Three Cups of Tea

Picked by: Sarah

I don't collect things, so when I travel I bring the kids a few things like t-shirts, a pocketful of unspent Euros I won't bother to convert and will forget to take on the next trip and a cool new stamp on my passport.  Lately, though, I started picking up one or two books from the airport.  They can be expensive unless I get them on sale (prices in Euros looked great until I got good at the currency conversion).  Even having a Kindle now won't deter me from this new ritual.

On a flight home from London, I picked up this book by Greg Mortenson.  The title caught my attention a while ago but non-fiction books are not my 'cup of tea,' as it were.  However, I read this start to finish on the flight.  I was so engrossed by its thought-provoking and inspirational story, I left my very nice Brookstone neck pillow behind on the plane.  (If you find it, you can keep it.  I just 'had' to spend the ridiculous amount of money to buy another one.)

I picked it up because I wanted to be more knowledgeable about the conflicts we Americans are (involved / meddling / improving / fatigued / polarized) in the Middle East.  And because on NPR, I hear stories about how women are treated and I feel equal parts sympathetic and helpless.  And maybe because I had recently been surrounded by Europeans with a superior grasp of geography, global economics and world-view, I felt compelled to overcome the typical American egocentricity and educate myself.  It's as much a story about Afghanistan and its people and culture as it is about one American's desire to make a difference, despite overwhelming personal, political and life-threatening odds.  Reading it doesn't put another stamp in my passport, but I feel as if I traveled there and now understand better how what we do here can affect people half a world away.
 Whether it's for better or worse is up to each of us to decide.
 Interested?  Pick up the book and read more about it on the Three Cups of Tea website.

Jitterbug Perfume

I first read my selection almost 30 years ago on the recommendation of a friend.  Since then I’ve read and collected first editions of all Robbins' books (except his first, “Another Roadside Attraction” that still eludes me at a reasonable price – a good copy is $500+).  They all have the same pleasant weirdness as JP.

Speaking of “firsts,” this is the first book I’ve read in Kindle format.  Part of me hates the idea of paper books being replaced by electronic files.  Physical books have a wonderful feel to them and look nice on your shelf.  For book collectors, the first printing of an author’s first book is frequently the most valuable because the publisher normally starts off with a small number of copies; if there is demand it goes into 2^nd and 3^rd printings which are less valuable.  The first Harry Potter book had a first printing of 500 copies and to date has sold over 20,000,000 copies; those first 500 copies are insanely expensive now but the later 19,999,500 have little or no collector value.  For books in electronic format, all these principles of rarity are irrelevant and book collecting, sadly, goes away.

On the other hand, I love the Kindle experience and will most likely make this my primary method of reading books.  I'm now in the middle of Ken Follett's new 1000-page monster and it's much more convenient than the giant book, especially while travelling.  After all my whining above, this probably makes me some kind of especially loathsome traitor.

One comment about our book:  I was taken by how Robbins wove this long tale of Kudra and Alobar living together for hundreds of years then becoming separated for hundreds more years then finally resolved this main plot line with a few words tacked on the end of the final sentence of the book.

-Dick Dougherty