Agent 6, by Tom Rob Smith

Wow. Convoluted. Takes place over the course of 30 years, from the visit to the USSR of a black American singer in the early 50s, to New York City 15 years later, to 1980 in Afghanistan. I really wanted to like Leo, but he really annoyed the crap out of me in this book. There were a lot of rather unbelievable situations here, but the story is pretty good.

"Agent 6" shows up early in the book, but under his actual name. It's not till the last 50 or so pages that we find out who that name refers to. And the end....what the heck? I don't even know what to say about it.

Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin (on CD)

I enjoyed listening to this book, but I'm thinking about reading it with my eyeballs as well. The pronunciation of names and places was helpful, but I kept wondering what the spelling of the words is, and a reference map would have been helpful.

However, what Mortenson has been doing for 15 years is astounding. Why is the U.S. Government's policy more concerned with bombs instead of building schools?

As for the book itself, pretty well-written until the end when it pretty much just...stops. There were plenty of other "endings" that were better all the way through that were more sensibly places to stop. I suppose, though, since he's still at it, there really can't be a proper ending.

Amazing story; if you haven't read it, I would definitely do so.