My wonderful friends have posted memes, so I must jump on that bandwagon also… *grin*

From the Imperial Princess of Cute:

ARE YOU :
1. A cuddler?: More than most, I’d say
2. A morning person? Not unless I’ve been up all night
3. A perfectionist? Sometimes
4. An only child?: Nope
5. Religious?: I’m devout in my faith
6. In your pajamas?: I wish
7. Left handed?: Nope

And now for something completely TMI…

I found the book, Wicca’s Charm, written by Catherine Sanders and subtitled “Understanding the Spiritual Hunger Behind the Rise of Modern Witchcraft and Pagan Spirituality,” in the Pagan/Wiccan section of the bookstore — which is most certainly where it does not belong, as it’s not truly about Wicca or Paganism. It’s about the reasons why some Wiccans had become disillusioned with Christianity, and a primer on how Christians can understand and convert Pagans to Christianity.

That was really disappointing, because when I first saw this book, I was extremely hopeful that it would provide an objective view to the topic that the subtitle states: understanding the spiritual hunger behind the rise of modern Witchcraft and Pagan spirituality. And it doesn’t.

Although the author makes her Christian faith clear on page 5 of the preface, as I was reading through the first couple of chapters, I had high hopes that she was making an objective investigation of Wicca despite (or perhaps in light of) her devout personal beliefs, without disparaging or disrespecting another faith. But that simply wasn’t the case. It’s a somewhat subtle disparagement and disrespect, but it’s nonetheless present. Here are a few examples…

And now for something completely TMI…

The first thing I thought when I saw this book in the bookstore was, “Damn, I should have written that.” Later, of course, I realized why I hadn’t: I’m devotedly a solitary Pagan, and not much for spellwork anyway (although I love rituals, I’m not so keen on spells), and I’m probably a wee bit too cynical about polyamory to treat the subject as fairly as it deserves. But I bought the book, since I couldn’t hardly not buy it!

Pagan Polyamory: Becoming a Tribe of Hearts by Raven Kaldera is simply a wonderful book. I highly recommend it to anyone who is Pagan, or polyamorous, and most emphatically to those who are both!

The book is extremely well-balanced; about 1/3 regards polyamory, about another 1/3 regards Paganism, and the remaining 1/3 addresses both topics as they are (or can be) intertwined. If you’re Pagan but not poly, you can benefit immensely from the Pagan material on its own merits, and it’s a good idea to be familiar with the polyamorous information – perhaps you’ll do a handfasting someday where there are more than 2 people involved, or you may join a coven or partake in a ritual involving some polyamorous people. Likewise, if you’re poly but not Pagan, you’ll find excellent material on polyamory, and it’s a great way to learn about polyamory as Pagans practice it – because there are a lot of polyamorous Pagans out there, and you might end up dating one! I’m a perfect example: of my two boyfriends, one is Pagan and one isn’t.

One of the things I most liked about this book is that it’s surprisingly comprehensive. Of course, no book can include every smidgen of information on a given topic, but this one at least touches on almost every topic that a poly Pagan might want to have covered – and has nifty extras, like the text of the famous poly essay A Bouquet of Lovers by Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart, and the author’s own excellent essay “Pagan Festival Polyamory Etiquette, or How to Not Screw Up in Front of the Entire Pagan Community.”

Included in the book are chapters on communication, healthy conflict, sexual ethics, the perils of NRE, boundaries & agreements, issues involving family & children, and a whole lot more. Unlike most books on polyamory (or Paganism, for that matter), I literally couldn’t find anything to disagree with in the whole book! While there was the occasional tidbit here or there that wouldn’t work for me personally, there wasn’t anything I couldn’t see as being good information to have in general, which reflects accurately and sensibly how polyamory and/or Paganism is practiced by some individuals, and which would be valueable knowledge to keep in mind when dealing with others who are polyamorous and/or Pagan. That’s a seriously impressive achievement right there.

(I reviewed this book today because I was updating my personal Guide to Polyamory, and it reminded me that I’d bought this book a few weeks ago and promised myself I’d give it the sparkling reviews it deserves in a timely manner. So go buy the book, because it’s terrific!)

The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft by Ronald Hutton is an astounding tome. I’m the sort of Wiccan who loves in-depth, intelligent books – and this one certainly qualifies! It’s a paperback of 416 pages of very small font, with an additional 70 pages of footnotes & index.

However, it’s dry as the Sahara. No, drier.

