ubalstecha's review against another edition
3.0
Yann Martel is a Canadian publishing superstar. Author of Life of Pi, which has won a bucketful of awards, he started a campaign on April 16, 2007 to get Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper to pay more attention to the arts, for which his conservative government seem to almost take glee in cutting funding.
His method was to start a book club, one where he would send a book every two weeks to Stephen Harper with an accompanying letter explaining why Martel had chosen the book and some of the history surrounding the novel and its author. Martel also published the book selection and accompanying letter on a blog. He has also chronicled any responses he got from the Prime Minister, although most of those came from staffers rather than Stephen Harper himself.
The book then is a publishing of the first 55 of the books Martel has sent. And to read this is to listen to a sometimes condescending, sometimes earnest pleading of someone who loves literature who is trying to reach out to the someone who has very different views than him. The problem is there are times that Martel comes off as talking down to Harper, and that turns the reader off quite a bit.
The value of this book is the reading list it provides. The list of books is not narrowed down to one genre or origin. Fiction, Non-Fiction, Canadian, International, Classic, Modern, Martel has pulled from a very broad spectrum and that is where the richness lies. For us the reader to push ourselves out of our comfort zone readingwise, broadening our minds as Martel hopes to broaden Harper's.
A quick note: Martel has recently announced that he is ending his book club after four years and 99 books. Which is sad, if only because the list of books that we all should look at has ended.
His method was to start a book club, one where he would send a book every two weeks to Stephen Harper with an accompanying letter explaining why Martel had chosen the book and some of the history surrounding the novel and its author. Martel also published the book selection and accompanying letter on a blog. He has also chronicled any responses he got from the Prime Minister, although most of those came from staffers rather than Stephen Harper himself.
The book then is a publishing of the first 55 of the books Martel has sent. And to read this is to listen to a sometimes condescending, sometimes earnest pleading of someone who loves literature who is trying to reach out to the someone who has very different views than him. The problem is there are times that Martel comes off as talking down to Harper, and that turns the reader off quite a bit.
The value of this book is the reading list it provides. The list of books is not narrowed down to one genre or origin. Fiction, Non-Fiction, Canadian, International, Classic, Modern, Martel has pulled from a very broad spectrum and that is where the richness lies. For us the reader to push ourselves out of our comfort zone readingwise, broadening our minds as Martel hopes to broaden Harper's.
A quick note: Martel has recently announced that he is ending his book club after four years and 99 books. Which is sad, if only because the list of books that we all should look at has ended.
mgreen's review against another edition
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
4.0
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