Too many books, too little time

I'm thinking of starting to read more academic texts on paganism again. I used to be really into that -- I loved Drawing Down the Moon and Witching Culture, for instance. The friend I was staying with this weekend has an impressive collection of anthropological/sociological texts on the modern pagan movement, and it's rather inspiring. I've been meaning to finish reading Triumph of the Moon for ages, but right now I want to try Her Hidden Children. Since I'm an American pagan, I find studies of our brand of paganism slightly more interesting than studies of British witchcraft, even though they share common roots. I do intent to finish Triumph of the Moon eventually, though. Really! I was also enamoured of her copy of The Paganism Reader, which is a collection of excerpts from a variety of texts that have been important to the pagan movement. It looked fascinating.

And then there are the non-academic books I want to read! I just read a review of a new book about the elder futhark runes which sounds fantastic (Runes for Transformation - I found the review here), and I heard that Dianna Paxson has a new book out on trance states, Trance-portation: Learning to Navigate the Inner World, which also sounds interesting, though I haven't taken a close look at it yet. The Amazon blurb makes it sound like it might be taking a lighter attitude toward the topic than I would prefer, but you can't judge a book by its Amazon blurb! Or by the back of the book blurb, for that matter. So it still warrants a closer look.

With the holidays coming, I may find myself asking for some very strange books this year!