The Seven Sermons to the Dead

The story begins with three wise men. Sound familiar? Except in this case, the men get together to discuss the mysterious and newly translated book by eminent psychologist C. G. Jung. The year is 1949, and two of these men have fled from nearby Hungary to safer climes in Austria. One of the men is a Roman Catholic priest, once a member of the Jesuit order, and the youngest professor to hold a seat in the University of Hungary. This man, though a priest, is also an expert on Existentialism, and knew Sartre personally.
The second man is the author himself, at this time wet behind the ears and just getting into philosophy—not to mention maybe someday the priesthood.
The third man, the man who brings the book, is another priest about which not much is known. Because the book was for Jung’s close friends, it had been passed along for almost forty years just between a few men and in that way the third man encountered The Seven Sermons to the Dead.
The “sermons” themselves are baffling poetry, credited to Emperor Basilides—a seventeenth century alchemist and Gnostic who taught extensively in Alexandria—the ancient world’s most progressive and mystical city, located in Egypt (where east meets west). The book itself was beautiful—expensively bound, hand-written in German, and with a long unused Gothic typeface.
Dr. Jung, writing in the voice of ancient Basilides, published the rare little volumes in 1916. He kept it quiet because to be Gnostic, or even associated with such philosophy, was long considered heretical throughout history. No doubt, Jung felt he could not come forward with these as his specific beliefs.
“The dead came back from Jerusalem, where they did not find what they were seeking.”
Thus starts the Seven Sermons, the “dead” being those who have not reached individuation i.e. knowledge of the self. These are lost people, who conform to society rather than embrace their own unique and dichotomous spirits. Jung, in the voice of Emperor Basilides, continues throughout to “teach”, because he is implored, about the mysteries of universe, man, god, and spirit.
The first sermon deals with the “pleroma” or that which surrounds and fills all things. This ether has no qualities because it is all qualities. In general, I think he’s talking about space and the essence of the universe itself. The nameless and intangible something in which we are all suspended and out of which we are all created. By definition, as unique beings, we must by nature differentiate ourselves from this pleroma, this nothing and everything in which all qualities are contained. If we were to let ourselves become absorbed even in thought about it, we should cease to be.
”All things which are called definite and solid are but relative, for only that which is subject to change appears definite and solid.”
“We die to the extent that we fail to discriminate.”
“But if we know how to know ourselves as being apart from the pairs of opposites, then we have attained to salvation.”
It is implied in this first sermon that this endless potentiality of pleroma can influence a man to become either extreme on a spectrum of opposing forces—light/dark, good/evil, masculine/feminine. Instead, by transcending these forces and disallowing the projection of our own ideas on what is basically a faceless universe, a man can become truly what his nature has designed for him to be. All it takes, is listening to the self’s true desires and not letting anyone or anything stand in the way of progress to that growth.
To this day, these sermons have not been fully explored and there is too much to go over each individually or I would risk writing a novel myself. I recommend this book for anyone who is tired of the traditional “faith” around them--someone who is seeking a harmonious and balanced way of looking at the universe and our place in it as essential and unique beings. And also, someone who wants to consider an idea which allows for the attainment of their full potential.

The Language Instinct

I thought that this book by Steven Pinker was very interesting. It goes from sentence diagramming (which I don't think I ever learned) to the makeup of the brain to case studies of linguistic savants and computer programs that try to emulate human conversation. Though the information is densely packed into this volume, it is still entertaining. I wouldn't pick it up if I wanted a light read, but if you're as interested in linguistics as I am, this seems like it was a great introductory book.
Pinker's assertion is that humans are born with an instinct to learn language, and a specific window in which we are optimally prepared to learn it-- which is why people who learn second languages later in life learn more slowly, and have thicker accents. He also brings up the sad cases of those poor folk who have been raised without language, in insanely neglectful and abusive households. They can never learn any language as well as someone who is raised with it, though some have invented languages of their own.
Another particularly interesting aspect of this book was Pinker's propensity for bringing in examples from other languages. I liked it when he used examples from Japanese, since I've studied it, but there were some absolutely fascinating examples from various African languages as well. It's wonderful to see these wildly different languages broken down into their component pieces to find out that they are not so different after all.

