Have you ever noticed that when you take one of the personality “tests” you really don’t find out anything new? At least, I don’t. Perhaps that means I know who I am!

Here’s a fun one if you like taking personality tests:

Human Metrics Personality Test

Or discover what “color” you are. Are you Red, Green, Blue or Yellow? Visit True Colors and take the quiz.

~Lois

Everytime I go visit my daughter Erin I borrow a book. She has tons of good novels to choose from. And because she’s already read them and recommends them, I know I’ll like them. This time she gave me Barbara Kingsolver’s 1998 novel, The Poisonwood Bible. It’s fabulous. In fact, it’s so good that I think it might move into my favorite book spot.

Let me tell you why.

It’s about a family that goes to The Congo in the late 1950s as missionaries. The four kids (all girls) are all very different—even though two of them are twins. The father is domineering and brutal; he doesn’t have a clue about life and why people do things. The mother is kind, hard-working and relatively practical. She tries hard to protect her children.

The story is told from the perspective of the five females in the family. You see the incidents from several angles, as each of them has a different interpretation.

Since I work as the editor of the Journal of Mine Action (which is about ridding the world of landmines), and it is a magazine that relies on receiving articles from authors around the world, I have learned a great deal from my authors.

I have begun to understand why people think of us as “ugly Americans.” We constantly run roughshod over others and think they should just do it our way…because, of course, our way is best. And this attitude is pervasive throughout the novel.

But through interesting dialogue and stories, the author points out there can be more than one explanation or interpretation for what is said. The father in the story preaches incessantly about getting baptized. He wants to baptize all the people, especially the children, in the river by dunking them under the water. But what the villagers hear is that he wants to feed their children to the crocodiles! Who would consent to being baptized in a river filled with crocodiles?

The land, weather and culture cause many problems in Africa during the story. But the people from outside Africa who try to steal its resources while letting the people starve are truly the root of all evil. It’s a fascinating, eye-opening book. If all Americans read it and really listened to its lessons, the world would be a far better place.

~Lois