Featuring some of the most ferocious and humorous book curses ever inscribed, this is a lively, engaging introduction to the history and development of bookish maledictions.
Have you ever wanted to protect your books from forgetful borrowers, merciless page-folders, or outright thieves? Perhaps you have even wished harm on those who have damaged your books--but would you threaten them with hellfire, hanging, or the plague?
This book contains a collection of some of the most ferocious and humorous book curses ever inscribed--from fearsome threats discovered emblazoned on stone monuments from the ancient Near East to elaborate manuscript maledictions and chilling warnings scribbled in printed books. Book curses are entertaining writings in themselves, but they also offer a tantalizing insight into how passionately texts and books have been valued by their owners and readers over the centuries. Here you will find an engaging introduction to the history and development of the book curse and perhaps some inspiration to pen a few of your own.
In an increasingly uncertain world, people are seeking more and more ways to navigate life's challenges and seize opportunities. The Book of Luck is a fun and practical gift book that explores the world of luck and shows you how by simply shifting your mindset and adopting certain practices, you can increase your chances of experiencing luck in all aspects of your life. Featuring 60 beautifully illustrated lucky symbols from all around the world - including the talismanic Daruma doll to the whimsical Maneki-neko - alongside daily affirmations, everyday rituals, gratitude mediations and vision boards, The Book of Luck will teach you how you can leverage these symbols and actions to overcome obstacles and create a positive environment that encourages luck to flow into your lives. Whether you are preparing for a crucial job interview, navigating the challenges of moving house, or gearing up for a high-stakes presentation, this book will show you that by making positive choices and taking proactive steps towards your goals, you can create a foundation for luck to flourish.
The new book based on the long-running hit podcast by Aaron Mahnke, which has translated into over 120-million downloads to date, and a monthly average of over 2 million listeners.
The podcast, Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities, has delighted millions of listeners for years with tales of the wonderful, astounding, and downright bizarre people, places, and things throughout history. Now, in Cabinet of Curiosities the book, learn the fascinating story of the invention of the croissant in a country that was not France, and relive the adventures of a dog that stowed away and went to war, only to help capture a German spy. Along the way, readers will pass through the American state of Franklin, watch Abraham Lincoln's son be rescued by his assassin's brother, and learn how too many crash landings inspired one pilot to leave the airline industry and trek for the stars.
The first granular study of nineteenth-century composer devotion--a network of devotees who preserved tangible traces of composers through relics, rituals, pilgrimage, exhumation, and embalming. During the nineteenth century, music institutions promoted artworks they deemed timeless and made composers into figureheads of a lasting Western canon. Alongside this institutional face of the canon was a more intimate impulse to preserve, touch, and embrace the residues of the dead. In Germany and Austria between 1870 and 1930, music lovers venerated the bodies, houses, and belongings of composers as relics, shrines, and talismans. In The Composer Embalmed, Abigail Fine documents the vernacular and eccentric ways that composers have been remembered. Fine navigates a wealth of unknown archival material to recover the stories of devotees: from pilgrims who felt time stop in historic houses to music-loving doctors who made skulls into sacred specimens, dilettantes who displayed Beethoven's mask as a relic of the "beautiful death," and interwar critics of those dilettantes who disparaged piety as a false religion, a kitsch replica. In isolation, these practices may look like simple acts of affection. But in the aggregate, Fine asserts, acts of devotion constituted what we might broadly understand as relic culture--a culture that sought to possess the body of the departed genius, and that superimposed habits of anthropological collecting onto artifacts of Austro-German heritage. By excavating objects, ephemera, amateur lyric, visitors' books, letters, and travelogues, The Composer Embalmed reveals the underbelly of the canon, where guilty pleasures blur the boundary between sanctity and desecration.
I had been staying just within the shadow of the exit of the great rift. Now, without volition on my part, I drifted out of the semi-darkness and began to move slowly--toward the House. Amidst the din of roaring water, in a chasm where a house once stood in an isolated corner of Ireland, a manuscript is discovered entitled The House on the Borderland. Penned by the enigmatic Recluse, it tells of a revelatory descent into the uncanny. For the Recluse seems to have discovered another land and in it another House; a jade-green double of his own in a realm rife with beasts and cosmic beings without name, encroaching on the bounds of reality itself. With a new introduction by Ann VanderMeer exploring why Hodgson's tale is the 'perfect embodiment of a weird novel', this edition of the 1908 cult classic still thrums with the visionary energy which influenced countless writers including H. P. Lovecraft and Terry Pratchett.
