Books! Books! Books! - Reading! Rading! Reading!

Someone once said" "Show me your library and I will tell you when you died." That is,
the last thing you read is perhaps when you stopped learning and thinking and reflecting. Today, of course, we have books, magazines, Google, DVDs, etc. But there is something about holding a book, opening the book, turning those pages until the last page is read. One of our friars says that everyone should always be reading a novel - to get into another time zone, another culture, another person's and/or family's journey, another ethical world view,.... So what have I read recently?

I am almost finished reading "Three Cups of Tea" This a true story that reads like a novel. These 331 pages that won the Kiriyzma Prize is the story of Greg Mortenson's one man's mission to promote peace...one School at a time in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Greg Mortenson was attempting to climb the second highest mountain in the world but had to stop near the top and return down because of injuries of a fellow climber. On the descent, Mortenson took a turn that led him to a village where there was no school. That experience of these good people isolated not only by the mountains but by their lack of the possibility of education catapulted him into a mission that consumes his life with passion and meaning, commitment and direction.

The title refers to the custom in Pakistan and Afghanistan that is best described by Haji Ali, Korphe Village Chief, in the Karakoram Mountains of Pakistan: "We drink three cups of tea to do business: the first you are a stranger, the second you become a friend, and the third, you join our family and for our family we are prepared to do anything -- even die."

To read this book is to scale mountains and get to know people of Pakistan and Afghanistan in their daily hopes and fears, their struggles and challenges, the politics and wars. Mortenson is the director of the Central Asia Institute that he founded with the continued financial support of many people who share his dream and hope. He has spoken to a groups of a few people to thousands, to a room full of congressman in Washington DC and to military leaders at the Pentagon. The usual response is: Why have we not heard about this before?

David Oliver Relin, the writer, is a globe-trotting journalist who has won more than forty national awards for his writing and editing. A former teaching/writing fellow at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, he is a frequent contributor to Parade and Skiing Magazine. He lives in Portland Oregon.

Tom Brokaw said this about "Three Cups of Tea": "Thrilling....proof that one ordinary person, with the right combination of character and determination, really can change the world." I am finding the book an education of that part of the world and its culture, customs, religions, and wars. I have been moved and challenged to learn more and to do something. As a Franciscan, I went on the internet to "Franciscan Action Network" and found this website filled what is being done and can be done to bring more justice and peace to our world through the office in Washington DC. Take a look at "FAN" yourself. Most informative with daily updates.

The back cover of the book makes a great summary of the book in this way:

This book (Three Cups of Tea) is the astonishing, uplifting story of a real-life Indiana Jones and his remarkable humanitarian campaign in the Taliban's backyard. In 1993 a mountaineer named Greg Mortenson drifted into an impoverished Pakistan village in the Karakoram mountains after a failed attempt to climb K2. Moved by the inhabitants' kindness, he promised to return and build a school. Three Cups of Tea is the story of that promise and its extraordinary outcome. Over the next decade Mortenson buildt not just one but fifty-five schools - especially for girls - in the forbidding terrain that gave birth to the Taliban. His story is at once a riveting adventure and a testament to the power of the Humanitarian spirit.

Have any of you read this book? What are your comments and reflection?
Any other books that you have read and want to share a few words about?
I will write again about books: "The Shack" and one I received yesterday "A Voluptuous God" by Robert V. Thompson. Anyone read either of these two books?