T.C. Lethbridge (1980): "The Essential T.C. Lethbridge". T. Graves & J. Hoult (eds.)

I came to this volume via one of its editors, Tom Graves, who wrote a short book, Pendulum Dowsing (1989) which references the work of Lethbridge.  Lethbridge was a Cambridge University archaeologist who worked for many years within the accepted tradition of his discipline. Gradually, from his archaeological work on "the confused and difficult subject of the ancient Gods in Britain", to a personal investigation which takes a turn from the conventional as Lethbridge takes up pendulum dowsing.

This produced the same feeling of genuine scholarship applied to a less conventional area of study as reading, say T. J. Hudson's (1893) Psychic Phenomenon, which I picked up randomly for its attractive binding out of a cardboard box many years ago for £1- in a student union book sale. I remember enjoying Hudson at the time, and then recommending it and lending it to another student who disappeared from the scene never to be seen again.  These were the times before Amazon or AbeBooks.co.uk, so it was not until much later that Psychic Phenomenon could be tracked down again, it not being terribly or outrageously well read these days.  I always remember the books I lend, and to whom, and if I have received them back again.  Likewise I know which on my shelves aren't mine, but borrowed and a sense of obligation to return them lingers almost palpably about the shelf on which they sit.  Hudson went into that category of Lost Books, a file in my mind which is not so full now as it used to be, of those lent volumes which are irredeemably lent to the irredeemable.  From a more recent re-read of his Victorian works, I came to Graves, then Lethbridge and other minor madnesses such as Rupert Sheldrake and The Sense of Being Stared At (2003) or 1782 French grimoire, Le Petit Albert - this latter which it would be wrong to commend in any way at all.

Lethbridge reminds us of the interconnectedness of things:

I have enjoyed one great advantage over many of my contemporaries. It has never been necessary for me to stick closely to one line of study, and thus work it to death.  There has always been time enough to gain at least a passing acquaintance with subjects other than archaeology... Although this may well have led to my becoming a "jack of all trades and master of none", it has nevertheless provided me with a great store of experience, with some of which I at times bore my friends.

(p. xviii)

This broad-based interest in inter-connectedness of areas of intellectual endeavour very much represents what this Blog is trying to achieve with regard to winding the personal serendipitous highways and by-ways of books, old and new. The conceptual leads taking us from one book to another, and helping to explain the unconventional homes of certain books next to others on the shelves of the home library.  

Foucault, M. (1961): Madness and Civilization

Someone was staring to read Folie et deraison: Histoire de la folie a l'age classique, so I am quite happy to start a thread on what the current Routeledge version claims to be "the most influential, and controversial text in this field during the last forty years."  Having read and re-read the first three chapters several times without ever having got any further, this is a good opportunity to start over from my almost blunted purpose.

A Wikipedia summary to get you going. How does the impression on your mind of the summarised version differ from the experience of a reading of the original text, and do we in fact benefit from the time spent in reading this, as opposed to just Googling the summary and going for a run instead?

"Crime and Custom in Savage Society" By Bronislaw Malinowski (1926)

 Any takers for this classic text? Available free online HERE for those who don't already have it on their shelves. Shame on you.  I'm working from the 1966 8th edition which has been withdrawn from UCS Sociology Dept at some point in the distant past and retailed to me through abebooks.co.uk, of which you are no doubt already aware.  Seventeen chapters in two parts beginning with "The Automatic Submission to Custom and the Real Problem", and ending with "The Factors of Social Cohesion in a Primitive Tribe." Remembering that this was first published in 1922 and take into account that one of the reasons for starting with the older books before the more recent descendants, so to speak, it gives us a chance to look at the ideas in their embryonic but fully contextualised form rather than the gloss or digest of what Malinowski is said to have said passed down as footnotes of footnotes.  Part of the point in starting here is to get an idea of the original text, and from it to form a set of potential trajectories. Where could these ideas have led to when they were written in 1922? Not only where did they they lead, but what could they have led to.  Reading references to older texts in more recent books, particularly in some recent scholarship, it is possible for the reader, and likewise the reader of history texts, to get the idea that the development of thought from then to now was a linear and predictable process.  Clearly this view should at the very least be questioned. So I would propose that it is preferable to read and react to the original text, bearing in mind when and for whom it was written, what it was trying to convey to which audience. We should choose rather to re-read the original in preference to a quick Google search for Wiki-commentaries in order that we might begin to build a substantial base of knowledge on which those later refinements and commentaries can more fairly sit. Presuming, that is that we are reading for pleasure and expanded self-knowledge, rather than hoping to pass exams in the immediate future or knock out a quick cut'n'paste essay.