James says:
How can a tale of drinking tea be such a tale of adventure? Combine the skills of a good journalist with the mountaineering experiences of one compassionate person and voila! the adventures flow. Compassion expressed by almost single-minded devotion to educating the poorest of the poor in Pakistan and Afghanistan seems to be Greg Mortenson’s life-blood. His failure to summit K2 and his taking the wrong turn as he descended put him in the lap of one of the world’s poorest communities. As he says, though, maybe they really have a richer life. The tale cannot escape being a first-rate, first-hand, and severe condemnation of the U.S. policies in Central Asia. However, do not read this book for its implicit political statement against war and warring – read it for the adventure and the compassion. Greg’s second trip to the village he had first stumbled into is a hair-raising ride atop a 20-foot tall load of building supplies over a rockslide-prone narrow and curvy road climbing thousands of feet back toward K2. Other adventures include speaking to six persons when he had expected nearly 200, being kidnapped by jihadists, having his passport invalidated by a Taliban border guard (with absolutely no sympathy from the American Embassy – the ones charged with the protection of us citizens when we travel outside the U.S.), surviving two fatwas legally, even traveling with smugglers in order to reach the leader of Badakshan in northern Afghanistan. I had trouble putting it down.
This is the August 27th book club selection for Bellingham Reads, the Bellingham Public Library book club.
Join us at 6.30 in the Dodson Room if you’d like to talk with other avid readers about this story!