I would definitely suggest that anyone interested in linguistics read this book-- I am sure I have not done it justice.

More Sookie Stackhouse

Okay, so I now realize that it might be kind of silly to keep writing reviews for every Sookie Stackhouse novel-- they're all written by the same woman, in the same style, with the same characters, for the most part. If you like the first one, you're going to like the rest of them. So I thought I might condense the rest of the books into one review, writing only a sentence or two about each title.
And I suppose I should mention now that I am not fond of the cover art at all. The cover of Dead Until Dark was the best of the lot. After that, they switch to a strange, stylistic, almost childish style. I've also never been a fan of the little starbursts on the cover of books that proclaim that they're in Oprah's book-of-the-month club, or now a new HBO series, or a movie, or whatever. I think I would prefer a similar notice inside the book somewhere... or even just inside the cover. It's just such an eyesore. Ah, well.

Dead to the World : The Viking vampire Eric loses his memory due to a curse, and is put in the unique position of being the only male character in the series (so far) who has the opportunity to fall in love with Sookie twice. We learn a little more about witchcraft, and fairies.

Dead as a Doornail : We get a better look into the werepanther society in Hotshot. Sookie puts on her detective hat again.

Definitely Dead : Sookie's estranged cousin Hadley, who had become a vampire and the consort of the Queen of Louisiana, is murdered. She leaves all of her possessions for Sookie to go through, and Sookie is drawn into intrigue after intrigue. We learn a little more about witches and Wiccans.

All Together Dead : There is an important vampire convention, and Sookie is dragged along as an accessory of the Queen.

From Dead to Worse : Oh my goodness, it ends with such a tweest! I can't wait for the next book to come out.

Sorry for the extremely short 'reviews,' but as I said, they are all written very similarly, and if you like one, you'll like the rest. Also, I finished them quite a while ago, and just haven't gotten around to writing about them.
I would definitely recommend both the HBO show and the book series. They go in such different directions, but each in interesting.

Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

Clearly fiction, but written as if from personal experience, this 1979 bestseller is in my top list of strange and unusual books. Richard Bach is a nomadic type, flying over the countryside in his little biplane selling rides for a couple bucks an hour to locals. At night he nestles in a field somewhere with some canned beans and pan-fried bread and enjoys his life of solitude and freedom. Then one day he sees another biplane he's never seen before, and another pilot just like himself leaning against the plane as if just waiting for him to land. The strange fact is that the man was waiting for him to land, and had known that he would be arriving shortly. Richard soon learns that his name is Don Shimoda, and that he was supposed to be the world's next Messiah before he abruptly quit and left his followers behind.
Don and Richard become friends and soon they are zooming all over the countryside together, offering rides and making more money then Richard would normally make in a single season. There's just something about Shimoda that makes Richard feel as if he's known him all his life. Living the good life, Richard doesn't think to leave until all the little miracles start becoming noticeable--no squashed bugs on Don's plane, the tight impossible turns he makes, and the fact that he never once fills up for gas. When he confronts Shimoda, he is immediately invited to know all the things only a messiah is supposed to know. These things come conveniently in a "Messiah's Handbook", which Shimoda digs out of his cockpit and throws to Richard without ceremony. At first thinking Shimoda is crazy, Richard soon learns that no matter where he goes or what he says, Shimoda is one step ahead and determined that Richard understand he is the real deal.
It soon becomes apparent that Richard has been chosen to take his place. Throughout the book we get glimpses of not only why Shimoda quit being the new messiah, but also into the handbook and its "wisdom".
Philosophical, otherworldly, and at times downright crazy--still I carried this book around in my back pocket for months when I first read it years ago. Picking it up again, I see how it inspired me to see myself as powerful as any Christ, and as capable of miracles. Illusions is a weird and ofttimes confounding novel, and I'm sure it will be viewed with skepticism in the least, ridicule at the most. I love this book because of it's uniqueness, the author's ability to place himself entirely within a fictional story, and because of D. Shimoda--the unforgettable and reluctant messiah.
"Argue for your limitations, and sure enough they're yours." (Messiah's Handbook p. 100)

Club Dead

The third book of Charlaine Harris' Southern Vampire series begins with Sookie acting petulant. It's kind of refreshing, not having to wait for it. The tanned blond telepath is having yet more problems with her pale vampire lover, Bill. It's understandable, though-- at this point they've been together for a few months, and the honeymoon's over. Not that they're married, Sookie would be quick to point out. It's not legal for vampires to marry humans. And once she has pointed that out, it is required by law that she add, "Not that he's asked me." She seems awfully bitter that her soulmate (of a few months) hasn't tried to wed her (illegally).

