Lory

This was a beautifully produced, thoughtful and heartfelt testimony to the personal practice of prayer. The “prayer prompts” were often surprising and original in their wording, but grounded in the timeless wisdom that always means to lead us toward the divine gifts of love and connectedness. The short essays drawn from Justin's life experience were moving and inspiring, making me think about what small epiphanies are to be found in my own everyday life. The illustrations brought visual expression to ideas that are difficult to encompass only in words. Though small, this book would lend itself to practice over a long period of time and would unfold differently through each participant. It would be a good starting point for a prayer group or for discussion.

This was a beautifully produced, thoughtful and heartfelt testimony to the personal practice of prayer. The “prayer prompts” were often surprising and original in their wording, but grounded in the timeless wisdom that always means to lead us toward the divine gifts of love and connectedness. The short essays, stories, and meditations were moving and inspiring, making me think about what small epiphanies are to be found in my own everyday life. I found the description of “lectio divina” to be especially helpful. The illustrations brought visual expression to ideas that are difficult to encompass only in words. Though small, this book would lend itself to practice over a long period of time and would unfold differently through each participant. It would be a good starting point for a prayer group or for discussion.

This is a gentle, earnest, and reassuring guide to a meditative practice that can help to counteract the busy-ness that invades so much of our life, including our spiritual lives. Judgment and expectation are set aside as the author repeatedly urges us to take time simply to sit with God. Numerous examples both from the past (in the contemplative practice of the Desert fathers and mothers) and the present (ordinary people who have found their way to this transformative path) help to fill out the basically very simple message. Anyone who doesn't consider meditation to be a Christian practice will find ample evidence to the contrary in this book.

Guides to negotiating the storms of menopause have become more available in recent years, but women can use much help in this under=reported area of life. Here is one offering made with great heart and earnestness.

Johns comes from an evangelical Christian background that is not mine, and many of her comments are directed specifically to this audience. Some of the stories of shaming and repression of women that she shared were shocking to me and I find it unbelievable that this behavior is called “Christian.” However, it was also shocking to learn that not that long ago, women past the age of menopause were considered completely disposable, that menopause meant the “death of the woman within the woman.” The fear of women and female power is still very great, even within our supposedly enlightened society, and we cannot try too hard to overcome this bias.

Johns quoted the work of Christiane Northrup frequently and her approach is very similar, though flavored by her place in the evangelical Christian world. Each section contains description of one area Johns has identified as an opportunity for self-development in midlife, narrative examples from women's lives, and questions for individual and group reflection. There is much to learn and to explore, much of which could fruitfully be gone into earlier in a woman's life than menopause – but better late than never. Certainly there is great evidence that women who take up the challenge of this change can truly transform their lives for the better.

Johns used a great deal of flowery metaphorical language that I found unnecessary and sometimes distracting. I had a strong sense though of her passion for the topic and for her mission to help women embrace their authentic selves. I appreciate her work and hope it will reach the audience it is meant for.

Till recently, I knew nothing about Bram Stoker beyond his name, as the author of Dracula. I didn't know he was the theatrical manager for Henry Irving, and worked with Ellen Terry – about both of whom I did know a little more, largely thanks to my reading of the theatre-mad Robertson Davies. So when the chance to review a new novel about the theatrical trio came up, I jumped on it.

Though I was not sure what to expect, fortunately it turned out to be a delight. I did not realize the scheduled release date was only in May! I already want to recommend it, because it's one of my favorite books of the year.

In a nod to Stoker's famous epistolary novel, it's presented as an assemblage of letters, memoirs, transcripts and other invented documents. And it mainly covers the time around the composition of that novel, exploring how an obscure Dublin clerk became the manager for the eccentric, extravagant genius Irving and his Lyceum Theatre in London – while compulsively penning the weird and occult tales that brought undying fame only after his own death.

The Lyceum was a brilliant but ultimately doomed venture that strained Stoker's family relationships and sometimes perhaps his sanity.  The story is full of ghosts – one is reputed to haunt the theatre, but there are also the dim remnants of childhood trauma, unfulfilled dreams, inadmissible longings. The actor's playing out of a “second self” is a recurring motif, echoed in the shadow-worlds that Stoker creates in his writing. Such “shadowplay” gives power to art, whether in acting or in writing, but it is also a dangerous enterprise, as it taps into the hidden and unfulfilled sides of the human self. To convey that danger and that power, with a strong dash of Irish comedy, is no small achievement.

