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Powell's Staff:
Five Book Friday: In Memoriam
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Every year, the booksellers at Powell’s submit their Top Fives: their five favorite books that were released in 2023. It’s a list that, when put together, shows just how varied and interesting the book tastes of Powell’s booksellers are. I highly recommend digging into the recommendations — we would never lead you astray — but today...
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Brontez Purnell:
Powell’s Q&A: Brontez Purnell, author of ‘Ten Bridges I’ve Burnt’
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Rachael P.:
Starter Pack: Where to Begin with Ursula K. Le Guin
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Customer Comments
Daniel Raphael has commented on (12) products
Triumph of the Moon A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft
by
Ronald Hutton
Daniel Raphael
, August 20, 2006
Wiccan fundamentalists of whatever stripe won't like this book, but most witches will welcome the author's methodical, painstaking research and analysis. It is a real gift, to have information that is based on something other than opinion or powered by personal animus. Mr. Hutton examines the origins of the various myths that have underpinned contemporary Wicca, and judiciously separates the tangle of lies, half-truths, and confusion that have often been twined with the real roots of the Craft. He recognizes that England has given to the world an entirely new religion, and traces the development of the Craft from shifting cultural images to literary creation to its actual foundation by Gerald Gardner. He carefully identifies the various elements from Masonry and ceremonial magic that were integrated into the practices and creed of Wicca. One of the most important things he does is to utter words almost never heard by his detractors: 'I don't know.' Like any conscientious scholar, he is less interested in the outcome of his research than that he be faithful to the facts as he has uncovered them. At times, this can make for dry reading. If you aren't emotionally invested in the sifting of evidence and his correspondingly conditional evaluations thereof, you might want to scan that portion of the book. For those who wish to do their own research or to pursue specific factual points, his punctilious care with documentation will prove real benefit. Mr. Hutton has provided us with an academic, nonpartisan inquiry based upon years of first-hand acquaintanace with individual witches and covens. We can be grateful that this supplements his extensive analysis of extant literature, for it likely accounts for the sympathetic tone of his concluding musings. He is no patsy and not taken in by charlatans of whatever stripe; it is to his credit, then, that he has retained a sense of humanity and real understanding of the need that Wicca meets in the spiritual life of a growing number of human beings.
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Man Ray 1890 1976
by
Katherine Ware
Daniel Raphael
, August 07, 2006
If you like Man Ray's work, this book is an outstanding bargain. The book is large, hardbound, and provides a good sampling of all his different "phases" and types of subjects. All the photographs are in black and white, and the text appears in French, German, and English.
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Dialogue with Nietzsche
by
Gianni Vattimo
Daniel Raphael
, June 12, 2006
This is both a reflection upon and a close reading of Nietzsche's texts, especially those of unpublished and less-well-known writings. As such, it offers interesting perspectives on Nietzsche's work, though the author's approach is rather "airy" and occasionally lacks definition. This is essentially a postmodernist treatment of Nietzsche, though never explicitly named as such. Characteristic of such a treatment is the high degree of abstraction--so much so, that to read this account of Nietzsche, one might forget that human beings are in the first and last account, embodied in a world. There is much discussion of history and the Nietzschean understanding of time, but never is there a really existing human "project" requiring sustenance, shelter, and sanitary facilities. One might almost think that philosophy is purely a matter of arranging words on a page--that it's "all text," and nothing to do with the messy distraction of life lived. Why, to read this, one might almost think that nature itself was only a thought: Instinct and prejudice, on which belief in truth as evidentness is grounded, are in their turn no more than historical constructs. To establish a link from philosophy back to instinct does not, for Nietzsche, in any way mean linking it back to ?nature?: what we call nature is also a construct (of science), an interpretation no more entitled to advance claims to objectivity than any other construct. Ah yes, 'constructs'--and they, in turn, are...well, constructs...of constructs...which proceed from...the brow of the Zarathustrian Zeus! There's a problem here, Houston, and it isn't with Nietzsche. Still, for those who don't mind such massive absurdities and the abstraction unto dissolution of every phenomenon, this literary meditation may prove interesting. The analysis of The Eternal Recurrence is especially engaging, proposing that history is the contemporary creation of the philosopher/creator. But I assume that such a being must be merely a construct.