You know what else makes Sookie bitter? When Bill uses the computer for top-secret vampire stuff and doesn't shower her with attention. He doesn't even tell her what his top-secret vampire stuff is about! So when he leaves, on more top-secret vampire business, she feels so betrayed and hurt and it's the worst thing that has ever happened to her, ever, ever, boo-hoo-hoo, etc.

When she finds out that it is past the time that he should have been home, and she hadn't known when he was due back, and other vampires know more about the situation than she does, she feels even more hurt and betrayed, and it can't possibly get any worse, but then oh my god somehow it does get worse! Sookie mopes through the beginning of the book, sighing about how her life, evidently, wasn't worth sharing, and lamenting that Bill had "had some faith in [Sookie], no matter how faithless he might have been himself." This moping period isn't quite as painful as the one in the Twilight series, but it's close.

Another thing that bothered me: it's strange that the exotic vampire Chow, who is "Asian," has a Chinese name and Japanese yakuza tattoos. I guess I'll let that one slide, though, considering that Sookie lives in northern Louisiana and says that Chow is the first person of Asian descent that she has ever met. (That ignorance is probably reflected in Ms. Harris, as authors of these kinds of novels almost always seem to put a lot of themselves into their heroines.) That is just incredible to me. How can you go your whole life, until you're 25 or 26, not having met anyone of Asian descent?

Anyway, all complaints aside, I enjoyed this book, as I enjoy all of the Sookie Stackhouse books. We get to learn a little bit more about shifters and Weres, and Sookie meets more men who can fall in love with her.

One out of one pretty sweet Yakuza tattoo!

Living Dead in Dallas

I told myself that I couldn't read any further in the third book in Charlaine Harris' Southern Vampire series until I reviewed the second one, Living Dead in Dallas. So here we are. Hopefully, this will keep me from getting plot events confused, as I think I might have with my review of the first.

This book continues to follow perky Sookie Stackhouse on her adventures with her vampire boyfriend, Bill. Bill's boss, Eric, who owns the vampire bar Fangtasia, sends them off to use Sookie's telepathy to solve a mystery over in Dallas. In the past, she helped him find who was embezzling from his bar by reading the minds of humans who worked there. Now, she's being sent to Dallas to investigate the disappearance of a very old vampire named Godfrey (originally Godric), and to see whether the rabid anti-vampire faction of Christianity known as the Fellowship of the Sun had anything to do with it. (Funfact: Just found out that the Fellowship has a website: http://www.fellowshipofthesun.org -- hilarious! The production value on the videos is way too high for it to be realistic, though. Tee-hee!)

Now, this brings to mind another difference between the show and the books. In the show, it seems like they pull fewer punches with their fairly graphic sex scenes. But when you look at several specific incidences, it seems that some things are too extreme even for HBO. For instance, Sookie was molested by one of her uncles when she was a child. In the book, she tells Bill that he never penetrated her (obviously, since her hymen was intact for their first time), but in the series, they change it to her saying that he never touched her-- just held her in his lap and thought creepy thoughts about how she didn't have any hair on her body. Still gross, yes, but miles away from what happened in the book.

Also, when Sookie finally meets Godric in the series, he is a wise, almost Buddha-like vampire. He shows much more mercy, compassion, and understanding than any other character in either version of the series. In the books, though, he seems merely apathetic and bored with life-- he shows a disconnect with all beings, living or undead.

On to more complaining about Sookie getting mad about things I don't understand!

I believe this example comes from the second book-- if I err and it is from the first, I apologize. I lent both books to a friend right after I finished them, so cannot go back and check, or get exact quotes, for that matter.

