Three Cups of Tea

I finally finished reading Three Cups of Tea tonight. It was our new book club's inaugural book. I'm normally a fast reader, and this was only 300 pages, so I didn't start it until the week before the book club meeting - I was less than halfway through the book by the time we gathered to discuss it in the beginning of September. David Oliver Relin's prose was just too sloggy for me - I could never read more than 20 pages in a sitting. It's too bad, because Greg Mortenson's life story is incredibly compelling in and of itself, and he's doing amazing and important work in Pakistan and Afghanistan that every American should know about - yet this book had a hard time holding my attention. I was often distracted, as I dutifully trudged my way through it (can't stand abandoning a book), by wondering what a more competent author would have done with the same material.

All that being said, I think it's still worth reading in order to learn more about a part of the world that most Americans have very little knowledge or understanding of, and to learn more about the work and methods of the Central Asia Institute, and to help us think more critically about the methods and principles behind our own foreign policy (a most pertinent discussion in this electoral season).