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Tantra The Path of Ecstasy
by
Georg Feuerstein
Daniel Raphael
, June 08, 2006
This is the first book I read about Tantra, though I'd encountered many references to Tantrism via secondary sources. A Tantric priestess recommended this author to me as one whose perspective could be trusted. I already knew enough of Tantra to realize that the typical association in uninformed Western minds was 'Indian-style sex,' or something of the like. The internet is filled with "tantric" retreats, weekends, workshops, etc., and there is an extensive literature promising a Bigger O if you just do it like the gurus do. To this, Feuerstein comments: The paucity of research and publications on the Tantric heritage of Hinduism has in recent years made room for a whole crop of ill-informed popular books on what I have called ?Neo-Tantrism.? Their reductionism is so extreme that a true initiate would barely recognize the Tantric heritage in these writings. The most common distortion is to present Tantra Yoga as a mere discipline of ritualized or sacred sex. In the popular mind, Tantra has become equivalent to sex. Nothing could be farther from the truth! I think that correctly frames the matter, so those who are looking for sex books with an Eastern coating will want to move along, nothing here to see. For people wanting a basic introduction to what Tantra is--especially in the Hindu frame, which is the approach presented by this author--this volume will prove informative.
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Blind Oracles Intellectuals & War From K
by
Bruce Kuklick
Daniel Raphael
, May 09, 2006
This is a short book, and just as well. It is written in the way that academics and others impressed with their own vocabularies indulge when they are speaking to others of their own class. I can't recall ever having used 'clerisy' or 'belletristic' before...but I'm sure my life has been enhanced by my looking them up. Lest you think this an isolated symptom, consider that throughout this text, the author refers to "my intellectuals," and while the meaning is clear, so is the conceit. The writer continually editorializes by saying that this or that individual was wrong with regard to X or overstated Y, but these authorial assertions are never backed up with proof. This is ironic, given the observation near the end of the book that "The social expense of expertise was great. The men of knowledge did well by their society, yet their actual knowledge was minimal while their sense of self-regard and scholarly hand-waving was maximal." He ought to know. If you are looking for a sketch of the political culture of the RAND corporation and its decades-long role in American politics, or for brief sketches of people such as McGeorge Bundy, Henry Kissinger, Robert McNamara, and the like, you may find this volume of some interest. However, it appears to me largely an exercise in authorial self-indulgence and accordingly of little utility.
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Nietzsche In Turin An Intimate Biography
by
Lesley Chamberlain
Daniel Raphael
, May 06, 2006
Reading this small volume prior to beginning an arduous, first-time encounter with Nietzsche's texts would have greatly eased my way through his complex philosophy. Chamberlain does a very good job of explaining that more than most other philosophers, Nietzsche's work was something he lived into being: his books, correspondence, and other remnants of the man's life are the wake of a boat that has passed. Properly speaking, you won't find Nietzsche's philosophy at all; it's the old riddle of trying to get to the moon by climbing a signpost pointing towards it. Nietzsche's lessons were all lived, his grappling a personal journey reflected in his various texts, which cumulatively can be viewed as a philosophical diary. Ms. Chamberlain stresses the important of music, both as presence and metaphor in Nietzsche's musings. Contrary to the National Socialist caricature cooked up by his "silly antisemitic goose" of a sister, he came to prefer music that was light and gay, reflecting his core optimism. It was Wagner's decadent High Romanticism that turned Nietzsche away from his former muse, causing their irreparable, famous split. Nietzsche wanted music--as with art in general and with all things in culture--that glorified and nurtured life. Nietzsche is, like Heidegger, hard to access via translation because of his deliberate and extensive play with the meaning and tone of language. This accounts for some of the "scandalous" statements for which he is famous, but this volume does a great service in providing explanatory context for Nietzsche's often koan-like quips. Once his concerns and values are understood and his writing seen as an organic expression of his daily life, the obscurity of his thinking is disspelled.
