Three Cups of Tea Post 1-B

Dear Greg Mortenson,

I have enjoyed your book, "Three Cups of Tea," so far. The beginning was very boring, but it gets better. The problem with that is most people start from the first chapter, so someone might set the book down before they get to the good stuff, unless he is too lazy to go to the book store and buy a new Outside Reading book. The book starts with David Oliver Relin praising you up and down. Then you are just walking alone in the snow for several pages. It wasn't very exciting to read. "Mortenson tried to shake himself into a state of alertness" (10; ch. 1). I did too. Really, though, after you meet up with Mouzafer Ali, things start to get interesting.

My only other complaint is it's annoying when the book explains random anecdotes that don't amount to anything in the story. "Nearly a century earlier, Filippo De Filippi, doctor for and chronicler of the duke of Abruzzi's expedition to the Karakoram, recorded the desolation he felt among these mountains" (11; ch. 1). I have a gloomy feeling that the book might have been 50 pages shorter if you had stuck to the actual story that you are telling.

But the book has positives too, you know. I thought it was comical the way you were treated at the house in Korphe. You were treated with the greatest hospitality, and you didn't have any choice in the matter. "Haji Ali gripped his guest by the shoulders with his powerful hands and pushed him back on the pillows" (26; ch. 2).

By the way, sorry if I should be talking to David Relin instead of you. Both of you are listed as the author, so I really don't know how much control you had over the book.

Yours truly,
Adam Anderson