"Strike me down, and I shall become more powerful than you can imagine."
-- Odin

If you recall our elegiac post from last year, you recall that Fields Book Store, once pound for pound the finest occult bookshop in the English-speaking world, had died. Its physical location closed, it had ascended into the Web, like one of Zeus' ex-girlfriends ( Read more... )

Since the beginning of modern record keeping, I have gone 4-5 against Fields Book Store, pound for pound the finest occult bookstore in the English-speaking world. Next year, I shall win by forfeit -- Fields is shutting down their physical location after 81 years. After the end of February, the oldest continuously operating bookstore in San ( Read more... )

I think impecunious occult eccentric loners in the Bay Area are living longer. That's the only logical explanation for how I went to Fields Book Store, pound for pound the finest occult bookstore in the English-speaking world, and only found one book in the used section to buy: The Lebor Feasa Runda: A Druidic Grammar of Celtic Lore and Magic, by ( Read more... )

In the eternal struggle between myself and Fields Book Store -- pound for pound and title for title the best occult book store in the English-speaking world -- I win some and I lose some. This time, I lost some. I just walked into the punch, and never walked it off. I don't even remember putting up much of a fight: I actually bought a book off the ( Read more... )

Apologies for the delay on this entry, and for repurposing Sting lyrics for the title, but I've been minorly swamped and, in a perhaps related matter, less blog-inspired recently.

But let's go to, then, shall we? The day began promisingly, with a pint of Anchor Steam, America's best beer, on draft at 10 a.m. luagha and I had arrived at Polk Street in ( Read more... )

It occurs to me that I haven't yet posted about my annual trip to Fields Book Store, pound for pound still the finest occult bookstore in the English-speaking world. Mostly because all the books were already packed by the time I had the free time to post, and partly because -- yes, once more, Fields defeated me. Well, Bobby Lee probably wasn't ( Read more... )

The doughty luagha being otherwise engaged at an RPGA convention, I was forced to brave the daunting threshold of Fields Book Store on Polk Street in San Francisco, pound for pound the finest occult bookstore in the English-speaking world, all by my lonesome. I went early on Friday, before heading out to Dundracon, and once more I maintained my Princely ( Read more... )

This year, since my standard DunDraCon schedule is thrown off by a Tiny Tank Meeting (which is why I'm typing this in Oakland), we hit Fields Bookstore (on Polk Street in San Francisco), pound for pound the finest occult bookshop in the English-incanting world, on the Tuesday after the cons rather than the Friday before. And thereby, like the ( Read more... )

I think the tide is slowly beginning to turn. Yes, Fields Bookstore on Polk Street in San Francisco, pound for pound the finest occult bookstore in the Anglosphere beat me again. But not quite as decisively! For example, the Occult Nazis section had almost nothing to show me. Very little hot newness there: Did I buy A Science for the Soul: ( Read more... )

Fields Book Store on Polk Street in San Francisco, pound for pound the best occult bookstore in the English-speaking world, delivered unto me its ritual thrashing today. (Yes, I know I'm on Austerity. But mollpeartree said I could buy one book there as a Valentine's Day gift to myself, and if you take that book out of the equation, I've barely spent nine ( Read more... )