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The Heart of Philosophy
by
Jacob Needleman
Daniel Raphael
, May 01, 2006
If I were teaching an Introduction to Philosophy class and could choose only one text, this would be it. This would be so for the benefit of those students who were only taking Philosophy as a way of satisfying a Humanities requirement, and thus would likely never again be exposed to the subject--as well as for those who were specifically drawn to it. The great virtue of Jacob Needleman's book is that it lays out in clear and damningly accurate words, the true state of contemporary American "philosophy," an exercise academic in the fullest sense of the term. Needleman writes: "In human civilization, and in the individual life of every human being, behind every problem to be solved, there is a question of philosophy to be asked--and not only asked as we usually ask, but to be pondered and lived with as a reminder of something we have forgotten, something essential. Our culture has generally tended to solve its problems without experiencing its questions. That is our genius as a civilization, but it is also our pathology. Now the pathology is overtaking the genuius, and people are beginning to sense this everywhere." Lest this seem overly dramatic or perhaps obscure, let me ask whether a culture content to let most of the world's wealth be consumed by it, only to wake up one day to find the polar icecaps melting, its national identity the object of worldwide loathing, and its own much-vaunted political processes in dramatic decline, is not in fact a culture which is being overtaken by its unasked questions. I offer to you the thought that this is precisely the sort of thing that is happening, and which is the outcome of what Needleman addresses. Questions are the sort of bird that demand to be fed. They can be quite insistent after a time, and even fatal--as Nietzsche discovered, and as any number of others could testify, having felt the unrelenting press of meaning's clamor to be uncaged. Jacob Needleman's book has grown more timely with the years, as the sustained neglect he addresses continues to create increasingly alarming cultural breakdowns. I commend this book to you without reservation; if you never read another text of philosophy, you will still be well-served to have read this one. As a "heads up," I should mention that the original text employed the outdated practice of utilizing the male pronoun to designate human individuals and humanity as a whole. Not having read the more current version, I do not know whether this has been corrected.
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Encountering Kali: In the Margins, at the Center, in the West
by
Rachel Fe Mcdermott
Daniel Raphael
, May 01, 2006
These 12 essays offer primarily classical, academic studies as well as a few more personal, informal reports on the worship of Kali. None of the little dots, over-and-underlines, or other markings meant to indicate correct pronunciation of transliterized words are ever explained; while this absence creates an aura of textual exoticism (and academic expertise?), it really *is* bad manners that the authors never provide a legend or table. That aside, I think they do a good job of presenting their subject, covering the span of time and events ranging from Western colonialism, changes in gender dynamics within mainstream Indian Hindu society, up to contemporary Western interest in the black goddess. The implicit (and sometimes explicit) question that runs through these essays is "What is the real Kali?" This is asked in the context of "Western adoption" of Kali as a venerated goddess. I find myself questioning this question, as a god/dess would seem to me universally available (if a god is not, then what is?). I also wonder whether there exists a similarly scholarly volume taking a serious look at whether "Eastern adoption" of Jesus has somehow created a false, degraded, or somehow second-rate deity. I doubt it. The value of an examination like this is less in cautionary reminders that gods are culturally bound (are they?), than it is as an invitation to reflect upon what She means to the worshipper. Let the academics--and the fanatics--fuss about whose property the gods really are, who has "the Kali franchise," and how human beings can turn anything and everything, including the sacred, into yet another battlefield...and let us keep Kali for ourselves.
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Oh Terrifying Mother: Sexuality, Violence and Worship of the Goddess Kali
by
Sarah Caldwell
Daniel Raphael
, April 20, 2006
I finished reading this book minutes ago, one of several texts contemporaneously undertaken to reach a broader understanding of the goddess Kali. This text is based on a field study made by the author more than a decade ago, and the first printing did not occur until 1999. Her study centered on the public ritual performance of mutiyettu, which recounts how Kali came to slay a major demon. That is the ridgepole around which the book is structured. Along the way, the author examines the social status and roles of women and men in Kerala state; issues of sexual repression and abuse; familial dynamics and power; the historic and contemporary presentation of Indian goddesses, especially Kali; the role of language, symbolism, and art in mediating secular and spiritual power; and much else. While parts of the book are written and presented in the highly stilted voice of Academese, the author explicitly undertook to present multiple "levels" and "voices" that would mutually influence and inform each other. Thus, this book is in great measure her personal story of what unfolded as she traveled to Kerala with her husband and young daughter, conducting a study that also proved to be immersion. I will not spoil this for you by telling you "how it comes out"; I will say, however, that it is a remarkable piece of work and very useful to someone such as myself who is trying to comprehend the reality of Kali alongside or behind the various images of Her. The book shares with others I have read, the annoying feature of presenting transliteration of many Indian words with corresponding dots, under- and overlines, etc., with never a legend that would enable a reader to know what pronunciation is correct. That said, I can find little else to offer by way of negative commentary.