O'Connor writes in a vigorous, playful style that is not at all Victorian, and yet he somehow effectively evokes that era, especially the emotional and sexual turmoil that underlay its external propriety. But ultimately this is not a study of sex and death, but a story of love: the love that grew between three gifted, sometimes tormented, but thoroughly remarkable people. I've no idea how historically accurate it may be, but emotionally it rings true, and leaves me with a sense of having met these characters, or at least having seen them play out a part of their lives on the “stage” of the novel.

With a memorable guest appearance by Oscar Wilde, ample glimpses backstage for theatre lovers, and supporting roles by the spouses and children of the central trio (with some remarkable characters in their own right), there was so much to enjoy, and to learn. I do plan to read Dracula now and then to go back to see what references I missed. Whether you've read Stoker's masterpiece or not, I urge you to check this out, too.

This is an inspiring and humbling book – five stories of people who came through childhood neglect and abuse, repairing a damaged sense of self and bravely reconnecting to the world and other people. If I get upset about anything that happens to me, I just have to think of what they endured, and try to emulate their strength and courage.

Written by a therapist, this gives an interesting glimpse into the therapeutic process, including failures and setbacks along the way, and the path to recovery and renewal. While this can be extremely valuable for those going through similar issues, it also made me a little uncomfortable at times. There is a voyeuristic element in looking through the private window into someone's life, witnessing such horrible things. We are meant to empathize with them, but there is also a sense of distance that can be disturbing. How can we truly understand another person's suffering, how can we possibly treat it with enough reverence and respect? This includes the author's own abusive upbringing, which she reveals at the end in an oddly naive way, not seeming to fully realize how much it mirrors her own patients' inability to recognize what they have been subjected to. It made me wonder if she herself needed therapy more than she realized.

That said, this is a fascinating, compulsively readable book which gives a glimpse of true heroism, of the noble side of humanity that lurks in the darkest places. We need such images today. I am grateful to the subjects for making their stories available and to the author for sharing them with us.

The Last Gods of Indochine draws on the real and imagined history of Cambodia, focusing on the mysterious temple complex of Angkor Wat and alternating between two streams of time. Ferrer imagines the granddaughter of a real-life Victorian explorer who goes on her own journey of discovery in 1921, becoming strangely intertwined with a boy from centuries earlier who is caught up in religious and political turmoil. There were some especially strong passages about mystical experiences that convincingly got into the mindset of an earlier age, but an unnecessary and non-historically-based love interest, and an abrupt “hooray for science!” ending somewhat marred for me what otherwise was a very interesting trip into the past.

Looking at books that were written about or in Switzerland (including Frankenstein, Ulysses, The Magic Mountain, A Farewell to Arms, and Tender Is the Night, along with a good many spy novels and noir fiction), longtime resident Padraig Rooney gives us a dark-edged view of a land that is more complex than its popular image would suggest. Rooney makes no secret of his prejudices and blind spots (the Chalet school books and Rudolf Steiner are rudely dismissed, while Heidi is barely mentioned) and blithely admits to not bothering to finish books or visit museums when he doesn't feel like it. His use of outdated pop culture references made me roll my eyes at times as well, and I wouldn't take his opinions for gospel. Still, I enjoyed this quick slalom through a certain subsection of Swiss literature and history, particularly the seamier side.

One Half from the East took me into the world of a young girl in Afghanistan whose family is rocked by tragedy. When Obayda's father loses his legs in a bomb explosion, she is transformed into a bacha posh — a temporary boy — to bring luck and hopefully a new male baby to the family. The exploration of gender roles was fascinating and timely, as Obayda at first hates her disguise but then embraces the freedom it brings her and dreads losing it. No easy answers are to be found, but these are questions we must explore with girls (and boys) from a young age if we are to move into a more equitable future.

Season of Migration to the North is a true classic in translation, a rare book available to us from Sudan — the author worked closely with the translator to produce a work that is as beautifully written in English as in Arabic, the language in which it was originally published in 1966. An unnamed narrator, returned from study in the West, meets another former expatriate who confides in him a mysterious and brutal past life, then disappears. Coming to terms with this strange encounter forces the narrator to wrestle with the challenges and contradictions of post-colonial life, and we as readers are enriched and shaken by his journey.

I was excited to read this but it made little impression on me. Disjointed and disappointing.

This was an enjoyable spin on P and P that taught me a lot about modern Pakistani marriage customs too. I liked that every female character got her own business in the end!

