Review by Booklist Review
Kurtz and Ketcham are best known for The Spirituality of Imperfection (1992), which looked at spirituality through the prism of Alcoholics Anonymous. Here, the focus is on how to use spirituality to infuse life with meaning, specifically through the use of stories, anecdotes, and folktales. These writings and remembrances come from many cultures and times, and the authors have divided the material into sections with headings including Experience, Wonder, Community, Dark, Humor, Forgiveness, Prayer, and Wisdom. Many stories and there are many have a humorous twist, but they are thought-provoking as well. The authors open each chapter with some musing and intersperse their own thoughts. Storytelling, the writers believe, are the trigger of memory, and fitting our experiences into stories helps us be human as well as making it possible to explore fundamental mysteries. This is a book to savor.--Cooper, Ilene Copyright 2014 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Kurtz and Ketcham (The Spirituality of Imperfection) return after a long absence with a compendium of stories and wry life truths drawn from a variety of cultures and wisdom traditions. They quite deliberately organize their material loosely by theme, in chapters bearing such titles as "experience," "wonder," "wisdom." But they encourage the reader to dive in at random rather than read in a linear, front-to-back fashion. Readers who are conversant with brief wisdom tales from Hasidism or Zen will find many familiar ones here. What's new, though, is the sourcing and contextualizing found in the unobtrusive footnotes, which demonstrates the breadth and depth of resources the authors have drawn from. The earlier book is the more insightful; some readers may wish for a bit more from two well-known figures than their curation of familiar tales. But this will likely find an enthusiastic reception among people in addiction recovery programs and will be a good addition to public library shelves as well. Agent: Linda Loewenthal, David Black Agency. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Review by Library Journal Review
Starred Review. In this sequel to The Spirituality of Imperfections (1993), coauthors Kurtz and Ketcham present stories from a variety of countries, cultures, and religions to demonstrate how people attain enlightenment. What's particularly compelling about this work is that the authors use the relevant themes of community, forgiveness, recovery, and so on, and provide simple narratives and readable anecdotes to deliver the message. It's the kind of text in which one can pick an important topic and delve into that chapter, or read the sections randomly. VERDICT One of the best guides for applying spiritual tools to life. (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
