Also: In Books

While in NC, my mother gave me a copy of a book her book club had finished recently: Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. After finishing it rather quickly between my flights back from Cary and my Tuesday babysitting, I found I had exactly the same opinion of it as my mother's group. It was a poorly written book about a fascinating and inspiring story.

But...not to say it's not worth reading. Upfront, the bad writing irritated me til the last. But I actually felt soothed and rather superior after being given the easy chance to identify so many ill-constructed sentences, and thus it worked itself out.

Ill writing aside (and the fact that had it been in the hands of, say, John Krakauer, it would have been full of sharp and poignant drama), it was a very good book. It's the story of a guy who's just turned thirty and has nothing concrete going at home, and who is a serious climber. He joins an expedition to K2'S summit with the vow to honor his sister who died at 23 by doing so. But he is thwarted by one of his teammate's injuries, and in his disappointed haze he drifts into an extremely remote Balti (a tribal group in Pakistan) village. Here is so impressed with the hospitality and inhabitants that when confronted with the village's lack of any school at all, he promises to build them a school. And for Mortenson, a promise is a big deal.

The rest of the book builds on this initial promise and his strugges to make it a reality. There's drama in the US (coming up with donars, a bit of romance), drama in the big Pakistani cities (buying supplies, finding a hotel), and drama in the countryside (villages squabbling over who gets the school, weather issues, many more). But what really kept me going was the calm but persistent message that if we only devoted our strength to making education possible for everyone in places like Pakistan, this would be fighting the "war on terror" in the most effective way possible. Mortenson is a compelling figure, his strengths downplayed if anything here, and one who truly - unlike so many who are billed as such - proves that anyone with conviction can make a difference. The message is relvant, humbling, inspiring and empowering.

...I just wish it was not so poorly written.