An NPR Best Book of 2017 Celebrate the witchiest women writers with an inventive guidebook that pairs imaginative vignettes with whimsical, folkloric illustrations. Literary Witches reimagines visionary writers as witches: both are figures of formidable creativity, empowerment, and general badassery. Through a series of thirty lyrical portraits, Taisia Kitaiskaia and Katy Horan honor the witchy qualities of well-known and obscure authors alike, including Virginia Woolf, Mira Bai, Toni Morrison, Emily Dickinson, Octavia E. Butler, Sandra Cisneros, and many more. Perfect for both book lovers and coven members, Literary Witches is a treasure trove of creative and courageous women who aren't afraid to be alone in the woods of their imagination. Kitaiskaia and Horan conjure evocative, highly stylized depictions of history's most beloved female authors, introduce enchanting new writers, and invite you to rediscover the magic of literature.
'All about us on the stairs was some of the most exquisite statuary I have ever seen... save for a few pieces carved in the form of some hideous beast, the like of which I have never seen on earth...' The sunken continent of Atlantis has dwelt in the collective imagination of writers and artists for centuries; a bejeweled paradox bubbling with themes of irrecoverable loss and quixotic faith in its rediscovery. This new anthology collects stories from the vast, yet seldom recognized, vault of Atlantean fiction from the Golden Age of Weird Tales magazine, presented in four core sections, perfect for diving into: Atlantis Rediscovered - in which the ruins of ancient Atlantis are found again Atlantis Revisited - tales of Deep Time, in which the descendants of Atlanteans re-live the experiences of ancestors Atlantis Resurrected - in which Atlantis never sunk at all but remains at large in the world Atlantis Reimagined - in which the continent is fertile ground for experiments in Weird Fantasy and beyond
A fascinating insight into two eighteenth-century House Books, revealing the everyday life for Georgian households
During the eighteenth century, ladies of high society kept handwritten notes on recipes, remedies, gardening and household advice in their personal House Books and it became fashionable to exchange their most successful tips with friends and neighbors. Very few of these fragile House Books have survived and this compilation celebrates two: one from Lady Talbot of Lacock Abbey and the other from Lady Louisa Conolly of Castletown House.In this collection you will find their herbal remedies for everything from coughs and colds to rickets, consumption and 'preventing smallpox', along with concoctions to ensure soft hands, improve the skin and 'remove inhibitions'. There are also tips on cleaning and polishing, the best ways in which a garden should be laid out and the roles each servant should be expected to perform. Finally there is also a selection of their favorite recipes, including Cinnamon Spinach, Slipcoat Cheese and Pitchcocked Eels.
This charming compilation is full of fascinating information and useful tips and gives an insight into the lives of those living in the grand houses of the eighteenth century.
A fascinating and highly original history of medieval magic told through twenty key illuminated manuscripts Medieval Europe was preoccupied with magic. From the Carolingian Empire to Renaissance Italy and Tudor England, great rulers, religious figures, and scholars sought to harness supernatural power. They tried to summon spirits, predict the future, and even prolong life. Alongside science and religion, magic lay at the very heart of culture. In this beautifully illustrated account, Anne Lawrence-Mathers explores the medieval fascination with magic through twenty extraordinary illuminated manuscripts. These books were highly sought after, commissioned by kings and stored in great libraries. They include an astronomical compendium made for Charlemagne's son; The Sworn Book of Honorius, used by a secret society of trained magicians; and the highly influential Picatrix. This vivid new history shows how attitudes to magic and science changed over the medieval period--and produced great works of art as they did so.
"Come inside, my bonny witch-finder. Here is shelter for thee..." A tale of callous murder and deranged revenge rings out from fifteenth century Italy. A witch-finder's great triumph is also the herald of his own doom in sixteenth-century Britain. A prisoner's fate at the hands of the Inquisition in seventeenth-century Mexico leads to an encounter with the bestial and bizarre beneath the waves. Readers and writers have been fascinated with the past long before the term 'historical fiction' became recognized as its own genre of writing. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, tellers of strange tales saw the weird potential in setting stories within the realms of previous centuries, and the chance to evoke terrors throughout time. Summoning eleven stories chosen for their uncanny portrayals of weird history, this collection presents a dark timeline of grim visions harking from plague-racked England to revolutionary France and culminating in the last gasps of the nineteenth century.
Including stories by the greatest writers of history-turned-horrifying such as Marjorie Bowen, Frederick Cowles, Vernon Lee and the lost genius Vincent O'Sullivan, this volume is capped by two of Aaron Worth's own tales of Victorian macabre alongside a chiller evoking M. R. James by the adapter of his stories for radio, Sheila Hodgson.