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Wow, have I really not posted any book thoughts in nearly a month? I have posts written up already and everything! Ugh self. Here, book thoughts:
This is a memoir of Queen Noor of Jordan, covering the time from when she first met King Hussein in the early 70's, through their relationship, to his death of cancer in 1999. And it is SO INTERESTING. The impression I get of Noor from this book is that she is a very capable and also very caring person, and deeply invested in the politics of the Middle East and trying to work for peace. I really respect her. Of course since she's a very public figure her memoir is not exactly a tell-all but it seems to me that she was as open as she felt she could be about a lot of things. She doesn't brush over some of the ways in which her relationship and her position were challenging, but she always speaks about the harder things in a way that makes me as the reader respect her integrity. I like her a lot!
Although the book of course talks about her relationship with Hussein and her children and all that, I was surprised how much of the book was about politics, although in retrospect I shouldn't be. Given Jordan's location, of course a lot of this was about Israel/Palestine stuff. The book covers from the 70's through the 90's, which is an era that I've never actually heard a lot about wrt that area - usually the layperson hears about the founding of Israel, and the current conflict, but the details of the intervening time is glossed over. Well, there's a lot of it! And it's all just so sad and hard to read about, because here's Noor and Hussein working as hard as they can towards peace in the region but I know the spoilers already, I know they don't succeed, I know the conflict is still ongoing today. And that means that there's just been more time for resentment and mistrust to build on all sides, and less likelihood as far as I can tell of a reasonable and viable peaceful agreement ever being reached.
This is a memoir of Queen Noor of Jordan, covering the time from when she first met King Hussein in the early 70's, through their relationship, to his death of cancer in 1999. And it is SO INTERESTING. The impression I get of Noor from this book is that she is a very capable and also very caring person, and deeply invested in the politics of the Middle East and trying to work for peace. I really respect her. Of course since she's a very public figure her memoir is not exactly a tell-all but it seems to me that she was as open as she felt she could be about a lot of things. She doesn't brush over some of the ways in which her relationship and her position were challenging, but she always speaks about the harder things in a way that makes me as the reader respect her integrity. I like her a lot!
Although the book of course talks about her relationship with Hussein and her children and all that, I was surprised how much of the book was about politics, although in retrospect I shouldn't be. Given Jordan's location, of course a lot of this was about Israel/Palestine stuff. The book covers from the 70's through the 90's, which is an era that I've never actually heard a lot about wrt that area - usually the layperson hears about the founding of Israel, and the current conflict, but the details of the intervening time is glossed over. Well, there's a lot of it! And it's all just so sad and hard to read about, because here's Noor and Hussein working as hard as they can towards peace in the region but I know the spoilers already, I know they don't succeed, I know the conflict is still ongoing today. And that means that there's just been more time for resentment and mistrust to build on all sides, and less likelihood as far as I can tell of a reasonable and viable peaceful agreement ever being reached.
