a lamp to my feet

This title makes the rounds a lot on lists of worst book names, and it really is... just awful. How they thought any message other than INCESTALERT would come through with that picture of a kid, let’s just call her Elektra, trying to escape her oblivious mother and face-hiding father, I simply don’t know. 

A prayer guide *so definitive* that it had to be “completely revised”. Hopefully, this version is definitely, finitely, definitive, for ever and ever, Amen.

This stupid book, written in English, the language of The World, will teach you to teach others how to pray right and to the right God, for Pete’s sake. Every single, individual nation is ostensibly covered by this missionary manual and this is illustrated here with text like WORLD and a picture of the world looking a bit deflated, and the names of various countries, and photos of some not-white people. “Daaaamn”, I’ll bet you’re thinking, “the world is so expansive, and exotic, and people wear all sorts of things on their heads! Ha, ha, so crazy and cool!” and now you’re just dying to get out there and spread the word of your Lord and Saviour so that everyone will wear normal things on their heads like snapbacks.

Hah. 

Sex and stiffs. And sundials, and signposts, and some simpleton called Staume... alliterative allusions are a necessary distraction from actually engaging with this horrific book.

It did remind me of another book I came across once - it was called ‘Grave Desire: A Cultural History of Necrophilia’, which, as a pun-lover, I thought was a pretty great title. But, after realising the author was going to call the first chapter 'A Necroduction'... followed by 'Necrophilia: a Deathnition', a chapter on 'NecroSuperstars', 'Necronauts', and of course, a 'Necroclusion'... I was like, mate, let it die.

Anyway, back to the tragedy in question - maybe Staume thinks he’s being funny - his previous book was ‘A Beginner's Guide for the Recently Deceased’, a lame attempt to gain kudos for the Beetlejuice reference. But Staume really is trying to write about the “potential” of “sexual energy” beyond the graaaave and for that, he deserves my derision. The imagery here is either ambiguous or, by contrast, extremely literal - arrows pointing up! To Heaven! In the SKY! That stock image of a woman’s mouth caught in an ecstatic moan (BECAUSE OF SEX) just makes me wonder why we don’t see more male ‘o faces’ on book covers - 

Here’s a surprise - this book is about exactly what it sounds like. Perhaps more surprising - the author responsible for this book, ‘Dolphins, Extraterrestrials, Angels’, isn’t even the only person to draw those three things together. 

Timothy Wyllie, who you get to see a picture of in his hot tub on the backcover, yay, wrote this autobiographical story about his “adventures among Spiritual Intelligences.” As if the horrible New Agey artwork of aliens abducting dolphins wasn’t bad enough, unnecessary capitals are always a red flag of the bad things to come. Wyllie, or Father Micah as he was known when he was part of The Process (an offshoot of Scientology) tries to convince us of the “metanoic certainty” of dolphin-human telepathy, the Urantia prophecy, and that a host of celestial seraphim came to Earth to tell him that it was cool for him to take all the drugs he wanted because he had “the perfect protection of heaven” - lucky guy!

The reason I bought this book (from Glastonbury, where else) is that I’m interested in how animals may be perceived by the metaphysical community to have supernatural powers. In the 1960s, Dr John Lilly, inventor of the isolation tank, began studying cetacean psychology through experiments financially backed by NASA. Lilly became enamoured with the idea that hallucinogens would enable us to reach new heights of consciousness, such that would allow interspecies psychic unity, and even injected his dolphins with LSD to see if that would help. Lilly is obviously Wyllie’s hero, but his research came to nothing, and in his drug-addled haze Lilly lost his funding and his credibility. Interestingly, he later became a campaigner for cetacean rights, and became anti-animals in captivity.

And because the US military has always taken an interest in psychic warfare, especially if the Soviets are doing it too, it might not be a coincidence that both the America and the Russian navy have squads of trained dolphins (dolphins have badass echolocation powers which could have military applications, but reports of them having knives strapped to their heads to stab underwater spies is a lot, A LOT, less cool). It’s not hard to believe that the military still do, or might again, investigate the possibility of weaponising the alleged psychic capacities of dolphins, mostly because the military can be such a bizarre and ludicrous place. 

Today, we have something a bit different. To mark the untimely passing of one of fantasy’s bests, Sir Terry Pratchett, I want to talk about the importance of his books to me, and more widely, while still giving this book cover a gentle ribbing for being so hideous.

