Didn't know where to recommend book, but here

I just finished a very warm and richly detailed book called "Confessions of a Pagan Nun." Because it draws heavily on the old ways, almost every page mentions gardens full of medicinal herbs, nature spirits and a historical-fictional account of the people interacting with them. It's an interesting book not only because of how it represents Herbalism and Paganism, but it's full of little "true-isms" about being caught between worlds and having to adapt to and resolve (for lack of a better word) ideologies that make you think about who you are, at the very depths--the inescapable you--, and what movements/social changes are around you that you have to find a way to intergrate somehow in order to survive. The narative is poetic, only a little over 200 pages and balances between Paganism and early Christianity in Ireland.

Hi seaweed
Thanks for sharing.. I was just thinking i need a good book to read over the summer holidays, can you give me the author please , sounds like just my kind of thing

Cheers

GG

lovely book

Hey i have this book.. I had recently bought this book which was on sale.. I bought it because of the the title.. The title sounded really intriguing.. It is a lovely book.. All about druids and a bit of paganism.. Its about the life of this pagan nun.. Awesome book... This book is written by "Kate Horsley". I highly recommend this book...

I've just begun the next book in the series "The Changeling of Finnistuath" and it seems to be better edited & a bit more smoothly written than the first. "Pagan Nun" is so poetic and introspective while "The Changeling" has more of a historical narrative edge, very nice character development, but you have poetic phrases instead of poetic paragraphs. It reads closer to something like the "Sarum" series by Edward Rutherfurd, but without as much info-tainment. A review on Amazon says this one doesn't have a clean finish, but I should be done in a few days, so I'll let you guys know.

This book has a series??? Thats cool.. I would love to read the next one though... Do tell us how the next book is...

Review on The Changeling of Finnistuath

O.K., I just finished the Changeling of Finnistuath last night.

First, this book needs a slight warning, as quoted from another favorite author, Christopher Moore: "If you're buying this book as a gift for your grandma or a kid, you should be aware that it contains cusswords as well as ...depictions of...people having sex." In fact, at first I wondered a bit how this one got into the public library, until I saw how masterfully the author wrote the whole of this book.

The sex is what my grandma would definitely call "saucy," for even an age-appropriate reading audience. But the sex isn't gratuitous--it honestly serves both the plot and enhances your understanding of the characters.

The language is explicit and starts as early as the first sentence in the book. Caution notwithstanding, I think the language of the book is probably pretty accurate to the time period, though.

This book meets and exceeds her first book in that there is much better editing (with the exception of probably the last 30-odd pages,) very well-developed characters and nice attention to historical detail. She paints such strong descriptions that you can't help but to feel you're part of the landscape. By the end of the book you feel like you know these characters so well and that the characters are so emotionally/intellectually/spiritually strong that you'd love to sit down over a hot cup of matcha with them. Again, it's a book full of true-isms. It's as if you're getting knowlege for living and surviving life from the school-of-hard-knocks, as told by some smokey, fern-covered village's wise woman. It's a book about transformations in a person's self-peception, interacting with a world who seeks to judge and use others for their own aims, the nature of Nature, and about what constitutes a true family. It still straddles the old ways and mixes them with the early roots of Christianity, but as a diaphonous inner struggle where the characters try to identitify as much as who they in relation to what they believe as well as trying to figure out who they are within a quickly changing culture. This book is much more of a hero's journey than the last--central characters take on mythic proportions. Definitely an adventure worth taking!

I'd give it 5*****