April 23, 2009: Page Turners 7 p.m.

Book: Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson

Discussion:

Three Cups of Tea proved to be a popular book. For the second month in a row we had to add tables to our usual room configuration. We also had a few new members attend which inspired us to go around the room and introduce ourselves.

Once our introductions were complete we voted on the book. I was not surprised when no one chose to vote thumbs down. One reader voted sideways, two abstained pending completion, and everyone else voted thumbs up, or even double thumbs up. One member said the book was life-changing, that she bought all the related books, visited the Central Asia Institute’s website, and made a donation.

We next discussed Greg Mortenson and the various peace and humanitarian awards he has received. We are by no means surprised by his recent Nobel Peace Prize nomination; we even mentioned that his wife Tara deserves some kind of award for supporting him and enduring all the time away from home his job requires. We also mentioned others who are completing similar projects, particularly Oprah Winfrey’s South African School, and while we find those efforts commendable, we value Mortenson’s work just a bit more because of his physical involvement in the actual building of the schools, his inconspicuousness, and the friendships he creates with the people the school will serve.

Despite the high number of thumbs up votes, the book did receive a little criticism from the group. This was related to the grammar and literary structure of the work. Apparently, there were a few instances of misplaced modifiers and general awkwardness in the sentence structure, though these were not so prevalent that everyone noticed. One Page Turner who listened to the audiobook version said she enjoyed it very much and that the grammar faux pas were not noticeable during her listening sessions. In the end we all agreed that the content more than made up for the grammatical errors.

We also discussed the female situation related in the book. One member reiterated Mortenson’s belief that if you educate the girls today, fewer young men will join extremist groups in the future because boys must have their mothers’ permission to join, and mothers who were educated in their youth are less likely to give that permission. Another member praised the young girl who confronted Mortenson and reminded him of his promise to send her to a higher education institution in the city, remarking that it must have taken a great deal of determination for a young girl of that culture to speak to a man in such a way. A third Page Turner recounted a story she heard while traveling in Turkey. Some of the poorer girls were offered scholarships if they agreed to wear a burka-type head and face covering. Many of them accepted this offer and later were attending a class in which the professor said the students could remove the headdresses as they were in an all female class. They each refused to remove the covering in fear of losing their highly-valued scholarships.

We concluded the meeting with a discussion of the relationship between education and crime. As Mortenson said mothers who have been educated are less likely to allow their sons to join extremist groups. One member compared that to some of the crime in this country. Many of the students who leave school prematurely find that they have little opportunities to support themselves and will sometimes turn to crime in order to do so.

The meeting ended on a more positive note. We mentioned next month’s book, Barbara Kingsolver’s Poisonwood Bible, had some copies to hand out, and distributed flyers for upcoming programming as well.