I really enjoyed this! The romance was both sweet and empowering of female agency, the comic banter and descriptive passages hilarious, as wodehouse poked fun at the theater world that he knew and loved so well. Will definitely read again when I'm in need of cheering up.

Beautiful writing from an amazing listener. “I'd discovered, without knowing it, the difference between speaking and being. This is what listening is, true listening, the lonely but open mind. I'd discovered the gift of Milton: the soul's path is in the ear–not in the mirror.”

British Brigadier General Hackett's memoir (one of the lovely Slightly Foxed series) is a moving and harrowing account of his escape from German hands through the bravery of Dutch resistance workers and their families.

In War Diaries (elsewhere titled A World Gone Mad) we have the journal author Astrid Lindgren kept as a young wife and mother in neutral Sweden. She provides a record of the up-and-down thoughts and feelings of someone on the edge of the action, enjoying the benefits of not being in a country torn by war, while deploring its evils. For anyone interested in the time period, these book will bring unique insights into the author's experiences. (I was a bit disappointed, though, that Lindgren's diaries contained little reference to the genesis of Pippi Longstocking, which occurred during this period — but she considered other things more important at the time perhaps.)

Reviews and more on my blog: Entering the Enchanted Castle

I was never interested in Orsinia when I read Le Guin as a kid. I bought Orsinian Tales thinking it would be more Earthsea or The Wind's Twelve Quarters and put it aside, baffled and bored by the lack of magic or spaceships. But now it strikes me as one of her most impressive works, utterly immersive and not at all fantastic, except in being about an imaginary country. The characters live, within their vividly described setting, the language is beautiful, subtle and oblique, the thoughts about love and freedom as as relevant now as in the 1825 of the story. So glad I finally read this and I'll definitely be reading the Tales as well.

Reviews and more on my blog: Entering the Enchanted Castle

This was a really helpful introduction to the practice of centering prayer, a contemplative practice that is aimed at becoming awake to the constant presence of God rather than working with discursive thoughts and emotions. It includes a brief but lucid explanation of why contemplative prayer was lost to the Western tradition, a strange episode in our spiritual life that is thankfully now over, and of how Centering Prayer came to be developed. It also touches on some of the author's reservations or differences of opinion/emphasis with her mentor, Fr. Thomas Keating, which I appreciated, as it is important to appreciate and honor great teachers without necessarily agreeing with every single thing they say. I'll be reading more on Centering Prayer and more of Bourgeault's work.

Reviews and more on my blog: Entering the Enchanted Castle

This was a stunning observation of the self-deception we practice when denying a disability. What Kuusisto suffered and learned can benefit everyone, as we struggle to permit ourselves to be needy and to find the community that alone can make us whole. His vivid verbal images, full of surprising discoveries, make the prose a joy to read.

The dog pictured on the cover only makes her appearance in the last two chapters, but one knows from the outset that it's her companionship which makes Kuusisto's creative life possible. The human-dog teamwork is a powerful example of the human need to have trust in the kind of guidance that empowers us and facilitates our autonomy.

A wonderful book that I'll surely read again and recommend to many.

Reviews and more on my blog: Entering the Enchanted Castle

After Bourgeault's Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening, this was another very thoughtful and thorough exploration of the simple, yet profound practice of Centering Prayer. The book brings together three different types of presentation, from an introductory workshop to an in-depth analysis of the foundational medieval text The Cloud of Unknowing, but all are clearly related to the central theme.

After several decades of this practice developing as a recovery of the contemplative tradition for the Western Christian world, it is time to take stock and consider how to bring it further into the future. The author has some strong opinions and some reservations about some points of view that muddle or weaken the practice, and she does a good job of conveying these in an objective way.

Reviews and more on my blog: Entering the Enchanted Castle

This was interesting but not as compelling as I have found some of Renault's other books. The shoehorning in of information about ancient theater and about various famous figures (most notably Plato) did not feel entirely natural. The idea seemed to be to follow how Plato's ideas about the good ruler were worked out in a real life context, through the story of a ruler who tried to overcome the tyranny in Syracuse, first through philosophy and then through force. This did not have a happy ending.

Reviews and more on my blog: Entering the Enchanted Castle

I read this book many years ago as a teenager or in my twenties, because I had loved MacDonald's books as a child. But Lilith was something else again, and I think it must have put me off with its mostly dark and inscrutable images, and philosophical talk about death being the only way to true life. I don't have a strong memory of my response at the time; interested but puzzled, I think.

