lory_enterenchanted's Reviews (582)

Love the overall theme of spiritual training in a vaguely Celtic setting. The ending was a bit rushed, as with Wise Child. From former readings, I remembered most vividly the fact that Juniper's leaving a flaw in her Doran cloak that she thought no one would notice, resulted in her being injured by her enemy - a powerful image that stuck with me.

I found this a fascinating account of the psychology of indoctrination and extremism, seen from the inside out. The author writes beautifully along with telling a compelling story, and is able to minutely follow her own emotional and mental process with great honesty. The sequence where she finds her long-held opinions breaking up was astonishing. When one has been raised to have such intractable, inflexible thoughts, to change one's mind is truly an act of bravery and almost a miracle.

In literalist theology it seems to me that people take the guidebook that should be pointing them to an experience, as if it were the thing itself, as if they wanted to live inside the book. Scripture should only be a way to orient us toward God, not a God itself. And there are other ways, other possible guidebooks, other languages, and other concepts than "God" that can lead us toward the same thing. You can get there without using a book at all, just as you can take a journey without a guide! To look at a book as though IT were directing us, rather than the human mind and soul, is as much idol-worship as bowing down before a golden calf. 

Human beings become what they worship. When they worship a dead idol, they become dead. That's why the practice is abhorrent - because the true purpose of all religion, and certainly of Christianity, is to enable human beings to become alive. Not in some hypothetical afterlife, but now. Even in the wilderness of our hearts, where we have slain the life-giving creator spirit through our hatred, our ignorance and our blindness, life can spring up again. I experienced that sense of resurrection through this story, for which I am grateful.

One can selectively quote scripture out of context to prove almost anything one wishes. It's the movement and direction of the whole that is important. Even the ancient Israelites changed and evolved, as is shown in the course of the Hebrew scriptures. And in the Gospels we see this transform even further, turning the concepts of previous religious life on their head, demanding that people change their hearts and minds and make a step in inwardly manifesting what had formerly been outer practice -- a development that the fanatics of Westboro Baptist Church seem to miss entirely. If they had been among the crowd around Christ's crucifixion, they surely would have been shouting for his death.

Reviews and more on my blog: Entering the Enchanted Castle

I was completely absorbed by this "biography of a book," the story of how the Little House series came to be, in a matrix of complex historical and personal circumstances that also illumine a great deal in the history and biography of America.

Rose Wilder Lane was clearly a disturbed person. However, without her I do not think this great work of American literature would ever have come to be, so we owe her a certain measure of gratitude. And it's sad that her own talent was overshadowed by her mental and psychological handicaps, which at the time went unrecognized and untreated, and funneled into her Libertarian obsessions.

Unexpectedly this book helped me to understand the roots of the increasing intransigence of conservatives in the perhaps necessary, but insensitive and short-sighted treatment of agricultural overproduction during the New Deal, which created an alienation and divisiveness that has only gotten worse.

A follow up to Toxic Parents, focusing especially on five types of toxic (unloving) mothers and their effect on daughters, followed by advice on how daughters can change this dysfunctional relationship, or decide to leave if it can't be salvaged with their own integrity intact. It was not very clear what was particular about the mother-daughter relationship vs. the general parent-child relationship, but that didn't matter for my purposes. I find Forward's approach helpful as a general outline, although a bit narrow and harsh. Good to complement with some other books like It Didn't Start With You, or Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, which go more into the general family dynamic that evolves such bizarre behavior.

Reviews and more on my blog: Entering the Enchanted Castle

Kalanithi‘s story makes it clear both why medicine becomes dehumanized (it’s hard to remain open in the face of suffering) and how powerful it can be when doctors retain a sense of the sacred mystery of their calling and the reality of the human core that is not only body or mechanism. This book is a record of a brave man’s life and its writing an act of courage itself, the reading of which can help us face our lives more bravely too. Science and spirit are not opposites, but in their true nature belong together. It's the battle to bring them into harmony that is our true challenge today, and this book an eloquent example of that fight.

I really enjoyed this, a work of popular criticism that is perceptive, intelligent, insightful, and manages not to analyze its subject into insensibility. It brought out so many details in Austen that I had never noticed before, wrapped up as I've been in the flow of her narrative - which Mullan convincingly demonstrates is both artful and innovative. Now I want to read her again to appreciate her all the more.

This book was a somewhat uncomfortable combination of two elements: information about the emerging science on how traumatic events can actually affect our genes and thus the next generations, and anecdotes and practices coming out of Wolynn's therapeutic work with clients who appear to be repeating family traumas in their own lives and psyches. The latter is a more metaphorical / energetic kind of process than strictly biological, and although putting the genetic science first seems to be an attempt to legitimize the therapy, it actually weakens Wolynn's credibility because in many cases there is no evident link (e.g. one of the very first examples he gives involves an uncle who does not have any genetic connection with the subject). As many impatient and dismissive reviews here on GR attest, this turns off some readers immediately, and I think they have some reason. Genes affected by trauma may explain descendants having SOME kind of weakness or dysfunction, but they can't determine them to repeat in great emotional and psychological detail the SAME kind of trauma. This seems to me to require further research.

I happen to be sympathetic to the metaphorical approach, and also a student of karma (which I think is involved in such cases), so I let this disjunction slide and enjoyed the latter part of the book on its own terms. I have come to some of the same conclusions already through events in my own life, so it was very interesting to read the stories about family trauma being passed down through the generations. I wish I had had Wolynn's advice to follow much earlier; it could have saved me a good deal of pain and suffering. Even at this late date, it has helped me to clarify some of my issues and to identify some healing practices I can still try. I'm looking forward to doing more research of my own.

This is one of those later DWJ books which has an interesting idea that isn't completely worked out in a satisfying way. The strange village run by awful Aunt Maria, with a gender war in the background, could have been a terrific setting, but it fizzled out in an over-hasty resolution with some loose ends that bothered me. I think it would have been more convincing that AM wanted Mig to be her successor, if she had tried to cultivate and win her over in the beginning, instead of ignoring and torturing her. The tension between two sides of a person who is publicly sweet and lovable and inwardly manipulative and abusive was not strongly enough portrayed, because it's obvious from the outset that AM is bad news. It would have been a much stronger story if Mig had been sucked in at the beginning and had to get herself free. The diary format could have reflected this, showing as it does everything from Mig's point of view - maybe the writing could have been a way for her to realize what was really going on, as in The Spellcoats. However, that is not the story that we have!

The repeated motif in DWJ books of a male figure who has been buried/asleep/separated into pieces and returns appears again here, also not as strikingly as in some other books. Makes me want to do a survey of this particular theme and write something about it.