Title: The Spirituality of Imperfection: Storytelling and the Search For Meaning

Author: Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham

Pages/Format: 243/Paperback

What I Thought: Someone recommended this book to me about 4 years ago, and it’s taken me several years to get through it.  I loved the stories and quotes scattered throughout the book.  It was hard to get into, because the book is fairly dry, and read like a textbook at times.

A.A. and the 12 Steps/Traditions are mentioned throughout the book; at times, I felt like it was more like the spirituality of A.A., not the spirituality of imperfection.  Kurtz, according to the author biography at the back of the book, has written several books about A.A., which would explain the focus on A.A., as well as the bias towards A.A..  I don’t have anything against A.A., but I felt like it was focused on too much.

I did find the book interesting, though, since it’s about how accepting imperfection is the 1st step towards spirituality, and how there’s meaning and joy within suffering. 

I did like how the authors connected the stories to both imperfection and spirituality, and also how the stories illustrated the story of spirituality and imperfection.  I also liked the organization of the book, which is divided into 3 sections- the roots of spirituality, how spirituality and A.A. are really connected, and how spirituality is beneficial. 

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 because the quotes and stories were the only redeeming factor of the book.  Everything could have been said more succinctly, and it was redundant at times, especially towards the end.  While I did like the stories, they did start to sound the same about halfway through.