Book Review: 12 Steps to a Compassionate Life by Karen Armstrong

Non-fiction.  I started reading this over a year ago, as part of a group that was reading one chapter a month and meeting once a month to discuss it.  I had to abandon going to the group because of my teaching assignment (I had a night class).  So, after going to an excellent talk about mindfulness in the classroom, I finally picked it back up and read it cover to cover.  Armstrong suggests doing that, and then going back, chapter by chapter, and not moving on to the next chapter until you have successfully worked on each concept.  It is a marvelous work and inspiring.  It is not cheesy but a guide to sincere self-reflection.  I do not even want to call it "self-help" because that would imply gimmicks and hokey stuff.  This work is based on a lifetime of her exploring the world's religions and looking at the commonalities, as well as explaining how our brains work and how our actions affect it and us.  I highly recommend it to anyone trying to better themselves.

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Book Review: The Faith Club by Ranya Idliby, Priscilla Warner, and Suzanne Oliver

Read for book club (5/2011). With this one the title says it "The Faith Club: A Muslim, A Christian, A Jew--Three Women Search for Understanding." That is the book in a nutshell. I found it very interesting and definitely both learned a good deal and could identify with each woman in different ways. I think in absence of women of different faiths that one can chat candidly with, the book is a fun substitute. They talk about their doubts, the strengths and weaknesses they perceive in each others religions and their own, the varying degrees they do and don't want religion and faith in their lives, and how modern women of all three respective traditions draw a difference between faith and religion. They express how one can have faith but not necessarily be thrilled with every aspect of their religions. My only regret with this is that all the people in my book club who attended that day were from a Christian background; however, it was still interesting to discuss because we came from different sects of Christianity and had varying amounts of knowledge about different world religions, as well as different experiences and impressions of other religions than Christianity.

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