The Dressmaker of Khair Khana

The Dressmaker of Khair Khana is another book that I received for review from Netgalley. First of all, if you have an e-reader I highly recommend Netgalley for new books. Technically you are only getting galley copies (the last stages of the proofed document), but they're pretty close to being final copies. In most cases the books that I've been reading won't even be released to the public for another few months. All you need is an e-reader and somewhere to post book reviews. Netgalley works whether you have a Kindle or an e-reader that can view epub files. I had to download Adobe Digital Editions to manage the files but it is easy to do. Theoretically the files will go inactive after a set number of days but I don't know if that's only in Adobe or on my Nook too. There is a slight glitch in their system where I sometimes get two copies of everything for each book that I request but I think they're working it out and I haven't had any other issues.

Now onto The Dressmaker. This is a story that supposedly inspired the subject of the book Three Cups of Tea, which I've read and did love. The two stories share a lot of similarities. They're both about determination in the face of adversity. They're both about people who saw problems and started businesses or projects that grew into something much more. Both books are in the "as told to" style, which worked for Three Cups but in the case of Dressmaker makes it a bit less riveting of a story than it might be as an autobiography. For whatever reason, even though this was a great story about a really determined woman, it just didn't grab me like I wanted it to. For one thing, the story seemed short even though according to Amazon the hardcover version is 288 pages. Secondly, I think the author hit the "women are powerful and strong and awesome" bit just a little more than necessary. The story could have stood on its own without that. Thirdly, I still haven't figured out who "the woman who risked everything to keep them safe" is. It isn't Kamila herself, it wasn't one of her family members, and I hope that the author isn't thinking of herself since unless I missed something she didn't come to Afghanistan and start interviewing Kamila until after the Taliban occupation was over and the worst (but not all) of the danger had passed. Overall this was a good vacation read but not quite up to the caliber of Three Cups.

The Heart and the Fist

Yet another of the books I read via Nook when we were in Michigan was The Heart and the Fist. This book is being released in April 2011 but I got a galley copy. This is an autobiography by Eric Greitens, who attempts to find the balance between working as a soldier and working as a humanitarian. The structure of this book is a little chaotic. He starts in the present day in a war zone, then jumps back to an initial humanitarian experience and works forward from there back to his present day work with veterans. For me the most interesting part of this book was the extensive descriptions of the process of becoming a Navy Seal. The description of the training and hard physical conditioning required was fascinating as was finding out just how many prospective Seal candidates don't make it through training. Other than that, I don't really feel like this book answered its initial question- how best to save the world? The author seems to conclude that we need both saints and soldiers, which I think is letting everyone off a bit too easily. Surely there is a balance somewhere between power and compassion, but I would guess that its different for every person. Overall this was a good vacation read but nothing that I'd consider inspiring. It wraps up just a bit too easily for that.