Here are 100 books that Scattered Goddesses fans have personally recommended if you like
Scattered Goddesses.
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I’ve been intrigued by the Hindu goddess traditions since I first read Is the Goddess a Feminist as an undergraduate student. After reading this book, I changed my course of study and life, writing my Ph.D. dissertation and my first few books on Indian goddess traditions. Now, I continue to share my passion for Indian goddesses as a professor of Religious Studies at the University of Arizona.
This is my favorite book on Indian/Hindu goddesses. Even after all these years, I believe it to be the erudite and accessible book that portrays the complexity of goddesses and their relationships with devotees. Each time I re-read the book, I glean additional insights into India, Hinduism, and the ways that the sacred feminine shapes the lives of people in the Northeast region of India.
The worship of Devi (the Goddess) is one of the most vigorous and visible religious phenomena in northwest India today. This study uses interviews, participant observations, and textual analysis to explore the nature of the Goddess and her devotees' experience of her.
I’ve been intrigued by the Hindu goddess traditions since I first read Is the Goddess a Feminist as an undergraduate student. After reading this book, I changed my course of study and life, writing my Ph.D. dissertation and my first few books on Indian goddess traditions. Now, I continue to share my passion for Indian goddesses as a professor of Religious Studies at the University of Arizona.
This book served as my entry point to Indian goddess traditions. It examines a millennia-old tradition alongside the modern concept of feminism. What emerges is a nuanced and complicated set of essays that challenges my understanding of goddesses and their relation to women and men. At the end of the day, I walk away with a greater appreciation for both goddesses and feminism.
In India, God can be female. The goddesses of Hinduism and Buddhism represent the largest extant collection of living goddesses anywhere on the planet. Feminists in the West often draw upon South Asian goddesses as theological resources in the contemporary rediscovery of the Goddess. Yet, these goddesses are products of a male supremacist society. What is the impact of powerful female deities--their images, projections, textuality, and history--on the social standing and psychological health of women? Do they empower women, or serve the interests of patriarchal culture? Is the Goddess a Feminist? looks at the goddesses of South Asia to address…
I’ve been intrigued by the Hindu goddess traditions since I first read Is the Goddess a Feminist as an undergraduate student. After reading this book, I changed my course of study and life, writing my Ph.D. dissertation and my first few books on Indian goddess traditions. Now, I continue to share my passion for Indian goddesses as a professor of Religious Studies at the University of Arizona.
This book is a riveting exploration of the major goddess festival in India, Navaratri, and a follow-up volume of the popular Nine Nights of the Goddess.
I love this book because it dives into the regional diversity of the festival, taking me on a journey into the many ways that the goddess is celebrated throughout India and into the lives of her devotees. What I find so mesmerizing about Nine Nights of Power is the balance between breadth and depth that gives me a flavor of the diversity of the traditions with deep dives into the individual case studies.
The autumnal Navaratri festival—also called Durga Puja, Dassehra, or Dasain—is the most important Hindu festival in South Asia and wherever Hindus settle. A nine-night-long celebration in honor of the goddess Durga, it ends on the tenth day with a celebration called "the victorious tenth" (vijayadasami). The rituals that take place in domestic, royal, and public spaces are closely connected with one's station in life and dependent on social status, economic class, caste, and gender issues. Exploring different aspects of the festival as celebrated in diverse regions of South Asia and in the South Asian diaspora, this book addresses the following…
I’ve been intrigued by the Hindu goddess traditions since I first read Is the Goddess a Feminist as an undergraduate student. After reading this book, I changed my course of study and life, writing my Ph.D. dissertation and my first few books on Indian goddess traditions. Now, I continue to share my passion for Indian goddesses as a professor of Religious Studies at the University of Arizona.
This book takes an interesting approach to regional goddesses in India by looking at the seeds of their cults and how they grow and flower into powerful traditions in lived and literary traditions. I particularly love this approach because it not only spans the different regions of India, but it also spans the scope of time connecting ancient and medieval traditions with pan-Indian and local understandings of the goddess.
