Erin reviewed Ritual by Dimitris Xygalatas
Review of 'Ritual' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
A+ for accessible writing while still saying something. I appreciated all the citations/examples to back up his points. Sometimes it was too many …. cough last chapter cough I also appreciated how relatively well organized and structured this was.
Most of what he talks about I think we intuit. He just provides evidence for those intuitions. I was surprised that silly rituals that athletes use actually work! Just in a different way.
One of the major issues I have with the book is that he really doesn’t touch on the cons, the dangers. He mentions how connected ritual makes us with others of our group, and I kept expecting him to address the negatives of that, but it never happened. At one point he nods to Nazi rituals as bad, but that’s it. It really deserves its own chapter or something.