Lining the Walls

Read this when I was 12, when it first came out. Carried it around like a bible for 4 years if I recall correctly.Made me want to read, write, and inhale anything that was not part of the pre-digested and regurgitated 80s culture. It made me a rebel.

A wonderful book! A wonderful human, she managed to fool them all! This was one of those biographies I like to just devour, when I find out what a marvelous human someone was.

I liked this book, and didn't like it.I like that the connections with antiquity are found in classic literature, such as Byron, Shelly, and Swinburne, rather than insisting on connection with some kind of lineage that goes back to ancients. I have a theory that while there was "a witchcraft" in pretty much every religion and culture throughout history, Wicca itself, and by extension most modern paganism, is a modern invention of many different things taken from different places.After reading this I feel like I have a much better handle on both the Dorothy Clutterbuck and Margaret Murray issues that one hears so much about on Teh Intarwebz.I liked learning more about the Masons and their connection and similarities to early labor unions and guilds.Where I found myself floundering with the book was in the sections on "cunning folk", which left me feeling the way I did when I was wallowing through Colin Wilson's "The Occult"--indeed, at one point, Hutton acknowledges a literary debt to Wilson.Towards the end there is also a bit of a dank feel, as the Gardnerian, Alexandrian, and subsequent traditions are expounded on, and the comings and goings of the players on the stage traced. The value in this is only in being able to find out where to go for more information.There were many enjoyable moments in this book, and equally as many "Is this something I really *need* to know?" moments. As with any book of this much academic depth, I could probably benefit from reading it again sometime down the road.

Will review soon...

The comedian takes us through his life growing up in the sixties and seventies, with a generous sprinkling of sarcasm and heart-felt as well as humorous observations along the way.Black is an extremely political animal, with a left-leaning libertarian slant. Some of the material in this book is a re-hash of some of his television bits on Comedy Central, but there is enough fleshing out that framework to make it worthwhile. For this sentence alone, the book is worth the price of admission: "While Nixon spoke, I rubbed the shit across his televised face." I laughed out loud, and I think my grandmother, who hated Nixon with a passion, would have laughed too (even if she was a trifle red-faced.) She would have really enjoyed this book, and that's as good an endorsement as I can possibly give any book.

I'm going to have to take some time and really review this later--I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about this book.

This was the first honest-to-gosh personal finance book I have ever read, and I think I chose the best to start with.It really helped me figure out some of the mysteries behind home buying, how to set up a budget that includes retirement *and* other things along the way, investing, how to deal with credit cards, etc.I've never really bothered with thinking about this kind of stuff, because I felt like "since I *don't* have a lot of $$$, I don't really *need* to think about this"--which is extremely stinkin' thinkin', but now I have a better handle on these ideas.

I think this book was one of the things that saved my life when I was really depressed once.

This was the book that really turned my life on!Harriet is staunchly independent, irreverent, observant, passionate, intelligent, a fully formed radical feminist character. It was read to me by a teacher that dared mention feminism in our first grade summer school class. I got sick and could not finish the summer session, but I liked it so much I sought it out and read it myself--which started my career as a reader, a writer, and a feminist simultaneously, at the age of six. I think the teacher was later fired for being a feminist in our staid, buttoned up school district.This book is also, symbolically anyway, the story of Louise Fitzhugh, herself a great revolutionary figure, a fairly open lesbian.And I suggest reading this in the original edition, if you can get your hands on it, the illustrations, done by Fitzhugh herself, do much to transport you to the feel and the setting of this book, New York in the late 60s, early 70s. The newer editions, with their "nicer, more feminine" looking covers, seem to mill out all the personality, and one wonders if the contents themselves are similarly compromised.