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This book began by making a sweeping, unfounded generalization, and then irritated the heck out of me.

That's not a great way for a book to start.

In fact, if I'd just been reading it for fun I would have been tempted to stop. But I'm determined to read all the Canongate Myths, and for whatever reason this one is listed first. And it's only 150 pages long so, I figured, how bad can it be?

It starts by stating categorically that humans are the only animals to have language, the think on a meta level, and to play. These are all untrue. They're not even up for debate. The degree to which they're true is debated, hotly, but the bald fact that other animals have language, metacognition, and play is not at question in serious scientific circles. To suggest otherwise is just pure, blatant lazy thinking and bad research.

I figured these antiquated notions must reflect the old age of the book, but it turns out it was published in 2005. The source she cites for these ideas, however, was published in 1949. That's just lazy researching. That's fishing for a citation for a fact that you assume is true and don't want to put the effort into researching. And that just makes me crabby. How am I supposed to believe anything else Armstrong has to say if she's not even going to take researching seriously?

At that point, I really just started to squabble with the book, and Armstrong did nothing to redeem herself. For 100 or 120 pages, it all reads like a term paper written the night before its due date. There are interesting ideas, but they are scantily supported and the internal logic is not strong.

She makes sweeping generalizations (about why sky gods died out, for example, or assuming that sky god religions died out). She gets her logic confused, and repeatedly contradicts herself. She states that early humans did not distinguish between mundane, profane, and divine, but then uses exactly those terms to define how they thought about something. She makes unsupported statements about the state of mind of humans millennia ago, something she can't know, and gives no information regarding how she reached her conclusions. She uses modern perspective to analyze ancient times.

She keeps telling us that myths don't make sense without their liturgy or their rituals, but never explains this and, furthermore, doesn't explain how that fits in with her writing about myths in the first place.

The only reason I kept reading was stubbornness, and the fact that someone who'd read this (library!) copy before me had clearly had the same reaction. Wry, witty, comments in green ink at the most irksome sections kept me entertained. At least I wasn't alone.

I was all prepared to give this book two stars at the most when I hit page 130, and all of a sudden things got good.

The very last section of the book is where Armstrong hid her thesis: Humans need myths, and mythical thinking, to survive successfully. The degeneration of mythical thinking is at fault for most of our societal ills. Not that we need to believe someone can save us, but strict materialism doesn't seem to be working. This is extremely interesting, and she has some fascinating things to say on the topic of religious fundamentalism and creationism.

The last 20 pages or so are worth four stars, maybe even five. They are meaty, intelligent, and ripe for exploration. It's a pity I had to read so far to get there, and got so annoyed along the way.