bookshelves: currently-reading, novels
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bookshelves: fantasy
This is a somewhat uneven collection of stories, from the highly entertaining and moving to the too-plodding-to-finish.
Recommended to those who like spirituality mixed with their fantasy. ]]>
bookshelves: currently-reading, memoir-autobiography
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Janet
took the never-ending book quiz.
| questions answered: | 4240 |
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bookshelves: memoir-autobiography
I started reading Didion's memoir of the year after her husband's death two and a half years after the death of my own partner. It was my first venture in the literature of personal grief, and so I was primarily focused on the ways her experiences illuminated or contrasted with mine.
What made the book especially interesting to me is that Didion, like myself, is a Queen of Swords (to use the symbolic language of the tarot). She is a mature woman with a sharp intellect, whose primary mode is the rational. It is important to her to understand what is going on, and she uses knowledge to try to gain control over circumstances. The problem with this is that all the knowledge in the world can not change certain facts: the death of a husband, or the extended illness of a daughter. Didion's grief is complicated by the fact that their daughter Quintana is in the ICU at the time of her father's death, and remains in critical condition for most of the next six months.
What was most familiar to me was what Didion called the "vortex effect" -- the unexpected pain caused by suddenly finding herself in places that carried memories of her years with John. And because the two traveled widely, there are many such places. Even the backdrop for an otherwise irrelevant tv commercial can trigger pain.
Didion turns her sharp, rational mind on herself to observe her feelings and actions during this year. She describes how she was unable to give away her husband's shoes because "he will need them when he comes back." She describes her need to read the autopsy and the hospital reports so she can know excactly when her husband died and why. She studies thick references on neurology so she can better understand what is happening with her daughter and talk to the doctors. She writes clearly, lucidly, about having a panic attack while covering a convention and having to leave abruptly. The narrative weaves in and out of time as she goes back to key memories that inform her present experience. She quotes the books she went to for comfort and information, and the bits of her own and her husband's previous books which have new relevance to her as they help her to cope with his sudden absence.
What she does not do is allow the reader close to the rawness of her grief. She writes about what she does, what she says, what she thinks. She shares some of what she feels -- but she never lets the reader in close enough to witness her tears. She never discloses the rawness of her grief. Did she never scream? Never spend hours crying? Never feel so helpless and overwhelmed that her fine, disciplined mind *stopped* being clear and self-aware? Yes, the "magical thinking" itself was a form of irrationality, but it is presented with clear-eyed awareness.
Ms. Didion has every right to keep certain things private. This memoir is moving and intimate and filled with pain. But through it all I remained aware of what was unsaid, unwritten. ]]>
bookshelves: women-s-studies
This book seemed much more dated than it did the first time I read it, shortly after its publication, but the fundamental message remains relevant despite the fact that today's women have far more socially legitimate options than those who provide Heilbrun's examples.
The main reason for the ongoing relevance is the fact that even exceptional women of times past often told their own stories in ways that would conform to the socially acceptable standards of their time rather than tell the blunt truth about what they did. Among other things, Heilbrun exposes the gap between the active, assertive steps women such as Florence Nightengale, Golda Meir and Jane Addams took to advance their goals, as revealed in their personal letters and journals, and the soft-sell story they told in their autobiographies of how their vocations and their achievements somehow found them. They have re-cast themselves as passive rather than the active champions of their own lives. Biographers, female as well as male, have also struggled to reconcile the truth of women's extordinary lives with their own sense of convention, often writing judgements into their histories.
The other message, the one which I have carried with me since my first reading, is that we can only envision futures for ourselves that we have stories to describe. The more honest stories which are told by and about real women and their struggles and achievements, the more possibilities will open up for those who read them.
Heilbrun, an English professor, is also mystery writer Amanda Cross. Her story of how she decided to write those books, and why she chose to do so under a pseudonym, adds a valuable personal element to the book. ]]>
bookshelves: fantasy, graphic-novels
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bookshelves: novels
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"This book is tough going at times. Picoult knows how to push the emotional buttons."
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bookshelves: magic-studies, personal-development, spirituality
This is not a book of magic as spellcasting and it's not Wicca 101. This is a book for people who are serious about the challenging and rewarding path of The Great Work, the transformation of self through communion with the Divine.
T. Thorn Coyle is quite simply one of the most talented and sophisticated of Pagan teachers, and in this book she presents life-tested techniques with an attitude of both seriousness and joy.
This is a book about how to use magical-spiritual practices as the foundation for transforming the personality through meditation, purification, self-examination, facing inner demons and shadows, and cultivating an ever-deeper connection with the Divine. Although her perspective and theology are distinctly Pagan, most of the the techniques can be applied by people of other faiths, especially if one is willing to translate her terms into ones one more comfortable and familiar. Thorn herself frequently mentions practices from a variety of mystical traditions as possible options for approaching specific parts of the work.
Thorn's style is conversational but never condescending. She presents advanced spiritual concepts simply and clearly. In fact, this text helped me achieve several breakthroughs around topics I've studied before but never grasped until now.
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