![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snugglekittyOne fiction, one non-fiction.
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
7j gave me The Truth-Teller's Tale by Sharon Shinn just when I was about to run out and buy it myself. It's the sequel to The Safe-Keeper's Secret which I recently reviewed.
I felt that this book was a bit less predictable than the first, which was nice. I liked that it didn't dwell too much on the characters from the earlier book. A lot of series are clever that way which I tend to find a bit too pat. I really liked the way the two main characters foiled each other. The parent generation characters weren't as interesting in this book as in the other, though (although perhaps that was part of the point), and the love story was more interesting. I would give them both four stars, and have started reading the first book tostarkeymonster aloud.
It feels like quite an accomplishment to have finished Lucid Dreaming by Stephen LaBerge, since I've been working on it for several months. Overall, I think this book was great. It talks about what lucid dreams are, why we would want to have them, the history of our understanding of dreams, how to make them happen, what it's like to have them... pretty much, everything that you would want to know, which is probably why this book was recommended to me over and over. I also really enjoyed his discussion of levels of choice in our behavior (reflex, instinct, habit, and ideal). I think pondering levels of choice in our lives is applicable to a much wider utility than thinking about dream behavior.
The book did have some blind spots and personal biases in it, though. The chief example - he writes that the psychology community, when faced with successful studies about lucid dreaming, claimed that they were invalid mainly because the information didn't fit neatly within their framework. Then, similarly, he writes that he thinks that OBEs are actually lucid dreams, and that clairvoyance during OBEs is better explained by "dream telepathy" than by astral projection. This is without ever saying what he means by dream telepathy or what would make that a more logical explanation. That struck me as kind of like saying, "I have a pony! My pony is the best pony in the whole world, and look at all the tricks it can do! Other people think they have ponies, but those are FAKE PONIES. My pony is REAL!" after complaining about how other people think that his pony is fake because they're so invested in theirs. He also doesn't suggest any study that would prove or disprove his theory about OBEs, which makes it feel a little non-empirical. Nonetheless, five stars, because this book resonated strongly and changed the way I think about my dreams.
Overall, I thought this book was great, and I've had about four lucid dreams since I started reading it. My hope is that I will continue to have them, and I'm willing to work a bit to develop that. This book is copyrighted 1985 and I understand LaBerge has more recent work. I'm very interested to read some of that as well, although I'm going to give myself a break first. I have a lot of other non-fiction that I'd like to get to this summer.
I am also about halfway through Happy Policeman by Patricia Anthony, which is a very weird book. "Who killed the Mary Kay lady?" only with aliens. I'm enjoying it. Next up, The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf, recommended to me byarachne8x as well as being referenced heavily in My Husband Betty, which I thought was great.
7j gave me The Truth-Teller's Tale by Sharon Shinn just when I was about to run out and buy it myself. It's the sequel to The Safe-Keeper's Secret which I recently reviewed.I felt that this book was a bit less predictable than the first, which was nice. I liked that it didn't dwell too much on the characters from the earlier book. A lot of series are clever that way which I tend to find a bit too pat. I really liked the way the two main characters foiled each other. The parent generation characters weren't as interesting in this book as in the other, though (although perhaps that was part of the point), and the love story was more interesting. I would give them both four stars, and have started reading the first book to
starkeymonster aloud.It feels like quite an accomplishment to have finished Lucid Dreaming by Stephen LaBerge, since I've been working on it for several months. Overall, I think this book was great. It talks about what lucid dreams are, why we would want to have them, the history of our understanding of dreams, how to make them happen, what it's like to have them... pretty much, everything that you would want to know, which is probably why this book was recommended to me over and over. I also really enjoyed his discussion of levels of choice in our behavior (reflex, instinct, habit, and ideal). I think pondering levels of choice in our lives is applicable to a much wider utility than thinking about dream behavior.
The book did have some blind spots and personal biases in it, though. The chief example - he writes that the psychology community, when faced with successful studies about lucid dreaming, claimed that they were invalid mainly because the information didn't fit neatly within their framework. Then, similarly, he writes that he thinks that OBEs are actually lucid dreams, and that clairvoyance during OBEs is better explained by "dream telepathy" than by astral projection. This is without ever saying what he means by dream telepathy or what would make that a more logical explanation. That struck me as kind of like saying, "I have a pony! My pony is the best pony in the whole world, and look at all the tricks it can do! Other people think they have ponies, but those are FAKE PONIES. My pony is REAL!" after complaining about how other people think that his pony is fake because they're so invested in theirs. He also doesn't suggest any study that would prove or disprove his theory about OBEs, which makes it feel a little non-empirical. Nonetheless, five stars, because this book resonated strongly and changed the way I think about my dreams.
Overall, I thought this book was great, and I've had about four lucid dreams since I started reading it. My hope is that I will continue to have them, and I'm willing to work a bit to develop that. This book is copyrighted 1985 and I understand LaBerge has more recent work. I'm very interested to read some of that as well, although I'm going to give myself a break first. I have a lot of other non-fiction that I'd like to get to this summer.
I am also about halfway through Happy Policeman by Patricia Anthony, which is a very weird book. "Who killed the Mary Kay lady?" only with aliens. I'm enjoying it. Next up, The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf, recommended to me by
arachne8x as well as being referenced heavily in My Husband Betty, which I thought was great.