The Poisonwood Bible

I just finished reading this book and it has made a fast rise up my favorite books list. It's a book about perception, stubbornness, and change. I picked it up because my younger brother had to read it for his high school English class last year and I needed a book to read. I was over at my parent's house and there it was--I no longer needed to risk my life visiting the downtown public library. I picked it up thinking that it was going to be this simple story of a conservative Christian family who stubbornly sticks to their own misguided views in the jungles of Africa. What I found out while reading the book that it was so much more than that. I admit that I don't know a lot about Africa. I thought that it was just that place where lions and giraffes roam and where some really poor people live. This book opened my eyes to the idea that it is much more complicated than that. The Poisonwood Bible is about a family changed by their experience in Africa. How Africa takes a hold of them and never lets go. I have a hard time imagining myself in a similar situation as those girls in that book. To be in a place where you have to fight to live and where there is so much political corruption all around. While I sit here on my cushy couch in one of the richest nations in the world I can't help but think about how fortunate I am and how blind we all are. The problem is that tomorrow I will go on with my life as if nothing has changed. And to tell you the truth, nothing has changed in my life. I can chalk it up to being a good story and nothing more, even though I know there was truth behind the fiction. So I guess the question is what can I do? How can I change the world? I don't have an answer right now, but the first step is admitting that there is a problem. The sign of a great book is when it makes you think about the world and life many days after you finish. This book gets an A+ from me!