lory_enterenchanted's Reviews (582)

Reviews and more on my blog: Entering the Enchanted Castle

This was the second Georgette Heyer mystery I read on the current binge, and I had mixed feelings. The witty banter was somewhat spoiled by being often so gruesome and involving so many unlikeable characters. The romantic hero was flawless while the heroine was childish and silly. I grew fond of them nevertheless and did root for them to get together, but one could tell what the outcome of that would be. I also suspected the murderer -- as someone else has said, it was the absolutely most unlikeable character of all, which made it rather obvious. I find these mysteries acceptable light reading but I don't think I'd ever reread them as I do the romances.

Reviews and more on my blog: Entering the Enchanted Castle

Completely agree with reviews that compare this to an episode of Scooby-Doo, minus the dog. I think Heyer's other mysteries are reputed to be better, so I'll try those.

Reviews and more on my blog: Entering the Enchanted Castle

A curious variety of villain in this book, whose mark of evil is that they refuse to kill, prating "reverence for life." But there are worse things than causing physical death. 

"I honor life, I honor it because it's a much more difficult and uncertain matter than death, and the most difficult and uncertain quality of all is intelligence. The Shing kept their Law and let me live, but they killed my intelligence. Is that not murder? They killed the man I was, the child I had been. To play with a man's mind so, is that reverence? Their law is a lie, and their reverence is mockery."

"In a good season one trusts life; in a bad season one only hopes. But they are of the same essence; they are the mind's indispensable relationship with other minds, with the world, and with time. Without trust, a man lives, but not a human life; without hope, he dies. Where there is no relationship, where hands do not touch, emotion atrophies in void and intelligence grows sterile and obsessed. Between men the only link left is that of owner to slave, or murderer to victim." 

Reviews and more on my blog: Entering the Enchanted Castle

A mix of personal spiritual memoir, travelogue, and religious history that brought many insights and epiphanies, although I was not always enamored of the author's journalistic style. I confess I had not realized how much Christianity is in decline in Europe, which may seem sad in some ways, but I think the old shell of that religion has to die, so that a truer, more authentic experience can come into being.

I was also somehow not quite cognizant (clueless American that I am)of how bitterly religious wars have shaped Europe. Catholics against heretics, Protestants against Catholics, Protestants against other Protestants. (A story about John Calvin cruelly executing a man who had come to him for refuge in Geneva, because he had somewhat different ideas, was quite telling here.) Again, this warfare would seem to be something that needs to die away, although it seems to be simply morphing into political antagonisms as religion loses its power. Truly, the real Christianity of love is still to be born in our time.

It was notable that Egan seemed to recover his faith simply by walking -- a reminder that SLOW DOWN is the most central tenet of any valid religious practice.

Reviews and more on my blog: Entering the Enchanted Castle

Review of this Folio edition on Shiny New Books: https://shinynewbooks.co.uk/half-of-a-yellow-sun-by-chimamanda-ngozi-adichie

I made it to Crystal Mountain but now I have to take a break. This is a long, slow journey. I feel sorry for the porters, to whom Matthiessen is so condescending. Some gems along the way though.

"'All the way to Heaven is Heaven,' Saint Catherine said, and that is the very breath of Zen, which does not elevate divinity above the common miracles of every day. ... In the United States, before spiritualist foolishness at the end of the last century confused mysticism with 'the occult' and tarnished both, William James wrote a master work of metaphysics, Emerson spoke of 'the wise silence, the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal One ...' ; Melville referred to 'that profound silence, that only voice of God'; Walt Whitman celebrated the most ancient secret, that no God could be found 'more divine than yourself.' And then, almost everywhere, a clear and subtle illumination that lent magnificence to life and peace to death was overwhelmed in the hard glare of technology. Yet that light is always present, like the stars of noon. Man must perceive it if he is to transcend his fear of meaningless(ness), for no amount of 'progress' can take its place. We have outsmarted ourselves, like greedy monkeys, and now we are full of dread." (Oct.9)

"Such unusual gifts [as levitation], whether cultivated or not, may deflect the aspirant from his path to true mystical experience of God, and have never been highly regarded by great teachers; one of the four cardinal sins in the monastic order of the Buddha--after unchastity, theft, and killing, was laying claim to miraculous powers." (Oct25)

I started reading this (I think rereading) for Kristen M.'s March Magics event, but I was not enjoying it. Terry Pratchett's style does not always work for me.

Reviews and more on my blog: Entering the Enchanted Castle

This was a minor Stevenson romance, very class and race conscious in the way of an earlier day, thus mildly distasteful. The central romance between a distracted painter and a hero-worshiping baker's daughter was not the most inspiring, and some of the insinuations about "blood" were downright disturbing. 

Reviews and more on my blog: Entering the Enchanted Castle

I found this a very frustrating read. Elizabeth Packard's story is clearly important to know, and the issues she dealt with vital and still with us today, but I could not feel that the author was treating her in an unbiased or objective manner. She had a point to make, and she twisted her telling of the facts in accord with that, while an unwanted subtext managed to escape her control. It was a weird reading experience.

