K's Books

I believe I bought and first read this book around a decade ago, I reread it once in preparation for seminary. Every time I reread it, it gets more difficult as I have less patience for academic ramblings about modalities.  I tried to read this cover to cover but it's just too dense, and it's not really structured that way. Anyway, this book did not come in handy when I was in seminary because Loyola University New Orleans was intellectually disappointing and not challenging. I was overprepared by rereading this back then!  This is till an excellent reference book to have, and it needed to happen in the early 1980s in order for feminist theology to develop. While it personally might frustrate me, I understand the need to excel at academic drudgery in order to be perceived as valid. That was exceptionally true in 1983, when this was the very first book of its kind. While Mary Daly started the conversation entirely, Schüssler Fiorenza opened the door for the academic field. She ...

I don't remember exactly when I first read this book, but I remember where I was the first time I read the passage about the color purple so that would've been '10-'11. Of course I'd heard of the book and I saw the movie when I was 16, but I didn't decide to seek out and read a copy until shortly after graduating from college. I bought my secondhand copy immediately after finishing it and this was probably my 4th or 5th time rereading it. This time I read it all in one day, it seems like every time I reread it it's less tragic and more joyous. It's still a heavy, painful read and makes me cry every time. The uplifting parts of the book take up more space each time I read it. Spoiler: The first couple times I read this, I was mad that Mr. ______ hangs around and eventually becomes a member of the family. Probably because the first time I read this was very shortly after I cut contact with my mother (that's how I remember where I was, I was walking pas...

I first discovered Karen Armstrong when I was working at the bookstore at O'Hare, of course we carried her very popular book A History of God which is how I first heard of her. I didn't read it until a few years later, when I was living in Nashville in '13, and the at the time it impress me so much that I want to read her memoir. Notice that I own the two parts of her memoir and not that book - I revisited it years later and found I had gleaned all that I could from that book, I do still recommend it as introductory material.  I read this when I was grappling with my relationship with religion, specifically the Catholic Church. I was dealing with PTSD symptoms and struggling with going back to Mass, realizing that so much of what was pulling me back was specific to the Midwest and couldn't be found in central Tennessee. This first section of her memoir deals with her time in a very strict convent immediately before the changes of Vatican II were implemented, and her dif...

This book was given to me as a joke in 2012 and it's still funny!  https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1382114.How_They_Do_It 

I was a sophomore in high school when George Harrison died and I took it very hard. Firstly, my obsession with the Beatles was a coping strategy and secondly, my dad had walked out a year before and my mother had forbidden me from expressing any emotion about that other than joy - so grieving George was a way for me to grieve my dad safely (I had no idea that's what I was doing at the time). Although I was deep into the kind of Wicca found on the bookshelves of Borders at the time, my obsession with George brought me to the Hare Krishna movement and eventually to this book.  My mother forbade me from having or borrowing copy of this, so I got it when I was in college! The first section of the book is a quick autobiography of the author and his LSD journey, the second section is the artistic treaties of his teachings, and the third section was so boring I had to stop. The first time I read this, I barely understood his autobiography since I'd been so sheltered (I had...