January Reading

I’ve been a bad blogger again. So much for New Year’s Resolutions! (Though I am eating healthy, but have yet to start the gym, or knitting classes, but it’s only Feb. 1st) I was holding my breath for a snow day today, especially after dragging myself to work all week with a horrible cold.

One resolution that I have stuck to for 2008 has been pleasure reading. I’ve read three wonderful books so far in 2008. First, was Stephanie Nolen’s Shakespeare’s Face, which I might actually put among my favourite non-fiction reads. Who knew that the story of a painting, hidden away in an Ottawa dining room, could have me completely hooked.

Next was End of Food, by Thomas Pawlick. I admit I skipped a chapter or two because I have horrible time management skills and I had to get the book back to the library, but the 95% that I did read was eye-opening.

"Food is not just something you jam into your mouth and swallow fast to prevent starvation. It is the basis of social interaction. From a baby's first bonding with its own mother, though the milk of her breasts, human beings have used food as a means of keeping family, clan, and community together. In every religion and every culture, around the world, sharing a meal has been seen as a necessary social component of importionat occasions: whether at Christmas, Easter or Iftar, at weddings, baptisms, or wakes, sharing a meal is the key to sharing life. ...

To make the neglect of food a habit, its production a mere conveyor-belt, assembly line routine measured in some corporate ledger book, and the eating of it a peripheral event to be gotten through quickly, is to make it a habit to forget what makes us human."

Last, but not least has been Ana's Story, by none other than Jenna Bush. It's a beautifully written book for young adults, which somewhat restores what little faith I had in the Bush family. Wait, that's not right, I never had faith in the Bush family, but maybe now I have a tiny bit of hope for the younger generation.

This article from the American Prospect seems to think that she has outgrown her family’s conservative politics, and her book seems to act as proof of this. I can’t imagine being a young woman growing up in that household.

"Like the vast majority of Americans in their mid-twenties, Jenna Bush believes condoms effectively prevent the spread of HIV, comprehensive sex education helps young people make healthy choices, and sex between two mutually loving people is okay -- even if they aren't married.

None of that is surprising. But given that Jenna Bush is the daughter of a deeply conservative president, one whose administration has in part been defined by retrograde sexual politics, it's rather extraordinary that Jenna has written a book advocating a practical, social justice stance toward the problems of poverty, AIDS, child abuse, sexual abuse, and teenage motherhood in Latin America.

As her father threatens to veto the entire $34 billion 2008 foreign aid budget just because congressional Democrats have finally snuck in loopholes providing condoms and abortion services to women in the developing world, Jenna is on a nationwide book tour and media blitz, spreading the message that safe sex and education are some of the most important tools in fighting disease. "