book review catch-up
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
This is the first non-fantasy book I've read in a long time that was hard to put down. Hosseini's writing really drew me into the story. It is basically the story of a boy, Amir, growing up in Afghanistan, and his relationship with his father and with another boy, Hassan, who is the son of their servant (and is also a servant). I don't want to spoil any of it for those who haven't read it, so I will just say that there is an incident which changes Amir's relationship with Hassan permanently, and Amir spends the rest of his life haunted by it.
I learned a lot about Afghanistan from this book. It made me think about the time I went with my sister to get her hair cut, and at the time she was going to an Afghani woman. The woman told us about how in Afghanistan, before the Taliban, she had been rich, and her family had had servants and a large house. Now having come to the US she was working at a hair salon. We asked her if she was ever going to go back, and she said probably not because her children were too American and wouldn't want to.
I will admit that there was one point in the book where I had one of those "are you serious?" moments because something very cliche happened. But really, overall, it was a great book. Like I said, I almost never find a regular (non-fantasy) novel that I can't put down. This was one of them. (Off the top of my head, I can't even think of any others.)
Blood and Iron by Elizabeth Bear
After my last post about this book, I gave up on it. Couldn't finish it. Too much mythology, too much not making sense, too much everything. If she had focused on just ONE thing -- the faeries, the werewolves, King Arthur, the magicians -- it could have been good. But there was just way too much STUFF, too many characters, too many things to remember, too many twisted relationships.
The Clocks by Agatha Christie
This is the first book I ever read by Agatha Christie, and I have to say I was underwhelmed. It was kind of a like a Sherlock Holmes story, in that you are presented with a bunch of random information, then at the end some super detective comes in and says, "I have discovered that x random thing you never would have thought of or possibly even considered is the answer!" Except that at the end, they throw in an extra "and by the way, so-and-so's sister's uncle's cousin's brother's ex-wife's grandmother is a communist!!!" WTF. The basic plot is that a girl from a typist's bureau goes to a client's house and discovers a dead man. Nobody can identify the dead man (including the person who lives in the house), and also in the room with him they found four clocks that didn't belong to the person who owned the house. A few more people die along the way to solving the case.
In any case I am willing to try more of her books since she is, after all, probably the most famous mystery writer. But The Clocks was just not so exciting.
Currently reading: I, Claudius by Robert Graves. I also packed a couple more books for the weekend since out in the country there's not much to do besides read, so I may be back with more reviews Monday.