I received a copy of The Voluntourist by Ken Budd several years ago from the LibraryThing Early Reviewers Program. I finally got around to reading it last week. The death of his father accompanied by the realization that he would never be a father started the author on a soul searching mission to discover his place in the world. On a whim, he signs up for a community service project in New Orleans shortly after Hurricane Katrina. Being out of his comfort zone provided Budd with the space he needed to begin to think about many of life's big questions. He ends up signing up for multiple short-term volunteer projects around the world. In the process, he tries to work through a lot of the issues brought up by his father's death and his wife's unwillingness to have children.

As the veteran of many of these kinds of short-term international volunteer project, I found the book to be an accurate depiction of this type of experience. Budd captures the friendship and camaraderie among volunteers especially well. I think this would be an excellent book for someone considering doing volunteer work abroad to read. The section on his work in Palestine was very interesting to me because I've never talked to anyone who has done a project like that.

The person issues that Budd weaves throughout the narrative are intriguing. However, I didn't feel a sense that any of them were really resolved. I would have liked to know how he planned to continue to work on them (more volunteer trips? something else?). This didn't seem clear to me.

Overall, this book held my interest. I liked it, but didn't love it. This may be partly because I've had a lot of similar volunteer experiences, so nothing in it really came as much of a surprise to me. ( )

I am a sucker for anything that is a travel memoir and I think that the idea of traveling while volunteering is an interesting one. ( )

When I was about a quarter of the way into this book, I realized I was kind of burnt out on the whole voluntourism genre. I've read a lot of these books and I just wasn't as interest this time around - which means it took me 6 months to finish this one, reading sporadically.

One thing that I did really like about the book was Budd's discussion of his desires to be a father and coming to terms with the fact that he wouldn't be. I feel like that's a narrative that we don't hear much, at least from the male perspective. Overall though, the book was just okay for me. ( )

After the death of his father, Ken Budd reflects on the type of man his father was, and on his own life and wishes. One of his greatest wishes is to have children, while his wife does not feel the same way. Ken tries to find a way of dealing with this by going on various volunteering trips around the world in order to help others.

I found this to be an interesting read, mainly because of all of the different types of trips that Budd took. I'd been considering taking a volunteer-vacation for a while, and it was wonderful to be able to read about so many varied experiences from a single person. There's a nice section of suggestions for people who are interested in taking these types of trips at the end of the book.

After the sudden death of his father and his own realization that he will never be a father himself. Ken Budd decides to take on international volunteering vacations as a way to give meaning to his life and allow him to make a lasting impression on the world. This memoir takes us on those trips and presents us with the rewards and challenges of short term volunteer stints. The books is easy to read, though the author can be rambling at times. The most valuable part of the book was the section of advice for others seeking to become voluntourists. 3 out of 5 stars. ( )