The Eclectic Reader

New Arrivals at The Eclectic Reader. Won't last long!

A really fine book and this is the second time it has come in the bookstore. Fascinating photo-essay! From the dust-flap: "The Klondike Gold Rush was perhaps the most photographed event in North America during the nineteenth century. More than ten thousand pictures are available in public archives and private collections, depicting every aspect of what Pierre Berton has called 'one of the strangest mass movements in history.' " It lasted from 1897-1899. For sale at $25.

Monday, May 18, I will be starting another cancer treatment after a year of other types of treatment. This time it will be chemotherapy. I have no idea what my reaction will be. The bookstore hours might be unreliable for a while so this is a heads-up that you might want to call first and see if I made it to work. Sorry for the inconvenience.

The new inventory is fabulous. I hope you are able to stop in soon.

work.me

Some great new inventory just came in...plus a collection of 60 older science fiction paperbacks.

I've been downsizing my personal horticultural library. This was a favorite book for two reasons. It has information on tropical plants commonly grown in Florida that we grow as houseplants in Colorado. Secondly, I used to visit Florida every year and loved being able to identify the flora. This is a hardback in good condition. Priced at $18.

Speaking of houseplants, I am starting to bring in more of my homegrown plant "starts" again as the weather warms up. I sell them here. I can also offer unusual cuttings as well. If there is interest, we might be able to host a cuttings swap. I will be downsizing my plant collection this year.

New book. This one's hard to find. $25. Fukuoka devoted over 50 years to farming as a spiritual path.

If you have ever wanted to know why someone would join a cult, this intimate memoir will explain it all. The truth is that no one ever joins a cult. People are attracted to a community or organization that seems to offer what their hungry soul needs: a new life, a second chance, a chance to save themselves and the world. They may be searching for family, acceptance, community, or meaning.

For Janet Dart, that community was Synanon. She will take you along on her journey through all the stages of a relationship: interest, excitement, infatuation, comfortability, disappointment and doubt, questioning, fear of breaking up... and then the split, followed by release and possibly remorse.

You will see the changes in Synanon itself as it shifts from the realm of a model drug rehabilitation program to the benign dreams of an experimental community that hopes to change the world, into the dangerous territory of an authoritarian cult. It becomes a vehicle for a charismatic leader, his family and his circle of sycophants, to amass power and wealth while the majority of the community, clinging to their ideals, their hopeful vision, or their desperate need to recover from addiction, live in blind servitude, rewarded only by total loyalty and evicted by purges of faltering faith.

How do I know this inside story of the rise and fall of a cult? Because I was there for eight years. Because Janet Dart and I had similar experiences in Synanon. I am in this book and I am part of her story. I know what it is like to be trapped inside a cage of your own doubts, to be both attracted by the promise and disappointed in the reality. To never want to leave the better parts or to cut yourself off from a life. To abandon a circle of friends that shared more intimacy than anything I have experienced since.

This is a rare and viscerally honest look at the psychology behind a poorly understood phenomena. Janet’s is such a compelling personal story. It will rip your heart out. You cannot put it down.

GUNN'S FAMILY PHYSICIAN, circa 1868

If you like antique medical texts, this one is affordable. Originals of this book from the late 1800s run $100-200. This copy is in such poor exterior condition that I am only asking $30. It is missing the preliminary pages and the title page, but it has 1,193 pages of medical lore that are still present.

IT'S TIME FOR GARDEN DREAMING AND PLANNING

As a former landscape gardener and greenhouse worker, and a long-time Fort Collins gardener (retired), I take a special interest in the horticulture section of my bookstore. These are some great new additions.