Rick Warren's bestseller, The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For?, found its way into my library queue after several years of procrastination. I'm not particularly religious, but I was sufficiently curious to pick the book up and see what Warren has to say.
While obviously, this book would speak far more profoundly to an active Christian than to a secular humanist, I thought it was a pretty accurate representation of what it means to be a Christian and how being a Christian can give your life purpose, meaning and dignity no matter how small your talents or capacities. If you're interested in the Christian faith or what churchy-folk believe, it's not a bad place to start, though it's not really written as a conversion text, but more as a galvanizing book for those already somewhat familiar with Christian principles.
It's not for everyone and since I don't read Christian literature all that often, I can't speak to how it compares to other Christian texts. But it's well-written and those far more spiritually wise than me seem to like it.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Half The Sky
NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, collaborated on Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, a sobering look at the appalling conditions that women endure around the world and how contributions of time and money are making substantial changes on both an individual and a societal level. This book is Kristof and WuDunn's call to arms and I think it would be incredibly challenging to read it and not be moved to participate in some way to help the women and children profiled in its pages.
In topics varying from forced prostitution to unhealed obstetrical fistulas, Kristof and WuDunn take stock of the condition of women in third-world countries and the very real challenges to helping them in any meaningful way. They highlight people like Greg Mortensen (of Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time fame) who are working in hostile or challenging environments to promote education and public health. They examine successes and failures in international aid approaches and after ripping your guts out with horrific stories of war survivors and rescued prostitutes, they let you know how you can help.
There's nothing light about this book. If Kristoff and WuDunn's intention is to stoke people into helping women, to raise consciousness to prompt action, they've succeeded brilliantly.
If I have one criticism of the book, it's that Kristoff and WuDunn are clearly liberals and at times, their policy analysis reeks of that bias. However, the focus of the book is NOT politics and it would be a mistake to ignore it on that basis.
Worth reading.
In topics varying from forced prostitution to unhealed obstetrical fistulas, Kristof and WuDunn take stock of the condition of women in third-world countries and the very real challenges to helping them in any meaningful way. They highlight people like Greg Mortensen (of Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time fame) who are working in hostile or challenging environments to promote education and public health. They examine successes and failures in international aid approaches and after ripping your guts out with horrific stories of war survivors and rescued prostitutes, they let you know how you can help.
There's nothing light about this book. If Kristoff and WuDunn's intention is to stoke people into helping women, to raise consciousness to prompt action, they've succeeded brilliantly.
If I have one criticism of the book, it's that Kristoff and WuDunn are clearly liberals and at times, their policy analysis reeks of that bias. However, the focus of the book is NOT politics and it would be a mistake to ignore it on that basis.
Worth reading.
Sippy Cups Are Not For Chardonnay
Stefanie Wilder-Taylor's foray into the glutted world of motherly advice literature, Sippy Cups Are Not for Chardonnay: And Other Things I Had to Learn as a New Mom, is an amusing take on the trials and tribulations of navigating motherhood for the first time. Like Celia Rivenbark, Wilder-Taylor is an older first-time mom who seems to think that motherhood is somehow more intimidating or challenging at 35 than it is at 25. (That's bullshit, btw).
Wilder-Taylor offers up nothing new here but her humorous tone and pithy observations make the book, if nothing else (and it is nothing else), a brainless, easy read into issues that every mom can relate to--from the other moms on the playground to the breastfeeding Nazis to the sleep-training fascists. She's obviously trying to be funny and for the most part, she succeeds. I think I might recommend this book to anyone who has tried to breastfeed a baby and had little success or enjoyment from it, since Wilder-Taylor had that experience and writes about it with a decent amount of understanding and empathy.
No matter how many of these advice books you read, your kids will always find ways to surprise you and other moms will pull out meals or disciplinary tactics that you'd expect to find in the African bush or the Spanish Inquisition. Wilder-Taylor gets that.
I liked it. I'm not sure I'd run out and buy it, but if you need a snarky pick-me-up and you're hanging with the under 7 crowd, it's a good one for you.
Wilder-Taylor offers up nothing new here but her humorous tone and pithy observations make the book, if nothing else (and it is nothing else), a brainless, easy read into issues that every mom can relate to--from the other moms on the playground to the breastfeeding Nazis to the sleep-training fascists. She's obviously trying to be funny and for the most part, she succeeds. I think I might recommend this book to anyone who has tried to breastfeed a baby and had little success or enjoyment from it, since Wilder-Taylor had that experience and writes about it with a decent amount of understanding and empathy.
No matter how many of these advice books you read, your kids will always find ways to surprise you and other moms will pull out meals or disciplinary tactics that you'd expect to find in the African bush or the Spanish Inquisition. Wilder-Taylor gets that.
I liked it. I'm not sure I'd run out and buy it, but if you need a snarky pick-me-up and you're hanging with the under 7 crowd, it's a good one for you.
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