Like many Pagans, I'm a big-time bibliophile. Here's a photo of the books I'm in the midst of reading -- never mind that at least one of them has not been picked up in a couple of years.
I'm nearly finished reading Barack Obama's Dreams from My Father. It's a very touching memoir, written before his arrival on the national political scene. I like his quality of reflecting, his depth, and his compassion for humanity. I'm working with Marin County for Obama, tabling at the weekly downtown San Rafael Farmers Market.
I'm also well into Jonathan Kirsch's A History of the End of the World, which about the Biblical Book of Revelations. I have a remote connection with the author: he was the attorney Starhawk and I consulted when we signed the contract for The Pagan Book of Living and Dying. Since then I've read his God Against the Gods: The History of the War Between Monotheism and Polytheism and really liked it. Since the more manic of our neighbors among the religious right cry of the endtimes, it's good to have a sensible look at the underpinnings of this craze proffered by a rational, level-headed Jewish lawyer.
She Who Changes is Carol Christ's book about process thealogy. I resonate strongly with much of what she says, but find reading about it somewhat dry.
The Last Witchfinder and Boudica are both historical novels, the first about Enlightenment featuring Isobel, Lady Mowbray, as a character, aunt of the protagonist Jennett, and the latter about the Iceni warrior queen.
In the absence of the opportunity to take a class in basic geology and with a fascination with our glorious Earth, I began reading McPhee's Annals of the Former World. It's a wonderful book, but I'm unversed in the subject so it takes me a long time to digest what he's saying. His writing is accessible to the lay person; that's what makes it so great. Still, I have to work to understand and retain.
Many of the entries in Clifton and Harvey's The Paganism Reader I've read before, and many are new to me. I learn from rereading the familiar writings and encountering the newer ones.
The bookends in the photo are actually boxes, Yule gifts to Corby and me from our friend Victoria, who made them. Guess which is whose.
2 comments:
Hi Macha, don't you wish you had several heads, like an Indian god, so you could read many books at once? I often with that for myself. Also, come to think of it, some more arms would be good too.
I have an overflowing pile next to my bed. The books I mean to read, the books I started reading, and a few old favorites that I open to a random page for a few minutes of reading before lights out.
We are facing the daunting task of having to weed through our bookcases once again to, what else, make room for new ones.
Mama Kelly
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