English 3 Honor Paired Reading

My two books that I selected as my paired reading choices were A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Housseini and Three Cups of Tea by George Mortenson. Both of the books have settings in the Middle East, and one of the main themes that both books share is determination to get an education. Although very different, the message that both books are trying to portray to the world is the right to an education, for women especially. Both books are showing what third wheel countries are like to live in, and all of the unfair laws and disadvantages that they have compared to the United States. Both books are great to read about if an 11th grade student wants to know about what is going on over on the other side of the world. I would not recommend Three Cups of Tea for 11th graders because it is not very well written. The point of the book is very clear, but the author takes an extremely long time to get his point across, and there are a lot of details that are not needed. 11th grade students would become extremely uninterested in the book because it is not one of those books that you cannot stop reading because you’re so interested, it’s one of those books that you force yourself to read because you have to, for an English class. I would recommend A Thousand Splendid Suns because the book is written beautifully, it keeps the reader interested, and most of the main characters start off as children and then become adults, which makes it easy for 11th graders to relate to.