Tuesday, July 05, 2005

The Spiral Staircase--Nice, Very Nice

I never expected to like Karen Armstrong. I think it was for entirely stupid and snobbish reasons. She doesn't have a degree in it, but she writes books on the history of religion for a popular audience. Her autobiography "The Spiral Staircase" is compelling, sweet, and consistently interesting. She resolutely refuses to sensationalize or glamourize any of it--being a nun, a school teacher, a TV personality, a woman traveling in the middle east. There's something nice about the English can pull that understated thing off. . . . .

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