Imagining the divine as female is rare-even controversial-in most religions. Hinduism, by contrast, preserves a rich and continuous tradition of goddess worship. A Garland of Forgotten Goddesses conveys the diversity of this tradition by bringing together a fresh array of captivating and largely overlooked Hindu goddess tales from different regions. As the first such anthology of goddess narratives in translation, this collection highlights a range of sources from ancient myths to modern lore. The goddesses featured here battle demons, perform miracles, and grant rare Tantric visions to their devotees. Each translation is paired with a short essay that explains the…
I have always loved reading fiction novels with a fast-paced plot and an unexpected ending that surprises me. In my own Dr. Kyle Chandler Thriller Series, I try to use this same thought-provoking pattern that also includes quick dialogue with an underlying sexual tension between the male and female protagonists to keep the readers’ interest. Using this, I feel I am conveying my passion for the characters and plot to the reader. I believe that this theme of fast-paced, twisting plots matched with surprise endings is shown with clarity in all five of the books I have recommended in this list.
From the author of the successful Gabriel Allon series, I feel that this thrilling novel about the exciting, action-filled life of an Israeli spy is one of his best.
I believe this fast-paced plot, with its unique character descriptions, is one of the best examples of the thriller genre, mixing the worlds of international art restoration with the global forces of criminal power.
Art restorer and sometime spy Gabriel Allon is asked to visit Zurich, to clean the work of an Old Master for a millionaire banker. But when he gets there he finds the corpse of his client in a pool of blood beneath the masterpiece, and discovers that a secret collection of priceless paintings stolen by Nazis in the war is missing. With the Swiss authorities trying to pin the murder on Allon and a powerful cabal determined to make sure this wartime secret remains buried, the art restorer must use all his former spy skills to find out the truth.…
Crypto’s rollercoaster journey has given rise to some of the most thrilling real-life tales of the last two decades. These tales teem with personal drama and reveal much larger truths: about our fractured global moment, about the ripple effects of well-intentioned technological systems, and about the massive divide between how we want society to function and how it actually does.
As much as some people wish it dead, crypto is not going away any time soon. Many of its followers have adopted a religious-like belief that it will transform humanity and bring unlimited wealth to its followers; others simply believe it to be a good investment. Their collective trust in these strange digital currencies means that crypto will continue to shape the world in unpredictable ways.
This book is not about crypto at all, but it does ask and answer complex questions about the very nature of value, which are central to understanding why crypto is now worth as much as it is. The economist Don Thompson takes on this question through the lens of the art world, examining why some pieces of canvas garner so much more attention and fame than others.
Through his reporting, Thompson reveals a self-serving, crime-adjacent industry that has convinced itself of its value to the world, but it is too often a glinting hall of mirrors. Sound familiar?
Why would a smart New York investment banker pay $12 million for the decaying, stuffed carcass of a shark? By what alchemy does Jackson Pollock's drip painting No. 5, 1948 sell for $140 million?
Intriguing and entertaining, The $12 Million Stuffed Shark is a Freakonomics approach to the economics and psychology of the contemporary art world. Why were record prices achieved at auction for works by 131 contemporary artists in 2006 alone, with astonishing new heights reached in 2007? Don Thompson explores the money, lust, and self-aggrandizement of the art world in an attempt to determine what makes a particular…
I’m a singer/songwriter and I grew up in a rock’n’roll household. My family has always traded great books about music between us, memoirs, biographies, scientific studies, deep dives into subcultures, industry exposes – I love them all and find a good music book impossible to resist. I always get excited when I find books written by other obsessive music-loving kindred spirits––if I can feel the love I’m right in there with them. I especially love the behind-the-scenes stories and insights into the work and fascinations that helped forge an artist’s career.
As someone that lovingly collected fallen sequins from a theatre dressing room floor after a show as a kid, I relate hard to this story of the intense love and awe Warren Ellis has for Nina Simone, and for seeing the world through a lens of music in general. His snowballing obsession with Nina Simone’s discarded gum (which I once had the pleasure of seeing, back when it lived unceremoniously inside a plastic bag on a shelf) makes for a wild absurdist ride through true love.
THE TIMES TOP 10 BESTSELLER A GUARDIAN, TELEGRAPH, THE TIMES, IRISH TIMES, SUNDAY EXPRESS, ROUGH TRADE, MOJO, CLASH, ROLLING STONE, UNCUT BOOK OF THE YEAR
From award-winning musician and composer Warren Ellis comes the unexpected and inspiring story of a piece of chewing gum.
