Newest Spirituality and Religion Reviews
In the Beginning: A New Interpretation of Genesis by Karen Armstrong
Armstrong's background (there's a page right at the beginning) is certainly diverse and interesting so I was looking forward to reading what she had to say. And thankfully, I didn't have to rummage around looking for my own copy of the bible (I've now located it) as Armstrong obligingly provides Genesis (in beautiful, old-fashioned typeface) here. So roughly two thirds is given over to her investigative prose and the remaining third is the actual book of Genesis, for handy reference. Full review...
Across Many Mountains: Three Daughters of Tibet by Yangzom Brauen and Katy Darbyshire
Fleeing your home can never be easy but when you are six, your only shoes are roughly hand-sewn and stuffed with hay, and your route is over the world's highest mountain range then it must be particularly challenging. This was the journey that Yangzom Brauen's mother took with her parents when they fled Tibet after the Chinese invasion of 1959. They were leaving behind all that they knew and travelling to India in the hope that they could find sanctuary in the country where the Dalai Lama was in exile. 'Across Many Mountains' is their story. Full review...
Shakespeare's Secret Booke: Deciphering Magical and Rosicrucian Codes by David Ovason
One group of people that were convinced the Chilean miners, Los 33, would be relieved of their ordeal, were numerologists. For hundreds of years, it seems, they have held the number thirty-three in good stead. It represents a lot of expression of the ego, or the soul, or the transformation of the spirit from one world to another. It doesn't boil down to just the 33 years Christ was supposed to have held His human incarnation, but refers to many ethereal, magical, alchemical transformations from state to state. And who can deny the Chilean mine was 2010's most vivid embodiment of hell - and that the 33 were reborn in coming back to life on earth? Full review...
Running Scared: For 22 Years He Was a Fugitive - The Corrupt Cop Busted by God by Robert Leon Davis
Robert Davis was the eldest of nine children all living with their grandmother in New Orleans – on welfare. His grandmother was a good, honest woman and Davis loved and respected her, but money was so tight that he resorted to thieving to bring some extra food in for the family. He knew that she would be deeply upset about it, but hunger is hunger. In your heart you can't blame him and it seems that all is coming good when Davis becomes a respected police officer in the mid nineteen-seventies. He's living with a good, decent woman and looks set to have a good career. Great, you think, sometimes life is fair and it works out. Full review...
Columbanus: Poet, Preacher, Statesman, Saint by Carol Richards
Richards is at pains to point out straight away that the reader mustn't confuse Columbanus with Columba of Iona. She informs us that the latter did not travel extensively but the former, the subject of her book, did travel throughout parts of Europe. She gives her subject a terrific introduction on the cover, describing him as 'poet, preacher, statesman, saint.' And then goes into much more detail about these areas of his life. Full review...
The Butterfly Mosque: A Young Woman's Journey to Love and Islam by G Willow Wilson
This memoir is told in the first person so straight away there is a connection with the reader. The story starts - not in Egypt - but in the USA. Willow (lovely name) says she's in the market for a philosophy. And in this search she is extremely thorough. She looks at mainstream religions - Christianity, Buddhism to name but two and puts them under the microscope, so to speak. She dismisses all of them before settling on Islam. It appears to offer what she is after, what she is looking for, that enigmatic thing. But also, there's some little twist which helps make her mind up. But not before she digs deep and seeks answers to complex and awkward questions. She reads and researches Islam and finds out surprising facts, which she shares with the reader. Willow is well-read and well-educated. She seems set for a good career of her choice on American soil. Why not settle for that? But she's set on travel to the Middle East come what may. Full review...
A Pregnant Ghost and Other Sexual Hauntings by Colin Waters
This is a book that does what it sets out to do on the tin, and does so in almost glorious fashion. The back cover blurb promises hilarity and tittilation, but this will also fit on the shelf of any academic looking into the hornier side of the Fortean world, as well as anyone relishing the most singular collection of ghost legends that I can remember reading. Full review...
The Four Gospels with introductions by A N Wilson, Nick Cave, Richard Holloway and Blake Morrison
I wasn't entirely sure what to expect from this book. I only skimmed through the description on Amazon, and understood that four modern writers were introducing the four Gospels. What I hadn't really taken in was that the introductions are brief - a few pages each - and that the bulk of the book consists of the Authorised Version (known as the King James Version in the USA) of the Gospels. The whole is published in a fairly trendy looking paperback format, with the idea of appealing to people who are not particularly religious, but who see the Bible as valuable ancient literature. Full review...
