[Gocamino] More books

[pagett11]

Hi Rosina - Can you tell us who wrote the article? Cherie Pagett
PD: I couldn't finish Coehlo's book either!
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Rosina" <blaroli at aol.com>
To: <GoCamino at oakapple.net>
Cc: <saintjames at yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, December 14, 2010 9:38 PM
Subject: [Gocamino] More books


>
> Hello you all,
> I, myself, do not understand why so very many pilgrims feel compelled to 
> write about their pilgrimage.  Doing so minimizes and obscures what in my 
> perception is the most valuable benefit of the pilgrimage: the journey 
> from the outside oneself, (too involved with the busy-ness of the world 
> all around, and with the incessant claims of life and of others,) to the 
> inside oneself:  silently, quietly, un demandingly in the depth of 
> awareness , and, theretofore, hardly noticed, but nevertheless the pillar 
> of the soul.   It seems to me that such intensely personal journey by 
> necessity requires silent intimacy and, consequently, the most punctilious 
> privacy.
> Kathy Gower explained to me one time,  when I told her of my individual 
> dislike of such talk-show-like pouring out of Camino experiences in books, 
> that some pilgrims are so overwhelmed by their Camino feelings that their 
> "cup runneth over" onto books. That sounds sensible.
> But I no longer  read personal Camino accounts (with the notable exception 
> of the book written by the German TV personality which was different and 
> extremely witty and well written).
> Perhaps the fact that, save for Jane Austen and the classics, I haven't 
> read any fiction books for many a decade,  may color my reading choices, 
> and, frankly, some of those "true" Camino accounts that I tried to read 
> years ago seemed anything but.  Remember Coehlo's book? (couldn't finish 
> it), and Shirley McLaine's? and on and on.
> But, my friends, as the country people have it: "different strokes for 
> different folks".
> And, so, here is an article about three new Camino-related books available 
> in English.
> Hugs!
> Rosina
>
>
> -------
> Recent research from the University of Innsbruck in Austria revealed that 
> Westerners no longer give a fig about whether their lives have meaning. 
> Tell that to the more than 400,000 people who trod the Camino de Santiago 
> de Compostela (literally, the Way of St. James in the Field of Stars) in 
> the last few years.
> Modern-day quests usually begin with the universal complaint: “How can I 
> escape the insanity of my life?” Before you know it you’re trolling the 
> aisles of Mountain Equipment Co-op convincing yourself you’ll be perfectly 
> comfortable hiking through a country you’ve never visited and whose 
> language you don’t speak.
> Walking Spain’s ancient 800-km pilgrim’s route with the barest of 
> necessities has become a popular New Year’s resolution. It’s not for 
> wimps, but many a wimp (I am one of them) has been known to hike the 
> entire thing. There are steep hills aplenty—more than you can shake a 
> walking stick at. The trail ends at the Catedral de Santiago de 
> Compostela, where it is said that the bones of Christ’s apostle James 
> (a.k.a. Santiago) are buried. As legions of pilgrims will attest, the 
> Camino is a life-altering experience that resonates years and decades 
> after you’ve pried your hiking boots from your hot, blistered feet.
>
> Three recent books tackle the spiritual and emotional challenges that 
> accompany a journey of some consequence.
> An unlikely Australian duo—a man in his fifties and a woman in her 
> twenties—take on the Camino in The Year We Seized the Day. They aren’t 
> romantically involved; in fact they barely know one another, having met 
> briefly at a writers’ festival. He’s a travel writer looking for a book 
> subject; she’s a confidence-lacking writer trying to improve her literary 
> prospects by riding on his coattails. Beneath the intense glare of the 
> Spanish sun in July (an utterly mad time to do the pilgrimage, by the 
> way), each begins to come clean about the reasons that have brought them 
> to the Camino. Wavering between the visceral (“I am hit by a wave of 
> loneliness so intense, I almost double over as if kicked in the balls”) 
> and the humorous (“We are edging along a cliff face, there is a sheer drop 
> on one side, a stumble will see her over the edge and my workload for the 
> book immediately double”), we gradually discover a truism of Camino 
> pilgrims: the person you perceived to be the strongest turns out to be 
> weighted down with weakness, while the one you thought was a lightweight 
> shows surprising strength and resilience.
> Julie Kirkpatrick discovers her own truth in a much different way in The 
> Camino Letters. Before setting out with her 17-year-old daughter, 
> Kirkpatrick asked 26 friends to give her a task a day (she figures the 
> Camino will take 26 days to walk). She receives orders that range from the 
> tough love (to ask herself why she continually falls for people she knows 
> will hurt her) to the banal (to list five things for which she’s 
> grateful). Kirkpatrick’s introspective responses, delivered in the form of 
> letters to the day’s taskmaster, are personal and raw as she ruminates on 
> family, bereavement, and the stress of the elusive work-life balance.
> The Miracle Chase has nothing to do with the Camino but everything to do 
> with miracles, which, incidentally, abound on the Camino. In this case, 
> three American women, each of whom has experienced a miracle, decide to 
> launch a collective quest into miracles. These are smart, ordinary 
> gals—they could be your neighbours—armed with not much beyond a healthy 
> dose of skepticism and a ton of curiosity. Over a 10-year span, they 
> research the history of miracles, interview miracle recipients, debate the 
> validity of miracles, review the scientific evidence, and try to come up 
> with a modern definition. Their own miracles are vastly different but 
> equally harrowing: one of the women recounts her escape from serial killer 
> Ted Bundy; another is diagnosed with breast cancer in the midst of the 
> trio’s miracle chase; the third one’s life changes when
>
> her infant daughter is abused by a babysitter. Told with wisdom and 
> humour, The Miracle Chase is as much about miracles as it is about the 
> power of friendship and of once-in-a-lifetime journeys, minus the steep 
> hills
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