{"id":178,"date":"2006-12-01T15:03:17","date_gmt":"2006-12-01T23:03:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/archives\/2006\/12\/01\/leap-of-faith\/"},"modified":"2007-05-19T09:59:32","modified_gmt":"2007-05-19T16:59:32","slug":"leap-of-faith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/2006\/12\/leap-of-faith\/","title":{"rendered":"Leap of Faith"},"content":{"rendered":"

The book club I belong to decided to read Queen Noor\u2019s \u201cLeap of Faith: Mem\u00adoirs of an Unex\u00adpec\u00adted Life\u201d<\/a>, her auto\u00adbi\u00ado\u00adgraphy, and this is a sum\u00admary of our review. Part of the reas\u00adon we chose this book was in the hopes that it would be a more access\u00adible way of learn\u00ading more about that part of the world, and par\u00adtially because one of the mem\u00adbers used to work in the same com\u00adpany as Queen Noor when she was still Lisa Halaby, and was curi\u00adous as to what the book would be like.<\/p>\n

The book was obvi\u00adously pop\u00adu\u00adlar amongst book clubs; there was a list of poten\u00adtial ques\u00adtions for people to dis\u00adcuss in the back, most of which missed the point of the book in our opin\u00adion. So we ignored them.<\/p>\n

Leap of Faith<\/em> was writ\u00adten not only as an auto\u00adbi\u00ado\u00adgraphy, but also to expose Jord\u00adan\u2019s point of view to a wider (West\u00adern) audi\u00adence; Queen Noor is quite clear about that in the book. As such, it\u2019s suc\u00adcess\u00adful. It\u2019s an easy read, though very choppy. The book has a mostly chro\u00adno\u00adlo\u00adgic\u00adal struc\u00adture, but keeps wan\u00adder\u00ading off into themes and so you hear about vari\u00adous chil\u00addren and what they did before you get to read the chapter in which they\u2019re born, for example. If you can read the book reas\u00adon\u00adably quickly, then it all still hangs together. <\/p>\n

Our book club mem\u00adber who had known Lisa before (albeit not very well) poin\u00adted out that a lot of things were miss\u00ading; this is not a tell-all book and Queen Noor seems to be at some pains to paint her\u00adself as naive and inno\u00adcent before her mar\u00adriage, des\u00adpite her edu\u00adca\u00adtion and work exper\u00adi\u00adence. But the book does suc\u00adceed where it presents Jord\u00adan\u2019s point of view on issues, par\u00adtic\u00adu\u00adlarly the issue of Israel and Palestine. I am not par\u00adtic\u00adu\u00adlarly well read on Middle East\u00adern issues and pre\u00advi\u00adously had\u00adn\u2019t known that any\u00adbody there con\u00adsidered the Egypt-Israel peace treaty of 1979 a bad idea; the book goes into some detail on why (chiefly that many wanted a com\u00adpre\u00adhens\u00adive peace treaty and feared that a piece\u00admeal solu\u00adtion would hinder that). I also had\u00adn\u2019t known that Jordan is a poor coun\u00adtry with no oil, or any\u00adthing about the Hashemites, and this book is an access\u00adible intro\u00adduc\u00adtion to both of those topics.<\/p>\n

In sum\u00admary, I found the book worth read\u00ading even though the chop\u00adpi\u00adness and incon\u00adsist\u00aden\u00adcies annoyed me. A good intro\u00adduc\u00adtion to a part of the world that I did\u00adn\u2019t know enough about pre\u00advi\u00adously, and prob\u00adably still don\u2019t, but at least I know more than I did.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The book club I belong to decided to read Queen Noor\u2019s \u201cLeap of Faith: Mem\u00adoirs of an Unex\u00adpec\u00adted Life\u201d, her auto\u00adbi\u00ado\u00adgraphy, and this is a sum\u00admary of our review. Part of the reas\u00adon we chose this book was in the hopes that it would be a more access\u00adible way of learn\u00ading more about that part \u2026 Con\u00adtin\u00adue read\u00ading \u201cLeap of Faith\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}