Wow, everybody is talking about Three Cups of Tea... again! Orginally published in 2006, Greg Mortenson's story (available in paperback) of failing to climb K2 but successfully building schools in remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan continues to strike a chord. Claiborne Yarbrough heard him speak last month during the Virginia Festival of the Book and reported the entire audience was spellbound for an hour and a half. She calls the book 'amazing' and other words I've heard used recently are 'inspiring' and  'incredible'. It's next on my list without question. Hope & Other Dangerous Pursuits by Laila Lalami failed to impress the Duck's Cottage Reading Group last month. With a bit more character development and depth of story it could have better lived up to its potential. Now we're on to River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze by Peter Hessler. Wild Birds of the American Wetlands is a lovely new coffee table book from Rosalie Winard featuring her unique and beautiful black and white photographs of a wide variety of waterfowl. Just out in paperback- I Feel Bad about My Neck (Nora Ephron), Loving Frank (Nancy Horan), Ten Days in the Hills (Jane Smiley) and RoadFood from NPR's traveling foodies Jane & Michael Stern. New in hardback- Certain Girls, Jennifer Weiner's follow-up to her 2001 best-seller Good In Bed, Jessica Queller's Pretty Is What Changes: Impossible Choices, the Breast Cancer Gene and How I Defied My Destiny, a new collection of stories, Unaccustomed Earth, by the master Jhumpa Lahiri and Sophie Dahl's first novel Playing with the Grown-ups which I'm dying to read (and yes, she is related to Roald Dahl; granddaughter). I recently enjoyed The City of Falling Angels, John Berendt's account of contemporary Venice in the aftermath of the La Fenice fire. Every time I read about this fascinating city I want to go there even more! Ah, well, someday... Getting press thanks to HBO's upcoming (July) adaptation- Generation Kill, Evan Wright's story of the Marines of the First Recon Battalion, the first generation (and a new breed) of soldiers sent into open combat after 9/11. I listened to an NPR interview with Wright last week and was very intrigued. Lots of people are looking forward to this Saturday's (April 12) premiere of Lifetime TV's version of Kim Edwards' The Memory Keeper's Daughter (a hit with book clubs nationwide) starring Dermot Mulroney and Gretchen Mol. If you've been reading Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose, the current Oprah Book Club selection, don't forget the Monday night live webcast 'classes'- also available as podcasts from ITunes. Last but not least, the Pulitzers are out and have been awarded to: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (fiction); The Years of Extermination by Saul Friedlander (general non-fiction); Eden's Outcasts by John Matteson (biography) and What God Hath Wrought by Daniel Walker Howe (history).