"The first rule of book club is you do not talk about book club. The second...."

[captainsblog]

You know that you've descended into the pits of geekdom when you find yourself devouring your monthly church newsletter. More so, when you find its Church Book Club selections for the coming year to be absolutely compelling.

And yet I did, and do. Not without good reason, though.

I can't say the first couple of picks are totally floating my boat. Leading off the series, two weeks from tomorrow night and three nights before my biggest trial sinkhole of the year, is a discussion of The Color of Water, described on Amazon as an interracial study that "tells the remarkable story of Ruth McBride Jordan, the two good men she married, and the 12 good children she raised." From there, in October, they move onto an autobiography of Julia Child, who I have trouble keeping a straight face about after Dan Aykroyd's take on her all those years ago.

Ah, but after that?

"The Memory Keeper's Daughter," #17 on my now-halfway-plus effort to read 50 books in 2008. Then, "The Biography of Shakespeare" by Bill Bryson, who's only been one of my favorite authors from either/both sides of the pond for more than a decade; and "I Capture the Castle," by the author of the original "The 101 Dalmatians" which we rediscovered this year in both book and film form.

And then it REALLY gets personal.

Later in the year, we'll be reading "The Zookeeper's Wife," by Diane Ackerman. I Friended one of my favorite writers on this entire site on account of her listing Diane as an "interest"- she, just because of love of her work and having had the chance to meet her a few times personally in recent years. Me, because Diane was my creative writing instructor at Cornell back before I detoured into current lines, and because I remember her with nothing but fondness and admiration for her gentleness and her brilliance.

I knew about that book, though. I was not prepared for this one:



Per its homepage:

Do you know anyone who would be willing to sell everything they own and live in their car just so they could save every dollar for someone else?  Greg Mortenson, a great American hero, did just that when he followed through on his promise to an impoverished Pakistani village to build a school for its children, and in the process has found himself playing a major role in one of the most historically and culturally pivotal areas in the world today.

        In THREE CUPS OF TEA: One Man’s Mission to Promote . . . One School at a Time (Viking/On-sale date: March 6, 2006 [and in paperback this very Monday- ed.]) Greg Mortenson, and acclaimed journalist David Oliver Relin, recount the unlikely journey that led Mortenson from a failed attempt to climb Pakistan’s K2, the world’s second highest mountain, to successfully building schools in some of the most remote regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan. By replacing guns with pencils, rhetoric with reading, Mortenson combines his unique background with his intimate knowledge of the third-world to fight terrorism with books, not bombs, and successfully bring education and hope to remote villages in central Asia.  THREE CUPS OF TEA is at once an unforgettable adventure and the inspiring true story of how one man really is changing the world—one school at a time.

Let me share the three words from that description which hit me the hardest.  "David Oliver Relin" is the son of Lloyd Henry Relin, the Rochester attorney who gave me my first legal job, 22 years ago this month, and who mentored me until May of 1986 when he was suddenly and unfairly taken from this world by a heart attack. I left the firm that still proudly bears his name in 1994, and lost all touch with his wife and kids even before that, but as I told David in an email yesterday after learning of this serendipity, "rarely does a week go by without my remembering his words, his brilliance, his dry sense of humor, or his kindness."

I think I'll be at that discussion. I'd urge you to find it and discuss it, too.

Comments

[swingdancefan.livejournal.com]

And, to close the circle, Greg Mortensen was a guest speaker at our school last spring when he dedicated the Peace Garden our IB students made.

Small world, no?

[headbanger118.livejournal.com]

Dude, you should have your own board game: The Six Degrees of Ray. You are totally connected.

I very much enjoyed The Memory Keeper's Daughter.