Mother Teresa: A Life Inspired, by Wyatt North
Mother Teresa: A Life Inspired, Wyatt North, is my biography choice for my 2016 (Blended) Reading Challenge.
I was young when Mother Teresa died, so while I remember her as a great agent of peace, I don't remember a whole lot of specifics. I thought this short biography would be a great way to catch up my reading challenge and see a positive example of Christianity in action. Which Mother Teresa herself certainly provides.
However, the book itself falls shorts. It's extremely repetitive. I nearly DNF a book with less than 150 pgs because that was so annoying. It might have even been 60-75 pages without the repetition. As other reviewers have mentioned, it reads much like a high school report. The book hits a few highlights of her childhood and career, glossing over who she really was in favor of speculation about how she must have been feeling or what she must have thought when she saw -whatever-. The author repeatedly mentions her fifty years' worth of diaries and shares only one excerpt.
I learned the same things from her wiki page afterward as from this book, and with much less time invested. While I did learn several things that I never originally knew, this book really only made me want to read other books about Mother Teresa - or better yet, her published diaries. I'd really hoped for more. I'm going to give it two stars because it was somewhat educational, but 2 stars is probably generous after a glance through the wiki.
I was young when Mother Teresa died, so while I remember her as a great agent of peace, I don't remember a whole lot of specifics. I thought this short biography would be a great way to catch up my reading challenge and see a positive example of Christianity in action. Which Mother Teresa herself certainly provides.
However, the book itself falls shorts. It's extremely repetitive. I nearly DNF a book with less than 150 pgs because that was so annoying. It might have even been 60-75 pages without the repetition. As other reviewers have mentioned, it reads much like a high school report. The book hits a few highlights of her childhood and career, glossing over who she really was in favor of speculation about how she must have been feeling or what she must have thought when she saw -whatever-. The author repeatedly mentions her fifty years' worth of diaries and shares only one excerpt.
I learned the same things from her wiki page afterward as from this book, and with much less time invested. While I did learn several things that I never originally knew, this book really only made me want to read other books about Mother Teresa - or better yet, her published diaries. I'd really hoped for more. I'm going to give it two stars because it was somewhat educational, but 2 stars is probably generous after a glance through the wiki.