Even though, as a kid in the 90s, Pratchett books were everywhere, it wasn’t until I was an adult that I gave them the time of day. The ever-insightful Michael Grogan bought me my first, the first Discworld novel, The Colour of Magic, and I loved it. Immediately, I gloried in Pratchett’s wry and clever humour and was genuinely astounded to see how much of his work had cyclically reflected and influenced perceptions of how magic and belief operate in the real world. The man truly was a myth-weaver. 

But I haaaated the cover art. Ugh, so daggy! I know that Josh Kirby’s iconic illustrations of Pratchett’s stories are rich, detailed, and colourful but they are also chaotic, caricature-ridden, amateurish, and just plain uggers. I didn’t want to be caught out with one of these garish-looking books in public, I disliked the imagery so much. Then one day, my eminently cool friend Claire wanted to borrow a book to read at the beach, and seized upon The Light Fantastic. I had this moment of realisation that showing your Pratchett ‘colours’, as it were, was a signification. It was showing the world that you’re part of this club of readers of excellent fantasy fiction. It says, yeah, that’s right, remember these books? Still excellent! I’m rofling at all the intelligent puns I missed as a kid because I’m a big smart grown up now with an intact sense of whimsy! YEAH! And I thought, shit yes, I want to be in that club. None of this an-adult-version-of-Harry-Potter-for-me-please bullshit. Read it, own it (unless its 50 Shades of Grey, keep your porn-reading off from my bus commute, thanks).

I was lucky enough to live with the wonderful Mel, who has an impressive book collection, so my exposure to Pratchett wondrousness only grew. Master raconteur Ryan Wittingslow created my very own audiobook by reading the best books aloud to me (and his Granny Weatherwax impression really can’t be beat). And one day, my kids will inherit a collection of these books, and I’ll do the best Granny voice I can muster, and they will love the stories, and learn to appreciate the crappy art that has come to signify the magnificent adventures that lie within the pages.

Why does every motherfucker talking about ‘wellness’ ‘naturally’ with ‘super foods’ have to drag the mortar and pestle into their schlock? Leave the goddamn mortar and pestle alone, you frauds! It doesn’t deserve this!

After one ‘wellness warrior’ trying to battle cancer through alternative dieting died recently and another was outed as a liar for pretending she had cancer to promote her ‘health’ site (!!!), I really hope people can start waking up to the reality of this industry and its anti-vax, heal-yourself-through-goji-berries bullshit.

Wow. 

Looking at this is pure torture. I actually have a couple of Taylor Ellwood books, and they all look similar to this (one has a cover that reaaally looks like someone jizzed all over it) but this has got to be the worst. At first I was only going to post a low-quality version, thought maybe we weren't quite ready for this book cover in all of its pixelated glory, but just so you can see the texture of this monstrosity, here you go. Look: there's tonnes to complain about, and yes this is probably self-published technically, but you've got admit, it's really something. I just don't know what... 

This is the book that inspired me 'Don't Worry, Be Hopi' - I borrowed it from Carole today in the hopes of finishing a thesis section on the mystical reputation of dolphins, but I just haven't been able to get anything done today with this on my desk. Just look at that cover art. Let's get right in there - 

Obviously, the title is a punny nightmare. Forget about that for a moment, if you can (I never will). That's presumably the detached head of the author floating there, wearing feathers and a vaguely ethnic necklace for authenticity. Interested in her backstory? "Jo is a clinical hypnotherapist and on turning 50, felt an intense need to justify her existence." Oh, man. I just hope her justification was found when someone convinced her to have the image of a dude's hands holding what seem to be radioactive bull's testicles in front of her picture so that it appears that a giant (is it God?) is groping her weird-looking breasts from behind.

Excellent questions, both. Today, I made a tumblr (my first!) to host images of terrible book cover designs from fiction and non-fiction books that deal with religious (including 'spiritual' and 'metaphysical') topics. Did you know you CAN read a book by it's cover? I spend a lot of time reading this shit and I need someone else to laugh with me about the sheer failure of so many of these covers to convey an appropriate, interesting, or even clear message - they are all beautiful travesties in their own special way.

Inanity, incoherence, and the sacrifice of decent aesthetics to the god of overlaying a series of stock images in the hope it looks 'deep' can be found on the front of many a self-published work. But that's too easy! These are, mostly, officially published and professionally edited and designed books.