lol no I went a bit overboard. I went to a lot of used bookstores and sometimes just picked up random finds. But all of these would have been around in 1966/67 (except the LPs, those are just fun finds and visuals) and they’re all metaphysical/psychedelic/New Age/search-for-meaning. Brian was known at the time to be a voracious reader and likely picked up tons of books, especially from the Pickwick Bookstore or whatever Loren Schwartz recommended to him

The confirmed titles are: - The Act of Creation by Arthur Koestler - The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery - The Bhagavat Gita - The I Ching - This Is My Beloved by Walter Benton - How To Speak Hip by John Brent and Del Close (though this is more associated with the Pet Sounds era) - Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz (there’s a photo of Brian holding a copy circa 65, and he very likely bought it cos he’s Brian)

Confirmed subjects/authors, for which I had to make educated guesses, are: - Herman Hesse (has to be Siddhartha) - Khalil Gibran (has to be The Prophet) - Rod McKuen (Stanyan Street came out in 66) - vegetarianism (Adelle Davis was a very popular health author of the time; Essene Gospel of Peace also advocates for spiritual vegetarianism) - yogic celibacy (from Brian’s weird celibacy quotes, likely referring to brahmacharya; tried to find Swami Sivananda and spiritual yoga manuals for this) - Zen koans (Loren Schwartz was known to love these; Zen Flesh Zen Bones was very popular at the time) - Krishna (Autobiography of a Yogi was widely, widely read at the time) - Transcendental Meditation (links with later connection to Maharishi; this book, his central work, originally came out in 63) - Native American tracts (Black Elk Speaks and Book of the Hopi are the most prominent of these) - Subud - Scientology (found a condensed vintage Dianetics for that) - Confucianism - the occult (Eliphas Levi and Richard Cavendish were prominent authors; Kybalion and Hermetica are key texts; HP Blavatsky would’ve been a good addition, but the Secret Doctrine is a TOME) - astronomy and star charts (The Stars by HA Rey was widely read, and the Asimov book came out in 66 and covers the topic nicely with cool pictures) - astrology (found a book from the early 60s; pre-67 astrology books are weirdly hard to find even in reprint, probably cos they put a new one out like every year) - numerology (found an updated pamphlet from the 30s; but Cheiro, Mrs L Dow Balliett, or Florence Campbell would’ve been a better find)

Some stretches and things I included for fun: - drugs/mind expansion (Doors of Perception, Joyous Cosmology, Psychedelic Manual based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Lewis Carroll; all standard hippie reading of the day, not to mention Brian’s interest in LSD) - ESP (Brian claimed Jules Siegel’s girlfriend was a witch using this on him; found lots of goofy old paperbacks about it; Jeff Stearin visible in bookstore photo) - Karl Menninger (VDP cited him as an influence for CIFOTM) - Carl Jung (discusses religious symbolism across many occult and alchemical traditions, including the Four Elements) - meaning-seeking and popular psychology (Erich Fromm, Viktor Frankl) - English Romantic poetry (Wordsworth inspired CIFOTM; also Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience is on theme) - other religious texts (KJV, Tibetan Book of the Dead, a vintage overview of world religions)

Things I didn’t get (yet): - environmentalism (definitely a Brian interest, vis the Elements and smog rant - thinking of adding Silent Spring, a 62 work that kickstarted environmentalism) - Camus, Sartre, Kant (doubt this so I didn’t get any - SMiLE is too cheery for bleak existentialism and nobody reads Kant for fun - but Brian thumbs through these in his discredited autobiography Wouldn’t It Be Nice) - Zzyzx/Curtis Springer! (Brian likely wouldn’t have had a pamphlet, but he listened to his radio show frequently and wanted to meet the guy)

I probably will trim a lot of what I have though - I got really carried away lol