Like many book readers, I am always reading a number of books
simultaneously.  I think it would be interesting to discuss books that
overlap either by common subject or some personal connection which are
being read in concert. Some co-read books have no apparent connection but
make a unique flavor when digested together.

13 responses total.

Recently I started reading "Breaking New Ground" by Gifford Pinchot.  He
is credited with starting the U.S. Forest Service, and particularly its
"Land of Many Uses" philosophy.  

  Last night, I arrived home to a very nice birthday gift:  "Epitaph for a
Desert Anarchist:  The Life and Legacy of Edward Abbey" by James Bishop
Jr. (1994, Atheneum).   I will be reading these books together.  From a
consumate organizer to Mr. Monkey Wrench and back, areading I shall go.

 I am usually reading 2 or 3 John Steinbecks at the same time.

I really enjoyed reading Cannery Row, Sweet Thursday and Tortilla Flat
at the same time.

Well I started reading "Thracian Tales on the Gundestrop Cauldron", which
appears to refer to some of the theories of Georges Dumezil and also owe
some homage to Claude Levi-Strauss.  Curiously, just before I was loaned
that book, I had decided to compare those two Anthropologists to see if there
is a sort of paradigmatic evolution going on: from dualism to triads to
perhaps the fluid sense of number/group that Rees and Rees discribe in
Celtic Heritage.  Is that obscure enough for books to read together?


Oh, and I first read Brave New World and 1984 at the same time.  Scarey.

I read Julian Jaynes' _The Rise of Consciousness in the Breakdown of
the Bicameral Mind_, Homer's _Iliad_, and parts of the Old Testament
at the same time.

Jaynes is a psychologist whose belief is that what we call
"consciousness" (the capability of introspection, to oversimplify a
bit) is a comparatively recently-developed mode of human mental
functioning and has existed only for the last few milennia.  In the
oldest civilizations -- e.g. Egyptian, Babylonian, Inca, --
human mental functioning was what Jaynes terms "bicameral":  human
activity was guided by the right side of the brain, which delivered
instructions to the left brain that were experienced as auditory and
visual hallucinations external to the body.  Hence the belief in "gods"
and the accounts of people hearing voices of the gods in much of very
ancient literature.

Jaynes cites _The Iliad_ and the early books of the _Old Testament_
as examples of literature that was produced during the bicameral
period, so I read those concurrently with Jaynes' book.

con-current reading is great!!!  But remember: Volts * Amps = What's
Happening?

Is Jaynes suggesting that there is a physical change in the mind - a
form of evolution - or that these are self-stabilizing modes that the
mind can settle into? I observe that a lot of people today say they
experience auditory and visual hallucinations, even without a whole
social fabric of such to support them.

It's been a while since I read it, but Jaynes believes that
bicamerality was the predominant mode in early civilizations, and was
stable and self-sustaining until its survival value became inadequate
to dealing with novelty and change, at which point a more
self-conscious and introspective mode of mental functioning became the
norm through the process of natural selection.  For civilizations of
the Mediterranean region the change occurred during a period of immense
social and climatic upheaval around the 2nd or 3rd century B.C.  In the
western hemisphere -- e.g. for Inca civilization -- it happened much
later, and was triggered by the European invasions.

According to Jaynes, syndromes such as schizophrenia, which are today
classified as mental illness, and in which individuals experience
hallucinations and hear voices telling them what to do, are throwbacks
to the bicameral period, and modern organized religion, with its belief
in divinity and supernatural power, is a remnant of it also.

Jayes cites modern brain research -- such as studies done on
individuals who have had connections between the right and left brain
hemispheres severed and who then appear to behave as two distinct and
often conflicting individuals -- in support of his theory.

I don't have the background to critique and evaluate Jaynes' theories,
but it's a fascinating book that is still in print after 17 years.
(Borders stocks it in the Psychology section.)

        I like to read books that clash, so I can diverse points of view on a
single subject.  Right now I'm reading tech nay sayer Neil Postman'
s "Technopoly," along with William Gibson's Virtual Light.

woops should be "can have diverse.." in the first sentence.

I read Jayes book some years ago -- I can't recall much of it now, but
I remember having to suspend disbelief to complete it.

re #5: I have to say, this is very good geek humor.

Re #10:  I didn't get it until I read your response, and went back to see what
you were talking about.  *sigh*

I like to read Heinlein's "Starship Trooper" along side Haldeman's 
"Forever War".  It's almost like the same story told from different 
perspectives.

While I often read several books at once, I seldom choose related books.  If
I do, I'm studying something and so not really reading the books; I'm just
mining them.

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