Great list of tidbits! (I really appreciate this aspect of your book reviews.)

Yes, that's a very clever subtitle, indeed! Gotta love the Victorian period, but as my grandma always said, "The good old days -- they were awful!"

Imaginary streets are “facts” and can’t be copyrighted‽‽‽

"Your local woo-woo shop"! I'm now picturing a brick-and-mortar storefront with the sign identifying it as "Your Local Woo-Woo Shop." I'd shop there! I'm actually there now, in a parallel universe.

This sounds amazing ... and The Library of the Dead is such a fantastic title, too!

Great review, and what a weird accidental excursion into Galena, Missouri!

I wonder if the color-coding is possibly an homage to Andrew Lang's color-coded fairy series: The Blue Fairy Book (1889), The Red Fairy Book (1890), The Green Fairy Book (1892), The Yellow Fairy Book (1894), The Pink Fairy Book (1897), The Grey Fairy Book (1900), The Violet Fairy Book (1901), The Crimson Fairy Book (1903), The Brown Fairy Book (1904), The Orange Fairy Book (1906), The Olive Fairy Book (1907), and The Lilac Fairy Book (1910).

Translating the Radio Shack part numbers to modern components sounds like a very worthwhile project. Looking forward to an update on this, if/when you're able to build one of the gadgets.

Great -- love all your bulleted notes! Really nifty that the author includes details on where all the clues were hidden throughout the story!

People dove into open graves to escape the flames!

A rainbow string is a brilliant hack, especially because sometimes the electrical outlet can be the same color as what you've plugged in (in my case of leaving something behind, the compact black charger for a cordless electric razor, left plugged into a black outlet), thus making it practically invisible. The drag queen Alaska Thunderf*ck has a song called "Everything Must Be Leopard Print," but I'm now hearing it as, "Everything must be rainbow string." :-)

I love your zinger, "If you’re not lucky enough to receive a copy by divine intervention..." In one of my upcoming videos, I review a book without ever mentioning its title, noting how the best books have a knack for finding you on their own. :-)

"My job is to follow the trail wherever leads, even if that’s right into the gaping maw of the impossible" !!! What a fantastic line!

I really like how your photo shows the number of page markers you added -- there's major visual impact, showing how you found valuable information throughout the book. Too many books have a strong beginning but then fizzle out (at least with fiction; I rarely read non-fiction, so I don't know if that genre suffers the way fiction does).

I was unaware of this book! Gene Wolfe's /Book of the New Sun/ is an all-time favorite around here.

Philip K. Dick confirmed that this is the age of iron. He called our present universe "the black iron prison."

Great bullet list of standout tidbits! I read Steinmeyer's introduction to the volume of the complete Charles Fort, and this biography is still on my to-read list. Sounds well-worth pursuing, so thanks for the reminder!

Children's books can also be used to trigger altered states of consciousness. Dr. Raymond Moody uses Dr. Seuss books to replicate the experience of the ancient Mystery Cults -- reading just a few pages of the nonsense rhymes, in the setting of Moody's "Psychomanteum" (a dark chamber with a specially angled mirror, used as a sort of sacred space for communing with departed loved ones or exploring other dimensions) establishes a frame of mind for new and extraordinary perspectives. My own theory, based upon Moody's data, is that if stage magicians brought back the formal use of mysterious "magic words" in their presentations, their audiences' experience of genuine wonderment would be greater due to the triggering of an eerier state of consciousness.

Very charming account! Great link to the other account that also involved the black showing introducing the residents of the cemetery to the visitors.

I had this, too! Loved, loved, loved it.

This is a wonderful quotation. I've been reading some ancient Tibetan literature, and they held that speaking makes everything worse, too.