able to place order with Amazon themselves, they would have put it in their cardboard box, but because they stopped sending that way to SA, I had to take whatever was available and hope for the best. Seeing what is coming and how, it is possible there will be a couple of titles that need to be reordered as part of the game.

Actually I had to order through a friend, and since he does not usually order that many 'funny books' (as he call them) from Amazon, the fraud department at his bank called him first thing in the morning to find out what was going on, as they were suspecting ID theft. And as the latest the customs sent a notice to the mailbox. They have stopped a parcel. I guess they wish to get some money or VAT unless I can prove to them that it is for personal use and not meant to stay in South Africa.

Some books are available in other languages than in English. For example I had a difficulty ordering the book of Allan Kardec from the SB list, but I knew someone who had told she had him in Portuguese. What a surprise when I came around to visit the family. She landed a set of six books on the kitchen table as a gift. They were originally sponsored by the Brazilian Spiritist association which has been very active propagating his ideas throughout the world.

Thanks for this helpful info, Thorbiorn, especially the points about shipping. I was wondering how books ordered from RedPill press and Amazon were sent out.

But I have another problem with ordering books from out of the country which has to do with censorship.

Where I live, there is a 'special committee' set up within the Ministry of Information to ensure all imported foreign books conform to national guidelines, and I quote:

Usually books that are banned are those that [deal negatively] with religion or [domestic] politics or sex...

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Books that are in the public domain; i.e. for sale in any good bookshop, rather than needing special orders from on-line publishers like Amazon or RedPill press, I have found fairly easy to order from our local American University bookshop.

All other books that would not pass the censors are on the 'must find a way round this' list!

I usually check eBay 1st. A lot of times I can find used books that I want for pretty cheap. Also, there is bookswim.com, which is the NetFlix of books. If they don't have the book you want, they'll try to get it and add it to their library of books to rent if you send them the ISBN #. I didn't have too much luck with them getting books that I wanted, but I did manage to get them to add Fulcanelli and Castaneda. Still, it might be worth a try to sign up with them if you're short on money.

www.abebooks.com is good. It's a collective of thousands of book sellers from around the globe. I live outside the USA and the UK and find it difficult to obtain books from third parties who list their second hand books on amazon. They don't usually accept credit cards from overseas.

FWIW a couple of days ago, I bought a copy of Clube's book on abebooks for a customer of mine.

It's also a good barometer of some of the rarer books in ones collection. A lot of books on the QFS recommended reading list are short print runs and thus retain their value, rarely ending up in the $3 bin. Even bread and butter titles such as Dwellings of the Philosophers are appreciating due to their scarcity. If you pay more for a book, you should be able to get it back (and then some) after awhile.

There again, given current economic conditions will this last?

Four books of Charles Fort recommended on the QFS list are available in public domain for download on _http://www.sacred-texts.com/fort/index.htm

The English version of Dwellings of the Philosophers one may get easier by writing to the publisher Archive Press directly. Althoug the Hardcover is sold out they say they still have paperback copies available. the contact one can find on: _http://www.archivepress.com/

Otherwise the Abe book site had the above book in French, Italien as well but much more rarely in Spanish and Portuguese. The way to bring them up on the Abe page is to search for "Fulcanelli".

Edit: The Secret Teachings of All Ages by Manley Palmer Hall [1928] mentioned in the lists, is in public domain and available for download at _http://www.sacred-texts.com/eso/sta/index.htm

Thorbiorn, thanks for those download links - nice one!

It will be worth the money for the extra ink cartridges to print them out - time-consuming, but not as long as waiting for the books to arrive, and certainly safer.

The Secret Teachings of All Ages by Manly P. Hall,
is available from at least three four publishers:
The first is a Reader's Edition. It is a reprint of the diamond jubilee edition from 1988 copyrighted by the Philosophical Research Society and published by Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin in 2003. This version has some colourplates of the original artwork. The paperback is around USD 16.47, was USD 24.95

Looking for the website of the Philosophical Research Society it turns out there is a page dedicated to this book and that they publish it in several different versions: _http://www.prs.org/secret.htm The most expensive is around USD 500.

A third publisher is Forgotten Books: See _http://www.forgottenbooks.org/info/The_Secret_Teachings_of_All_Ages Price is USD 14.10 This version is also available through Amazon. We do not have any details about how this version differs from the PRS version mentioned above.

A fourth is from Wilder Publications _http://astore.amazon.com/wilderpublic-20/188-3589685-2001235?%5Fencoding=UTF8&node=8 it is has no colour plates and sells for USD 14.39. If you wish to have a look at what kind of colour plates that were in the original have a look at _http://www.prs.org/symbprint.htm

Conclusion: The best buy as far as quality goes seems be the version from the Philosophical Research society or the paperback version published by Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin.

(While surfing around on the PRS site I found an enormous amount of books and lectures by Manly P. Hall, and among them one called "LECTURES ON ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY, Companion to The Secret Teachings of All Ages" The link is _http://www.prs.org/philosophy.htm It is it also on Amazon but cheaper and with a couple of reviews.)

One more book can be downloaded
One book on the SB list; "The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James [1902]" is available in public domain at _http://www.sacred-texts.com/etc/vre/index.htm

Shopping experiences
Of the 40 odd books that I ordered from all over, only five are outstanding. This is quite acceptable since I am in SA at the moment and since it is only a month since we ordered. Next time I will try to select those who add a few details about how they intend to post the books. Those who send by priority mail probably have a higher chance of getting here. If no details are given one should try to select a seller with a high rating, because sometimes they also send by priority mail even though they do no say.

