Review of summer reading

The two books I read over summer were A Thousand Splendid Suns and Three Cups of Tea. Although the story of Greg Mortenson is inspiring, Three Cups of Tea was sometimes difficult to read because the narrative was not very strong. Often there were events and descriptions that as the reader I did not find compelling. For example many of his personal issues did not seem to illuminate the main story, which was his charity work building schools. While I think the story of Greg Mortenson would be a good example to encourage students to do more for their community, I do not think that it would be a very good literary example. I found that A Thousand Splendid Suns had an engaging plot that made it easy to read. But what was maybe most interesting was the way it gave you a woman's perspective on the culture in Afghanistan through the two main characters. I also thought that the story brought up themes, like friendship and remorse, that would be good for class discussion.