Sum: Tales from the Afterlives by David Eagleman
For some reason I find myself unable to start this review. So I'll mention this book starts with the end, and see where we go from there. Of course, that's the key – this book does just that – starts with the end of our human life here on Earth (or wherever you happen to be reading this) and posits forty possibilities of what happens thereafter, in the hereafter. It's not so much 'Five People You Meet in Heaven' as 'Forty Heavens you Might Meet People In'. Full review...
The Secret Symbol: The Original Masonic Documents Behind Dan Brown's Latest Bestseller by Peter Blackstock
Pop Quiz. What links Scott of the Antarctic, Jim Davidson, Churchill, and Rabbie Burns? Where and when might you come a cropper trying to spell Boaz, but starting with the B? And what has three stages - unless it's thirty-three, or even ten by the York system? Full review...
Robert Crumb's Book of Genesis: All 50 Chapters by Robert Crumb
In the beginning was the picture. Just think of all the countless religious images, both inside and outside religious establishments, designed to convey the message to those who could not read. Art and religion have always been linked, which is probably one of the main reasons I stayed an atheist - I hated art at school, and drawing a man on a donkey, something way beyond my skills, was not a task I appreciated, hence my dislike of both subjects. Full review...
2012: Science or Superstition by Alexandra Bruce
The fuss about 2012 has not started just recently. The first book to feature the story was from a Yale professor, in 1966. We've also had prog rock bands named after Popol Vuh, the Maya creation myth. But as the crunch date of December 21st, 2012 - the winter solstice that year - nears, it's becoming a very big story indeed. Even though it sounds absurd - the end of a 5,125-year long cycle of the Maya calendar, which started on August 13th, 3114BCE - or was judged to start then, when they came across this concept a couple of thousand years into that period. Surely they couldn't predict the future from their 'primitive' state with such accuracy? Full review...
Have a Little Faith by Mitch Albom
One day, Mitch Albom's eighty-two year old rabbi asks him to write his eulogy. Thinking that he must be close to death Albom reluctantly agrees, but decides to meet with 'the Reb' to try to get to know him better as a man first. What then develops is an eight year friendship as Albom continues to regularly meet with the Reb, who was obviously stronger than he looked, discussing life and religion and death and love. At the same time Mitch becomes involved with a pastor in Detroit called Henry, a reformed drug dealer, who is preaching from an old, run-down church with no power, no heat and a hole in its roof. Albom relates the Reb's story, and thoughts on life, against the back drop of the struggling Henry, querying issues like forgiveness, doubt and faith. Full review...
Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes by Tamim Ansary
I enjoyed history at school and whilst we didn't always work our way through it chronologically I came, over time, to have a working knowledge of the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans. I knew about the rise of Christianity and spoke knowledgeably about medieval England, the Renaissance and the Reformation but was perhaps less taken by the Industrial Revolution and all that followed. I was au fait with the east but it was mainly from the perspective of exploration – or even exploitation. It was an education based on the virtues of the solid, white, English, Christian middle classes and it completely ignored histories from the perspective of other religions. Full review...
Immortal Longings: F.W.H. Myers and the Victorian Search for Life After Death by Trevor Hamilton
Born in 1843, Frederic Myers began his career as a classical lecturer at Cambridge University, but disliked teaching and soon gave it up in favour of writing poetry and essays in literature. Although his social circle included men such as Gladstone, Ruskin, Tennyson, Browning and Prince Leopold, the most intellectual of Queen Victoria's sons, his books (which are not so well remembered today) might have been his sole claim to fame, had it not been for his passionate curiosity about the meaning of human life. If it had a purpose, he was convinced, it could only be discovered through the study of human experiences. Full review...
On Kindness by Adam Phillips and Barbara Taylor
As a title, On Kindness doesn't pack quite the same punch as Adam Phillip's earlier: 'On Kissing, Tickling and Being Bored'. It put me in mind of an eighteenth century treatise, and, give or take a couple of centuries, that is exactly what the book provides: a thought-provoking exposition on a currently unfashionable virtue. Full review...