By the way, the books from Red Pill Press came fairly quickly, the only problem was that no price was mentioned, so the customs needed me to present an invoice/give the price of the books, on the basis of which they calculated how much I had to pay them. It turned out to be around 38$ ekstra and the price of the books was something like 156 Euro. For some countries I guess it is smarter so to say not to send an invoice with values on. But as far as the buyer is concerned, it may be good to keep the invoice or the payment confirmation details, just in case there is a question of VAT or handling fees.

Thanks for this thorbiorn
The Cosmic Serpent for £19.90 was probably me (I couldn't pass it up at that price)
On the note of the scarcity of this book and more so The Cosmic Winter, would anyone know how to approach Victor Clube/Bill Napier, so they could be asked if a scanned/pdf version could be made available online for free (copyright still being held by them)??
I've been itching to break out my scanner and turn them into pdf's, but don't want to go breaking copyright law!!!
Quite willing do to any work needed to achieve this, but am not sure where to start.

Regarding:



Apparently the Cosmic Winter exists in a Spanish version: El invierno cósmico by Victor Clube; Bill Napier, Language: Spanish Publisher: Madrid : Alianza Editorial, ©1995. ISBN 8420607215 : 9788420607214
OCLC: 38890610

I tried Abebooks.com but unfortunately nothing is available. If anyone lives in Spain maybe one day they might find?!

Laura posted a review on Amazon:

Laura said:

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
Of Cosmic Importance! (2008-02-25)

by Laura Knight-Jadczyk


Victor Clube's book, "The Cosmic Winter," is a book of inestimable importance to everyone on this planet. I strongly urge readers to write to the publisher and request a new printing since it is obvious that few people can afford the high prices for the few copies left in circulation. It is also obvious...

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Publisher: Oxford, UK ; Cambridge, Mass, USA : B. Blackwell, 1990. ISBN 0631169539 9780631169536
OCLC: 260218755

OCLC stands for (Online Computer Library Center) Can anyone explain why ISBN has two components? I found the above on _http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/20392676&referer=brief_results The last part I understand is it the ordinary ISBN and explained on Wikipedia.
Blackwell Publishing brings up _http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/ which says that Blackwell Publishing is now part of Wiley:

_http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/Brand/id-35.html said:

Wiley-Blackwell, created in February 2007 by merging Blackwell Publishing with Wiley's Global Scientific, Technical, and Medical business, is now one of the world’s foremost academic and professional publishers and the largest society publisher.

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The company behind is John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Contact details: _http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/Section/id-301698.html Contact details of Blackwell Publishing, probably the same: _http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/contacts/global_offices.asp#uk_1

For requesting or refering to the book it may be more correct to mention both authors: "Victor Clube; Bill Napier"
Perhaps one could suggest to the company, that in case they do not wish to make a complete reprint, they could make it available using print on demand technology:
_http://www.booksurgepages.com/amzn/outofprint/

Through _http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk one can easily search a variety of potential online sales network so as to keep an eye open for the opportunities. By the way The Cosmic Winter is now up in 240 Pounds!

Hi,

Live in Australia at the moment, and found it at times quite difficult (or very expensive) to find some of the titles on the recommended book list. My main supplier here is
_http://www.booktopia.com.au. They cover a fairly big range, but often have quite hefty prices.

At times I have had to order from Amazon in the US, which may be cheaper or more expensive depending on a number of factors. Then of course shipping adds to the overall cost.

Have also started to scout through the second-hand book shops and have been generally amazed at one can find, the expense here being mainly time and effort. Found for instance all three Velikovsky books for a total of less than AUD 20.

Have been struggling to find Mouravieff's three-part Gnosis. Booktopia doesn't have it. Anybody a good idea where I might find this in Oz?

nicklebleu said:

Have been struggling to find Mouravieff's three-part Gnosis. Booktopia doesn't have it. Anybody a good idea where I might find this in Oz?

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Pretty hard to come by as I think they're imports, I had to get mine overseas. Adyar has Gnosis I for $82, Gnosis II for $60 and Gnosis III for $55.

Thanks Johnno,

Pheww! .... lot of dough!
Will trawl the internet a bit more, maybe I'll find something a bit cheaper abroad.
But thanks anyway!!!

FWIW: I tried to send a-petition-to-reprint-email to the publisher of Cosmic Winter. From the first address I tried, the mail came back, (too many hops)?, from the second the automatic reply came to use: consumers@wiley(dot)com

A thought: If letters from Amnesty International members to political leaders sometimes in the past has helped to free desidents from prison, why should a few bookreaders not be able to help get a book reprinted.

Example of looking for translations of books in languages not using Latin letters.
For those more familiar with Russian, The Book On Mediums by Allan Kardec is available on _http://rassvet2000.narod.ru/knmed/index.htm The way I found it was to transcribe the name of the author into Russian letters, i.e. Аллан Кардек, insert it into the search engine and select a useful results; КНИГА МЕДИУМОВ . The conclusion from this experience is that those who do not use Latin letters in their language can try to look for translations in their own language by using this process. Those who find more translations may help others by posting their discoveries.

Fulcanelli - "Le Mystere de Cathedrales", exists in Russian translation as; Фулканелли - "Тайны готических соборов". One can occasionally find books for download that still have copyrights on them. I do not know for 100 % if there are any of the above books that still have, so I hesitate to give links except for the first exception, however with the information given I guess those interested can find them either in a bookshop or on the net.

Johnno said:

nicklebleu said:

Have been struggling to find Mouravieff's three-part Gnosis. Booktopia doesn't have it. Anybody a good idea where I might find this in Oz?

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Pretty hard to come by as I think they're imports, I had to get mine overseas. Adyar has Gnosis I for $82, Gnosis II for $60 and Gnosis III for $55.

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I just got all three books for $33.69 on eBay!