And now for something completely TMI…

When the book The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants first came into my house, I had no intention of reading it. After all, it was clearly a book for girls somewhere between the ages of “horse-crazy” and “prom-dates”, but certainly not for thirty-something moms of the afore-mentioned girls. After all, what could there be for me (or any other tired old working mom) in a book about four 15-year-olds who’ve been friends since birth?

I was so wrong. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants is for girls from 10 to 110; the three females in our house who’ve read it are 12, 16, and 35 – and we’re anxiously hopeful about how the upcoming movie will turn out (because, of course, we’re going to see it as soon as it comes out!). This is the book that prompted my 16-year-old to ask, “Why don’t we have fussy, overbearing Greek relatives?” (But never fear, it’s most definitely not the junior version of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding!”)

By the time you get to the end of the book, you’ve laughed, and blinked back tears, and smiled bittersweetly, and felt your heart leap at long-forgotten memories – and altogether fallen into the Sisterhood shared by Carmen, Lena, Bridget, and Tibby. A cynical reader will note in the “About the Author” section that it’s the first book by Ann Brashares, and sigh a little at the likelihood that the second doesn’t live up to the sheer joy, pain, discovery, and honesty of the first. But luckily, the two sequels thus far – The Second Summer of the Sisterhood, and Girls in Pants – are just as exquisite.

The books speak to your heart, about what it is to be a daughter, and a mother. About what it is to be a big sister, or a stepsister, or to long to have any sibling at all. About what it is to be giddily drunk with first love, and abjectly devastated by lost love, and bravely reaching out to love again after heartbreak. About what it is to be lost, to be found, and to realize you knew where home was the whole time. About doing the wrong thing without realizing it, and doing the right thing when you hate it, and coming to terms with the right and the wrong…and the way things just are.

But most of all the books are about love…

Sometimes when she thought of Eric, and now more powerfully when she saw him, she felt some achy nostalgia for her old self. For the dauntless, daring soul she used to be. There was something vaguely enchanted about that time. There were certain qualities you possessed carelessly. And you couldn’t retrieve them when they were gone. The very act of caring made them impossible to regain.

Not all of that spirit was gone. She still had it, but she had a more tempered version. That time with Eric in Baja had been both the height of that magic and its calamitous end. He had managed to inspire both.

She was a bit more fragile now. Or no. Maybe she was less fragile. Maybe she had come to terms with her injuries and she knew how to protect them. She was more self-protective, that was true. But she was a girl without a mother. She had to protect herself.

Not just about the love a girl feels for her first lover, but the love a girl has for her irksome toddler sister, her unexpected & unlikely new friend who’s dying of cancer, her quietly intense twin brother, her grandfather who doesn’t speak English, her stepsister that she used to think she hated, the wide-ranging & conflicted flavors of love for her mother, and of course the tumultuous yet solid love for her best friends.

The books are about recognizing the connections who help to make you who you are, and coming to terms with how the people in your life help shape you, while discovering yourself and appreciating just who that person is – but the stories are so compelling, and just downright enjoyable, that you’re too busy devouring each page to notice that there’s a “deeper” level while you’re reading them. It’s a rarity to find a book (or movie, or conversation, or anything in life!) that engages your feelings so intensely that you don’t realize how much it prompts you to think until later – and that’s exactly what I want in a book!

Years ago, when my demonspawn were little, I picked up a slim (but delightful & comprehensive) volume titled Spellcraft: A Primer for the Young Magician. It’s still the best book I’ve seen for young Pagans, and considering that I’ve been actively pursuing excellent books on Wicca for 15 years, that’s saying a lot.

So when I saw a new book by Lilith McLelland (and no, I don’t just like the author for her name *grin*), of course I had to get a copy. Out of the Shadows: Myths and Truths of Modern Wicca is – by far! – the best book on what Wicca is…and, possibly more importantly, what it isn’t.

I love the author’s honest & friendly (but no-nonsense!) tone throughout the book. I love how much truth it contains, without being the least bit sugar-coated or “politically (or Paganly) correct.” Normally when I get a new non-fiction book, I whip out my highlighter and start marking out bits that I find particularly important or memorable or otherwise meriting my future attention. I couldn’t do that with this book, or I would have highlighted at least 3/4 of it.

