I’m reading a book and I’m ten pages away from finishing – should I suck it up and read it? Or is life too short for me to read something I don’t enjoy?
Update: After posting this same question on feedback, six people encouraged me to finish the book. I did. Here’s my review on Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali:
“I would like to preface this review with this fact: I’m not a big non-fiction fan.
This is an autobiography that details Ayaan’s life from childhood to her current years in America … more ยป. I found the beginning part of the book easy to read and enjoyed learning about her home, Somalia. The part where she lost me, and why I’m only giving it three stars, is the Dutch political arena. This covered a good 1/3 of the end of the book. It was extremely difficult for me to enjoy and even follow. I suppose this is due to my lack of knowledge on Dutch politics.
Either way, I do appreciate her candid view on Islam. She speaks from first-hand experience and I appreciate her sobering reality of the situation. I believe these statements best summarize where she stands on the subject:
(p. 348-9) “My central, motivating concern is that women in Islam are oppressed. That oppression of women causes Muslim women and Muslim men, too, to lag behind the West. It creates a culture that generates more backwardness with every generation. It would be better for everyone–for Muslims, above all–if this situation could change.
When people say that the values of Islam are compassion, tolerance, and freedom, I look at reality, at real cultures and governments, and I see that it simply isn’t so. People in the West swallow this sort of thing because they have learned not to examine the religions or cultures of minorities too critically, for fear of being called racist.”