Thursday, December 14, 2006

Book update

Finally, an update on what I've been reading (unfortunately, it hasn't been much.)

Book #23 took me a long time to read and I'm not totally sure why. The subject matter was interesting and the book was engaging and easy to read but I found that I wasn't in the mood to sit and read for hours on end about poverty. That said, I learned a lot from reading Out of Poverty: and Into Something More Comfortable by John Stackhouse. Stackhouse is a foreign correspondent with the Globe and Mail and in this book he travels to impoverished villages and war-torn countries in order to discover some of the ways the people were trying to raise themselves up without the aid of NGOs. He discovered that people could be incredibly resourceful and savvy when given a push in the right direction. This book was incredibly insightful and if you are at all interested in international development, I would recommend it.

For book #24 I decided to go with something light after spending months reading about poverty. I've always enjoyed Philippa Gregory's historical novels so I sat down with The Constant Princess. I wasn't immediately drawn into this book about Katherine of Aragon's rise to the throne but as I read more I found it harder to put down. Like all of Gregory's novels, she portrays Katherine as a strong woman who has a few flaws. There's not much else I can say about this book except that if you've read and enjoyed some of Gregory's other books you will most likely enjoy this one as well.

1 comment:

  1. I read "Out of poverty" a year or 2 ago. During the completion of my International Studies degree, I used Stackhouse's articles in the Globe and Mail for a lot of my papers and I became VERY familiar with his work.

    I find that he's become increasingly jaded over the years. Wonder what he's doing now.

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