It’s written for Wiccans, but I would also recommend it to any non-Pagan who was looking for information on Wicca. (Along with “So Your Kid’s A Witch” – pardon me, that’s the in-joke name for Scott Cunningham’s The Truth About Witchcraft Today, the gentle-but-informative book we give our parents when they freak out about our religion.)

I really, really wish I’d had this book when I was new to Wicca – although thankfully, I did not commit any of the 3 cardinal mistakes that new Wiccans often make. (My granny didn’t teach me about any faith. The only Books of Shadows I’ve owned were hand-written by me, unless you count the last half of Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner by Scott Cunningham. And I have never been, nor wanted to be, a shaman.)

Hopefully she’ll write more books. I’m far more interested in what this intelligent, practical, and responsible Wiccan author has to say than 95% of the rest of the Pagan authors out there.

Lilith McLelland

Here is the Phobos Entertainment’s “100 Science Fiction Books You Just Have to Read.” I’m supposed to be a sci-fi bookworm geek – let’s see how many I’ve read (in bold).

1 Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke
2 Foundation by Isaac Asimov
3 Dune by Frank Herbert
4 The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
5 Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein
6 Valis by Philip K. Dick
7 Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
8 Gateway by Frederik Pohl
9 Space Merchants by Frederik Pohl
10 Earth Abides by George R. Stewart
11 Cuckoo’s Egg by C.J. Cherryh
12 Star Surgeon by James White
13 The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick
14 Radix by A. A. Attanasio
15 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke
16 Ringworld by Larry Niven
17 A Case of Conscience by James Blish
18 Last and First Man by Olaf Stapledon
19 The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
20 Way Station by Clifford D. Simak
21 More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon
22 Gray Lensman by E.E. “Doc” Smith
23 The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov
24 The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
25 Behold the Man by Michael Moorcock
26 Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon
27 The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
28 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
29 Heritage of Hastur by Marion Zimmer Bradley
30 The Time Machine by H. G. Wells
31 The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester
32 Slan by A. E. Van Vogt
33 Neuromancer by William Gibson
34 Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
35 In Conquest Born by C. S. Friedman
36 Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny
37 Eon by Greg Bear
38 Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey
39 Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne
40 Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
41 Cosm by Gregory Benford
42 The Voyage of the Space Beagle by A. E. Van Vogt
43 Blood Music by Greg Bear
44 Beggars in Spain by Nancy Kress
45 Omnivore by Piers Anthony
46 I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
47 Mission of Gravity by Hal Clement
48 To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip Jose Farmer
49 Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
50 The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold
51 1984 by George Orwell
52 The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyl And Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
53 Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
54 Flesh by Philip Jose Farmer
55 Cities in Flight by James Blish
56 Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe
57 Startide Rising by David Brin
58 Triton by Samuel R. Delany
59 Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner
60 A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
61 Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
62 A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr.
63 Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
64 No Blade of Grass by John Christopher
65 The Postman by David Brin
66 Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany
67 Berserker by Fred Saberhagen
68 Flatland by Edwin Abbott Abbott
69 Planiverse by A. K. Dewdney
70 Dragon’s Egg by Robert L. Forward
71 Downbelow Station by C. J. Cherryh
72 Dawn by Octavia E. Butler
73 The Puppet Masters by Robert A. Heinlein
74 The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
75 Forever War by Joe Haldeman
76 Deathbird Stories by Harlan Ellison
77 Roadside Picnic by Arkady Strugatsky
78 The Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge
79 The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
80 Drowned World by J.G. Ballard
81 Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
82 Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
83 Upanishads by Various
84 Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
85 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
86 The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin
87 The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham
88 Mutant by Henry Kuttner
89 Solaris by Stanislaw Lem
90 Ralph 124C41+ by Hugo Gernsback
91 I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
92 Timescape by Gregory Benford
93 The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester
94 War with the Newts by Karel Capek
95 Mars by Ben Bova
96 Brain Wave by Poul Anderson
97 Hyperion by Dan Simmons
98 The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton
99 Camp Concentration by Thomas M. Disch
100 A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

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Fourteen, huh? I have a hard time believing this is the best top 100. How did A. E. Van Vogt get on there twice, when Marion Zimmer Bradley & Anne McCaffrey only scored one each? What is “Alice in Wonderland” doing on the list, when it’s clearly fantasy rather than science fiction? Where the hell is Spider Robinson, who’s won a Nebula, three Hugos, and a John W. Campbell Award? There may be a few of these books, which are clearly classics, that I should read. But for the most part, I think the list bombed.