FEATURING AN INTRODUCTION BY NICK CAVE
I hadn't opened the towel that contained her gum since 2013. The last person to touch it was Nina Simone, her saliva and fingerprints unsullied. The idea that it was still in her towel was something I had drawn strength from. I thought each time I opened it some of…
I love historical settings and detail – I love coming away from a novel feeling like I’ve also learned something about the world. But I also like lots and lots of plot and intensity. Historical fiction slash mystery novels hit the spot just right. Though my own work thus far is more on the historical fiction side, I do try to plot it like a mystery, with lots of questions, revelations, and discoveries to be made as you go along.
A gorgeous, extravagant dual-timeline historical mystery about late-20th-century academics researching a pair of (fictional) Victorian poets – did they or didn’t they?
If you like library settings, fictional documents (letters, poems – lots of poems), and a good dose of poking-fun-at-academia, you’ll love it. Yes, it is also a movie (though I can’t speak to it).
Possession is an exhilarating novel of wit and romance, at once a literary detective novel and a triumphant love story. It is the tale of a pair of young scholars investigating the lives of two Victorian poets. Following a trail of letters, journals and poems they uncover a web of passion, deceit and tragedy, and their quest becomes a battle against time.
My father was a stage magician, and I grew up looking for the gimmick behind the marvel. As a journalist, I gravitated toward true crime and the many varieties of fraud, deception, and misdirection on display in any high-stakes criminal trial. I am particularly fascinated by elaborate cons, whether they involve sideshow mitt readers, political hucksters, or cryptocurrency barons. When I found out that a century ago my hometown was the center of a Big Con operation that raked in millions, I had to learn more. The result is my book Gangbuster.
Warner deftly weaves three narratives: the lurid life of the French aristocrat whose sexual exploits led to the coining of the term “sadism,” the fate of his most infamous work, and the collapse of a rare-book investment scheme devised by a man accused of being “the Bernie Madoff of France.”
It’s a lot of ground to cover, but this well-researched, well-crafted account hums along, introducing us to revolutionaries, surrealists, sexologists, high-end book collectors, and more, all fascinated by the handwritten scroll of 120 Days of Sodom.
And it raises questions about what makes a rare and suppressed book truly valuable – is it the unique history of its author, the dangerousness of its ideas, or its potential as an investment vehicle?
NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE • The captivating, deeply reported true story of how one of the most notorious novels ever written—Marquis de Sade’s 120 Days of Sodom—landed at the heart of one of the biggest scams in modern literary history.
“Reading The Curse of the Marquis de Sade, with the Marquis, the sabotage of rare manuscript sales, and a massive Ponzi scheme at its center,felt like a twisty waterslide shooting through a sleazy and bizarre landscape. This book is wild.”—Adam McKay, Academy Award–winning filmmaker
Described as both “one of the most important novels ever written” and “the gospel of…
I’ve always identified as a weirdo and felt misunderstood, which led to lots of wasted time “trying to fit in.” As an adult, I’ve learned to love myself for exactly who I am, but it took a lot of work and self-reflecting. Looking back, I realize there were actually many kids who felt the same way as me and we just never managed to connect with each other! Finding people who “get you” is an important task—but I truly believe self-love and self-acceptance is the greatest goal for all humans. I hope my books speak to the “weirdos” and non-weirdos a like, and encourages all readers to love themselves just the way they are.
Dewey Bob is a cute raccoon who turns trash into treasure and is ostrazied by the other raccoons for being so neat and sweet. I identified with Dewey and his quiet, artistic, and dramatic qualities, and rejoiced at his finding the perfect friend at the end of the story. He is also finally accepted by the other animals, but Dewey already loves himself!
A sweet raccoon character stars in this endearing tale of unexpected friendship from the creator of the bestselling Skippyjon Jones
Dewey Bob Crockett is a durn cute raccoon who lives by himself in a house filled to the brim with the wonderful objects he collects. Buttons, wheels, furniture and bricabrac adorn his cozy quarters and keep him busy as he finds and fixes, turning trash into treasures. But there’s something missing from Dewey’s collections—a friend! He tries gathering up some critters and bringing them home in his shopping cart, but that doesn’t work out so well. In the end, a…
