Therianthrope & Otherkin Book Club

Some books were recently added to the LibraryThing bookshelf of the Therianthrope and Otherkin Book List:

Patrick Harpur's Daimonic Reality: A Field Guide to the Otherworld, since Lupa's LibraryThing bookshelf tagged it as being interesting in context with otherkin. I haven't read it yet.

Bernd Heinrich's Mind of the Raven: Investigations and Adventures with Wolf-Birds, since Lupa's LibraryThing bookshelf listed it, I took a look at it, and it appears to be very interesting. I don't know if it'll fit the theme of the book list, but it is about animal intelligence. I haven't read it yet.

Joseph Campbell's The Power of Myth, which probably should have been on the list before, though I'm not sure which section it should go in... secular interests or spiritual interests?

Theodore Schick's How to Think About Weird Things: Critical Thinking for a New Age, since I've been planning on adding it to the spiritual interests section of the book list for years now. I've read it from cover to cover twice and used it as reference a few times, but I keep going back and forth on whether I like it. Yes, critical thinking is an indispensable tool... and yes, it's useful to know the criticism for various New Age ideas, since the New Age books themselves aren't generally inclined to tell you that part even though it's something you'd want to know. On the other hand, the book isn't as neutral as it claims to be; it tends to take the stance that only scientifically provable things are worth believing in-- that you shouldn't believe in anything unless if you can see, hear, touch, measure, and experiment on it. That's really useful for identifying whether an idea is pseudo-scientific, but it's kinda opposed to spirituality of most any kind...

Adam Riggs's Critter Costuming: Making Mascots and Fabricating Fursuits. I stumbled across this in a search under the tag “costumes.” I was expecting to find some books on Halloween and stage make-up, but I hadn't realized there were any books on this in particular. I haven't read it yet.

Murray Bookchin's Re-Enchanting Humanity: A Defense of the Human Spirit Against Antihumanism, Misanthropy, Mysticism and Primitivism. I stumbled across this on a tag search... I have basically no idea what it is, but it could be interesting, or it might not. I haven't read it yet.

Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail. Possible secular interest.

I have a plan for a new section in the book list... I'm still uncertain about whether I want to do this, since it could either broaden the book list's theme to the point of degrading the whole and causing burnout for myself, or it could improve the book list by introducing people to yet more books that they otherwise wouldn't have heard of that suit their interests and broaden their minds. The plan is that the fiction section will include both the existing section of fictional stories that have characters who pretty much are otherkin in spirit, as well as a not-yet-existing section of fiction books that have an atmosphere evocative of otherkin. The atmospheric fiction section would include Bob Eggleton's Dragonhenge, Peter Beagle's The Last Unicorn, some urban fantasy novels... that sort of thing. People have always been recommending books to me that are like that. The Last Unicorn is not about otherkin, because it's about a unicorn who physically transforms into a human, which doesn't happen in real life and isn't how any real otherkin came to be... but most people agree that the atmosphere is evocative of otherkin, since a lot of otherkin feel like the Unicorn did about being in human form. Dragonhenge is a collection of myths told by dragons... but it obviously isn't about real dragons, it's not about people who identify as dragons, the myths the fictional dragons tell are equally fictional and aren't intended to be used for a real person to base their spirituality on, and nobody believed it was true when they were creating it... however, a lot of dragon otherkin would be very moved and inspired by reading a book about dragons where dragons are portrayed as spiritual, intelligent, capable of being either heroic or villainous, and with a mythology of their own. It bums me out that a lot of dragon otherkin are apparently unaware of Dragonhenge, since they're missing out on something they would like.

What do you think? Should I include a “fiction: atmospheres evocative of otherkin and therianthropes” section? Would it help people, or would it add confusion? Does it diverge too much from my goal of listing books that are about otherkin? Would it end up getting longer than the rest of the list? So far I've been so careful about what I do and do not include... would the proposed section lower the value of the rest of the list by including things that don't have as much to do with the list's subject?

People who have experience in the Pagan communities and reading books on Paganism know about the reputations of authors. (Feel free to replace “Pagan” with “New Age” in this post... or possibly even “self-help,” “mythology,” or whichever other thing you're most familiar with.) However, the author's reputation isn't always clear when you're looking at titles in a catalog, shop, or library. I haven't seen any helpful lists made of Pagan authors that tell where they fall on the scale of “disreputable, avoid” and “reputable, must-read.” Let's make one.

Things to take into consideration about the author's writing: ethics, quality of scholarship, and honesty about whether a statement is factual or invented.

(Cross-posted to paganbooks and my journal.)