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Great War For Civilisation The Conquest of the Middle East
by
Robert Fisk
Daniel Raphael
, April 17, 2006
I read this book over a period of 3-4 weeks, late last year. It took that long because the type is small, the book is large, and the subject matter is, for those not yet deadened by the world's predictable procession of horrors, heartbreaking. The author has spent 30 years in the area about which he reports, and lives in Beirut. He knows whereof he speaks and has done things one might expect of a real journalist (not the faux kind we have in abundance): repeatedly risking his life, almost having been beaten to death by a mob in Afghanistan; reporting under fire during the Iraq/Iran war (remember that one, when Saddam was Our Boy?), from both sides of the line; looking firsthand at the casualties of American-made missiles in Baghdad, Palestine, and wherever else someone's collateral ran out. That said, his great value is not that he writes from an "anti-American" perspective, but that he is equally unsparing of any and all who have lied, manipulated, and terrorized common people into graves, hospitals, or cowering submission. No one gets a free pass from Robert Fisk, and his outrage at human inhumanity is a precious natural resource. A bit of the book is autobiographical, but needfully so rather than self-indulgent; knowing that Fisk's dad was both an archetypal racist of the British colonial mentality as well as the guide to his son's early awareness of what battlefields and war represented, helps the reader understand the author's concern. Similarly, knowing that the first book his mother gave him about the world was Anne Frank's Diary, explains much both about maternal influence and Robert's head start in grasping the lessons of Injustice 101. This book covers many wars, the original holocaust (the one against the Armenians) on which the later persecution of the Nazis' victims was patterned, and the background to much of what we now read in every day's news. If you can bear to read this book from cover to cover, do so and then keep it as an unrivalled resource about the stories that corporate news media either never report, or only distort.
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Eros
by
Linda Ferrer
Daniel Raphael
, April 17, 2006
Many of the books I buy are of photographs, most often black-and-white, and frequently the subject matter is nudes. This book is superb; it is the largest and heaviest of the type that I own, and its treatment of both female and male studies is equally outstanding. Text is sparse and unobtrusive, as it should be; photography of this quality needs no literary accompaniment, neither from defensiveness nor on account of any other perceived deficit. If I could give more stars by way of rating this collection, I would do so.
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Is the Goddess a Feminist The Politics of South Asian Goddesses
by
Hiltebeitel, Alf
Daniel Raphael
, April 17, 2006
This is the first of several texts I have recently undertaken to read about the goddess Kali and Her Tantric origins. This book is a compendium of essays by academic experts, with the one exception being a woman's story of her unintended encounter with Kali. The authors are all in varying degrees afflicted with the current preferred style of High Cocktail Party chatter, i.e., postmodernist BLAP. For those unfamiliar with postmod jargon and references, something will be lost in the process of reading; however, the more valuable essays are unsurprisingly those less afflicted with self-valorizing cant, and most of the authors are readily accessible to what used to be called "the informed layman." The responses to the book's title question are variable; most give a yes-and-no/depends-on-what-you-mean conclusion, and a few give the classic postmod line that if those who worship Kali (the goddess most often mentioned in this book) are feminists, then She will be a feminist; if not, then not. If you want to accept that gods (of whatever gender) are simply "constructed" by their worshippers, then you have there the answer most congenial to you. I should add that my strong impression is that most of these authors are neither devotees of Kali nor religious in any sense that I am able to discern. There are exceptions, but these academics' concern is not for sacredness but its sociology. They do a reasonably good job of "situating" the gods in Indian culture, and the psychoanalytic explanation of Kali's role in the psyche of many Indian men seems plausible. Whether it is true, is another matter--unless, of course, truth is simply a chimerical notion best dismissed via intake of yet another cocktail. In sum, my recommendation is that if you are a seeker with serious religious questions, this book will be largely a waste. If, however, you want to get a taste of what academics in the field are writing and their analysis of classic vedic texts, this book may very well be worth your time.
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