America Alone? Er, no, I haven't got around to that one yet. I've read it (three times), but don't have the energy to write a review for it.
So instead I'll do a quick review for a book that I only needed to read 20 pages of:
Contemporary Paganism: Listening People, Speaking Earth by Graham Harvey.
This is a book anybody could have written. In fact, if Harvey was clever, he would have just plugged some data into a computer with a thesaurus attached and wrote 85% of the tome that way. In fact, its entirely possible that Harvey is clever and actually did this.
What does it suppose to tell us about paganism?
Well, when it comes to [Ceremony A] some people do it [Method 1] and other people do it [Method 2]. However, some pagans will do [Method 1]+[Method 2] and yet other pagans will do neither method. All of these are the "right" way, this book is not claiming one is right or wrong. Also, in [Ceremony B] pagans worship [False Idol Alpha] but some pagans worship [False Idol Beta] and some even [False Idol Gamma] and others worship all three. Still yet others worship two or none of the above and sometimes none at all. These are all the "right" way, this book is not claiming one is right or wrong.And so on, and so forth. By the end of a subsection, you're so sick of his wishy-washy writing style you just want him to be honest with us and say
hey, you know what? Pagans believe in a spirit earth. If you're an athiest you can't believe in a spirit earth and you're only saying you're pagan because you think its some sort of individualistic kick or you've just joined the Green Party and somebody told you becoming a pagan was a mandatory initiation step. If you don't do paganism precisely how its been done by the people I've studied than you aren't really a pagan and please lets just go back to the good old days when words meant something and there was a simple formula to apply and figure out which people are pagans whom we can beat the living shit out of just for fun.
This book really tells you nothing. Oh, and the chapter entitled "Experimenting with ectasy" has nothing to do with dropping a hit of E and making out with a hot raver chick. I guess its up to me to write the sequel.
