Pilgrimage: A Medieval Cure for Modern Ills, available for pre-order on Kindle now, available for free
through Kindle Unlimited, available in paperback on January 6!
Rosemary Mahoney – The Singular Pilgrim – This book deserves more attention. It’s a bit older now (published 2004), but it offers a wealth of insight into pilgrimage, as Mahoney travels around the world and pursues pilgrimage in a variety of different contexts. The Camino is here, of course, but I focused more on her time in Varanasi/Banaras (India) and Lough Derg (Ireland).
Diana Eck – Banaras – OK, this isn’t really a pilgrim memoir–it’s a classic of anthropology–but Eck put in the work, with plenty of time spent with boots on the ground. It’s worth reading in combination with Mahoney’s account. I was thrilled to get to speak with Diana in Episode 56.
Michael Wolfe – The Hadj / Abdellah Hammoudi – A Season in Mecca – These two accounts were crucial to my understanding of the hajj. I particularly enjoyed reading them in conversation, as Wolfe’s pilgrimage was a celebration and confirmation of his later-in-life conversion, while Hammoudi’s pilgrimage was more conflicted, as he grappled with a faith that had become tenuous over his life.
Ann Armbrecht – Thin Places: A Pilgrimage Home – The pilgrimage described by Armbrecht that I spotlight in the book, to Khembalung, Nepal, qualifies as the route least likely to be followed by any reader! It’s a heart-stopping journey, to be sure, and Armbrecht captures it vividly. I enjoyed this as a parallel to Stephen Drew’s Into the Thin.
Ian Reader – Making Pilgrimages – OK, again, I’m playing fast and loose with “pilgrimage memoir” here, as this is much more firmly a work of ethnographic research. As with Eck, though, Reader’s firsthand experience on the Shikoku Pilgrimage makes this a richly detailed account around the island.
In my next post, I’ll go more explicitly into some of the academic research that I built upon in Pilgrimage.