This conversation occurred when Bill was driving Sookie to Fangtasia to meet with Eric. Bill bought a strip mall, if I remember correctly, that had several stores in it. When he told Sookie that she could go into the clothing store and pick out anything she liked, telling the salesperson to put it onto Bill's tab, she became furious with him. She was absolutely outraged that he would treat her like a 'kept woman,' and when the car mysteriously stopped, she jumped out and stormed off into the spooky woods, planning to walk all the way home. She ignored his calling to her, and when she began to have misgivings about her safety (as she heard creepy noises following her), she tried to tell herself that she was doing the right thing, and how dare Bill offer her free things and try to get her back in the car.

She is pretty awesome.


One, two, three out of three inexplicable love interests! Ah! Ah! Ah!

Dead Until Dark

Ever since I was in elementary school, I've had a soft spot for vampires, witches, and werewolves. I used to have an encyclopedic knowledge of the different guises the monsters wore in different cultures and time periods. When I was young, my fix was a series called The Last Vampire by Christopher Pike. Maybe I'll re-read that later and post my more mature (?) impression of them.

However, more recently I've discovered the guilty pleasure that is the Southern Vampire series, by Charlaine Harris.

Dead Until Dark is the first book in this series, and I liked it. I just finished re-reading it (and the second book-- I probably should have written this review before I started reading the next one..) after having seen up through Season 2 episode 10 of the HBO series based on the books, True Blood. My memory is awful, so I thought I should go back through the books and see just how true to them the show is.

The show goes much more deeply into some side-plots than the books do, but I think that it only adds richness and makes it more interesting. The minor characters are also more fleshed out and defined, again adding a new dimension.

Dead Until Dark focuses on the heroine, Sookie Stackhouse, and her 'disability,' which is telepathy. I think that Charlaine Harris might be overdoing her quirky character a bit much sometimes, making her a tad unbelievable. For instance, Sookie is always referring to her telepathy as a disability. Now, I understand that it's made her life harder, and she would rather not know everything that everyone around her is thinking, but 'disability'? That word just conjured up all the wrong images. I think a better route would have been the more obvious blessing/curse dichotomy, especially since Sookie proves herself time and time again to be a religious person.

Also, Sookie has never been in a serious relationship, because of her 'disability.' Since vampires are a 'blank spot' for her telepathy, they are some of the few people she can feel comfortable around. So when the vampire Bill wanders into the bar where she works, Merlotte's, she is instantly attracted to him (and the calming mental silence around him). However, once she is in the relationship, she seems to be quite a bit higher maintenance than one might have assumed. She takes offense at the strangest things, and gets her knickers in a knot for no reason I can see. I suppose it might be merely a writing device to differentiate between the usually cool vampire, Bill, and the hot-blooded human, Sookie, but I think that her 'reasoning' for starting tiffs with Bill is poorly thought out, even though the story is told from her perspective. It paints her as quite an irrational person, which is odd, especially since her telepathy supposedly gives her such great insights into human nature.

The foundation of the relationship of Sookie and Bill seems to be just that she can't hear his thoughts and that he thinks she tastes remarkably good. Oh, yes, and of course all of the incredible sex. Honestly, with all the fights they have over nothing, I can't imagine much else holding them together. It is quite possible that they have long, meaningful talks that the reader is not privy to, but if that's the case, they seem to forget about them pretty quickly when Sookie decides Bill isn't letting her be her own assertive self.

Bill, too, seems to have some strange personality quirks, in that he doesn't seem to have much of a personality. Perhaps it's just that he is so opaque to Sookie, who is used to reading everyone's mind. As the reader, we only know what Sookie knows-- that may be the base of the problem. Maybe.

Sam Merlotte, too, seems to be a somewhat flat character. He is Sookie's boss and owner of the bar, Merlotte's, and is defined first and foremost by his longing for Sookie-- Lord only knows why.

Flightiness of women and blankness of men aside, this book is quite entertaining. I enjoy seeing the hierarchy and power plays of the vampire society, how some vampires choose to 'mainstream' and try to join human society, and the sneak peeks that Sookie gets into the thoughts of those around her.

One out of one bloody mess!