addystape's reviews
290 reviews

I learned a great deal about Hindu goddess worship in India. It was interested to learn the differences and similarities among the various local devotional practices and approaches to the various goddesses and their aspects.

Scott Cunningham's love of nature is contagious, and I love his quiet insistence that a solitary and innovative practice is a valid approach to Wicca. The book contains a lot of good and practical advice.

Triumphant story of Celie's journey to find God and herself. With Shug, she founds a religion where she comes to discover the ubiquity of God in the purple flowers and she recognizes the need of everything and everyone to be loved.

Raunchy and bold. I absolutely love this loose woman, Sandra Cisneros! A feast!

Felt like I was a friend of Frida reading this book. She triumphant, she gave in, but always she was having a relationship with life simultaneously in love with it and fighting it all along. A picture of a woman as unafraid to live her life as she was to portray it in her art. Fascinating.

After a semester reading the works of the analytic and continental philosophers was relieved to read this one. While I loved the reevaluation of our epistemological approaches by the other philosophers, I was depressed to see them explain away most of what we think we are certain of. Austin reestablishes common sense as a valid approach and finds fault with the idea that our minds are deceiving us.

Pinker challenges the idea that our minds are blank slates at birth, a philosophy put forth by Locke. Pinker support his case with a survey of recent medical, biological, and anthropological research. Pinker says that while we have clung to the idea to maintain that all human beings are all equal at birth, we can not discount the role nature/genetics plays in our makeup and our behavior. Not usually my type of read, was sort of thrust upon me as a book club read, but still enjoyed it.

Takes the reader on a journey through Tashi, a young African woman, who suffers the painful psychological effects after undergoing female circumcision. Walker's message to Tashi and all women is that the Secret of Joy is Resistance! A daring and powerfully written work.

The perspective from the ground of the individuals who were affected when the bomb dropped is paralyzing to read. The book documents the flight and the mad uprooting of these people from their homes and the horrific and immediate physical effects to those affected by the bomb. A painful, but necessary read.

A nice anthology of poems from Shakespeare to William Carlos Williams. Has many of the standard favorites from Keats, Wordsworth, Frost, etc.