2 bad books.

I have to read 2 books for these first 3 weeks, and they are terrible. One is on the Snake handlers of the Appalchian mountains in the Southeastern USA, and the other is about Vodou (Voodoo) priestess in New York city (Brooklyn). These are, respectively:

Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn. Brown, Karen McCarthy. Universtiy of California Press, 2001.

Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalchia. Covington, Dennis. Penguin, 1995.

Mama Lola is very boring, and right in the Introduction, Ms. Brown says that she made up a lot of the stuff in the chapters. The books is half a family history and half a story of the voodoo gods that Mama Lola encounters in her job as a healer. It's praised as a postmodern, feminist book, but she is an anthropologist and the book doesn't appear to be worth the printing. I wouldn't recommend it.

The snakes is slightly better, as it starts off covering a trial about Glenn Summerford and his attempted murder of his wife with the churches snakes. It is fast paced and exciting, as the author is a journalist, who knows how to make a juicy story. However, it is still not worth wasting your money on.