The author's goal was to entirely exonerate and vindicate Elizabeth, and so anything she did that was a bit odd, foolish, or in contradiction to her image as a brilliant but misunderstood woman was swept aside or minimized. She had a very strange relationship with her doctor, and even wrote him an effusive love letter, but that was explained away as being a stratagem to get her book published. Periods of such infatuation alternated with periods of hatred and loathing, in a way that actually did seem a bit imbalanced to me. Elizabeth might not have strictly been insane, but I could not see her as entirely well emotionally or psychologically either. However, this was left unexplored, because the book's premise depended on her being unequivocally and entirely sane.

She definitely did stupid things that were at odds with how intelligent Moore tries to paint her, like returning to the husband who had put her in an institution, and threatened to do so again, with the naive hope that they can just live together amicably. Earlier in her story, she seems not to have any clue how irritating and dangerous her going against his preaching is -- as a preacher's wife, she's certainly expected to toe the line. Of course that is not fair or right, but it was the way of the world at the time. If not crazy, Elizabeth is at least terribly naive and foolish to think she can go against it with impunity.

So I"m really not sure what to think of her, or how accurate this portrait truly is. Another thing that bothered me was the author's habit of sprinkling her text liberally with quotes and footnotes, to assert her historical accuracy, but in between sneaking in passages of complete speculation -- "she might have furrowed her brow" "She must have smiled" and so forth. Sometimes she leaves out the conditional -- "He shifted in his seat." If you want to write scenes like this, write a novel! Otherwise, stick to the facts. 

The writing style was so flowery and overblown altogether. It was full of padding, so the book could been have reduced by at least a third. And on almost every page I had to roll my eyes at silly, unnecessary metaphors and purple prose: "She would also pull up womanhood with her: a podium full of perfervid princesses, all ready to claim their prize."  "Her pen leaping from topic to topic with all the unfettered freedom of the wild rabbits in the grounds outside." "Her thoughts stumbled on a rock as she considered why, but she did not peer too closely at it." Oh please.

There were also a number of grammatical slips that should have been caught by an editor: "Both focused on alleviating the sufferings of others in favor of dwelling on their own" -  should be in lieu of, or instead of.  "He did not attribute his own behavior to thier animosity" -- should be "he did not attribute their animosity to his own behavior." It was sloppy and also undermined confidence in the mind behind this stuff.

This is NOT my preferred style of nonfiction. So although the story is interesting, I can't recommend this treatment of it. Maybe someday Elizabeth will find a biographer worthy of her -- although I wonder if she'll come off quite so well.

Reviews and more on my blog: Entering the Enchanted Castle

This book had some interesting information but also some half-baked ideas. And it was repetitive. The central idea is that we have grown intolerant of discomfort, interpreting lower and lower levels of discomfort as a threat to survival, and that this leads to a vicious cycle of low dopamine levels and reaching for addictive remedies that lower dopamine levels further, etc.  This was stated over and over, along with the argument that we need to tolerate higher levels of discomfort. Okay, we get it.

The "warring brains" concept is fascinating, but presented a bit simplistically here. Still, I think the basic issue that our emotional, irrational brains are getting activated and taking over many of our actions and even driving what we think of as conscious decisions explains a LOT about the world today. 

What I think is really interesting, different from many other strategies I've tried (including mindfulness), and important, is the assertion that we have to not attempt to better control the limbic brain with the cerebral brain in a top-down approach, but take a horizontal approach of enlisting both parts of the brain, better engaging both and integrating them. This is done by learning to let discomfort and safety exist side by side. The author gives some strategies for doing this, but perhaps others could be devised, or found in the existing spiritual literature. I am definitely interested in pursuing such a path.

In any case, what a novel way to look at our polarized world, in which so much of political and social life is clearly being driven by people who are acting out of their limbic systems and fear reactions. How could we bring change to that realm? Could the practices advised for individuals be extended to a social setting? I can't see how, but I also can't see any other way out of our dilemma. The two sides bashing each other and trying to control each other is not working. And although we like to think that our cerebral capacities, logic and reason, will win out, the reality of our bodies is that the emotional, irrational side is stronger. It will win if reason doesn't take a different tactic.

I think this is why the rationalists are bent on developing Artificial Intelligence - as if we didn't have enough to deal with in trying to learn how to use our natural intelligence. What they want to achieve is a cerebral brain free of that pesky emotional and bodily element, that won't be overridden or pushed around by our survival instinct at all. This is a wish that comes from our inner warfare with our bodies, but do we really want to live without bodies? Do we really want to eliminate nature and life and replace it with pure intellect? If that is not to happen, we need some horizontal strategies to stop the madness. I really hope we can find them.

To return to the book, I was left wondering, though, why there was no addressing of the ultimate origin of discomfort, nor any impulse to actually uncover and heal it. It seemed the goal was just to live with it and push through it. That might be necessary for a while, but in the end it could turn out to be just another survival strategy. I think we need to do more than that, to actually transform the discomfort and not only let it sit there.

However, it is an essential step to dial back our reactivity, to allow the discomfort to be there without attacking or denying it, and these integrative strategies could be a useful tool in that pursuit.