Since then I've read and learned more about esoteric Christianity, spiritual development, and paths of initiation, and gone through a kind of death-rebirth process of my own through an extreme personal crisis at midlife. Now, picking this book up is like reading a textbook written in fairy-tale images about such a process of initiation. Extraordinary, and marred only by the twee sayings of the “Little Ones” who are far too cutesy (but that is a nineteenth century literary disease), and the sometimes murky prose. I will be reading it again, I'm sure, and there are lots of passages I want to copy and ponder at length.

Reviews and more on my blog: Entering the Enchanted Castle

A better understanding and appreciation of the figure of Mary Magdalene can “help us quit being afraid of human intimacy and start learning how to handle it better,” claims Cynthia Bourgeault – and what is more needed in the world today, both secular and religious? Her challenging, some would say heretical thesis is that Mary Magdalene has been denied her true role in the Christian story, as not only an intimate disciple and apostle, but the human beloved of Jesus. Bourgeault's treatment of this hot topic is subtle, thoroughly researched and argued, leading to a complex understanding of the principle of kenosis, or sacrificial, self-giving love, which can exist equally in celibate and non-celibate forms, neither of which is superior to the other – but which is absolutely necessary to our continued human evolution, and central to the teaching and life of Jesus Christ.

Bourgeault is far from the simple-mindedness and ignorance of Da Vinci Code-style hype, which has only served to obscure and delegitimize an important area for modern spiritual questing. I'm not sure I agree with every one of her claims, but I do think she is on to something here. I certainly agree that we need a new frame of reference to permit “a genuine reconciliation of Christianity with human sexuality [that will] free both celibacy and conjugal love to be the transformative pathways that they truly are.” If this is not found, I can hardly see any way forward for Christianity, whose death knell has long been rung by our sex-obsessed secular society; but with these new perspectives, some unforeseen possibilities start to open up. Exciting.

One caveat – I am not sure enough caution is advised in regard to mixing sexual and spiritual transformation. Both are areas where human beings are extremely vulnerable to unscrupulous and unprincipled influences. Maybe traditional religious celibacy originates not so much from a fear of sexuality per se, but a fear of the damage that can be done to people through invading their vulnerable places – and that has to be taken seriously.

The writer Charles Williams, for example, whom Bourgeault cites as a model philospher of substitutional love, engaged in highly questionable behavior with young women who fell under his spiritual spell, having emotional (if not physical) affairs with them in which he released sexual energy through sadomasochistic behaviors like spanking. He was described in a recent biography as having an unhappy and unfulfilled life, not at all a good advertisement for the form of “love” that he practiced.

That said, I still think this is an important topic that needs to be opened up for investigation. But for all her research, perhaps Bourgeault still has some blind spots.

Reviews and more on my blog: Entering the Enchanted Castle

In the introduction a comment about de Mille is repeated, that she is a better writer than she is a choreographer. I thought that was an insult until I read the book. She is an excellent writer! I am not a judge of choreography, so can't say anything to that, but her words often show a sense of movement and rhythm that is a joy to encounter, given the plodding and inelegant prose one so often encounters these days. Language is a bodily art too, she reminds us.

The book is a sort of a hodgepodge, which she says she scribbled in odd moments while taking care of small children and handed over to her publishers as a mass of material in a shopping bag. Bits about her early life and dancing career are interspersed with backstage views of the creation of works like Rodeo and Oklahoma! and portraits of notable figures like Martha Graham, Antony Tudor, and Marie Rambert.

I think it's likely that as a dancer she was not as great as these, and that she was kept afloat so long as a struggling young artist only by her family's money and influence (she was the niece of Cecil B. De Mille). There is too much in the book about these early concerts, which become boring to read about since one cannot actually see the dancing. But there are other moments that absolutely shine and give wings to the words in a remarkable way.

Reviews and more on my blog: Entering the Enchanted Castle

Pro: learning about the unconventional author's life, the story behind one of my favorite books.

Con: the writing style with its extraneous whimsy and weird formal-kitschy tone. The swoony, verbose analysis of Harriet was so at odds with Fitzhugh”s dry humor, it was not at all a good match. Flights of fancy, like long descriptions of what Fitzhugh MIGHT have worn to a dinner party, felt like padding. (This is rampant in biography, I find.) Plus the lack of editing, down to the level of subject- verb agreement, was quite egregious.

Overall worth reading, though, because it's the only truly frank and honest book on the subject, who is really fascinating – though no reproductions of Fitzhugh”s artwork, why not???