The Kite Runner- Khaled Hosseini

What is there to say about this book that hasn’t already been said? It’s an international bestseller, and I am behind the times on reading it. Very unlike me. What is like me is to shy away from a book with a subject matter like this, but I’m glad that I finally got around to this one. Despite the horrifying images in the book, the subject matter is very well written.

The Kite Runner is the story of Amir, the son of a rich man in Afghanistan, and immigrant to the United States. We follow his life as a young boy, running kites with his best friend, their servant’s son, Hassan, through his flight from Afghanistan, his life in America, and his eventual return to his home country.

This book was very upsetting but extremely good. It’s riveting, it’s stressful, and it’s moving. I only seem to be able to come up with short bursts of descriptions, which hardly do the book justice, but trust me when I say that it’s worth a read. Ultimately this was a tale of love, life, guilt, and friendship. And it absolutely forces you to think about the things you take for granted living in the United States.

In general I feel like I’m not saying enough to do justice to the book. I’m not sure anything I can say will. So let’s leave this one short and sweet: This is definitely worth a read if you’re like me and have been hesitating.

4- I’m glad I finally read this. And I’m going to read Hosseini’s next book, A Thousand Splendid Suns next. In fact, I’ve already started it.

Knit Two- Kate Jacobs

This review has spoilers from the end of The Friday Night Knitting Club, so if you don’t want to know, stop reading now.

This one was my latest audiobook, and as it turns out, I missed Georgia Walker a lot more than I thought I would.

I probably should have read Knit Two after I read Friday Night Knitting Club. But I couldn’t bring myself to, I was too annoyed with what seemed to be an unnecessary pull at the heartstrings with Georgia’s death. I’m still not entirely sure that I like the way that Kate Jacobs does things, or maybe I’ve just had misconceptions all along about what kind of writer she is. Knit Two obviously returns to the characters of the first book and Walker and Daughter, Georgia’s knitting shop. We hear how everyone has been dealing with her death, and meet everyone several years after the fact, when Dakota, the daughter of Walker and Daughter, has just returned from her first year in college.

Long story short, everyone is struggling with problems in their lives, both personal and professional, all of which are dealt with throughout the book. And I wasn’t as invested as I should have been. Overall this book was fine, but it was missing the center that Georgia brought to the first one. I don’t think I’ll be reading the next sequel, which I believe is Christmas related.

2- as usual, this audiobook was fine. nothing fantastic or horrible about it. just entertaining enough to keep my interest.

If You Were Here- Jen Lancaster

I’ll add my voice to the rest of Jen Lancaster’s fans discussing this book… I really wanted to like it. And to be fair, I think because I had extremely low expectations and thought it was going to be horrifyingly bad, I liked it more than most (which doesn’t say much). I agree with everyone else who says this should have been another memoir rather than a foray into fiction, but I’ll also add that for the most part, this WAS another memoir.

Mia and Mac are buying a new house, and it’s been a hellish ordeal for everyone. I made it through the first half to three quarters of this book by convincing myself that it was just a typical Jen Lancaster memoir, blatantly ignoring all references to Amish zombies, and pretending that Fletch had changed his name. And it did work for awhile. Mia and Mac sound VERY much like Jen and her husband Fletch, which I would imagine is intentional. I didn’t hate it, found it amusing enough (though nowhere near on par with her other books), and easily blew through the first half. Shortly thereafter is where she lost me.

Honestly, I can definitely understand the point of Jen wanting to try fiction: she can take her everyday life and make it even more exaggerated and ridiculous to comic effect. The problem is, the comic effect was lacking. Mia is nowhere near as funny as Jen, and Mac was downright horrible. And at no point did I recognize the writing in the second half as anywhere near as entertaining as Jen’s. Not to mention that the Amish zombies were more prevalent. I can’t say I understood why she thought that would be funny. In fact, I would say that was her biggest misfire for me. Despite thinking that it was ridiculous for her to so blatantly talk about her own life (Mia’s dog is named Daisy, Jen’s is Maisy, Mia’s best friend is Tracy, Jen’s is Stacy), I hung in there. Even as Mia’s book, Buggies are the New Black (as opposed to Bitter is the New Black) caused a massive eyeroll, I did my best to stick with it, because I felt I owed Jen the benefit of the doubt for her first fiction attempt.

If she tries it again, I’m not sure I’ll be able to overlook it. I hope very much that she goes back to memoirs.

2- didn’t like it overall. Jen should stick to being funny about her own life.

The Year We Left Home- Jean Thompson

Well, this one took awhile too, and with most of my recent audiobooks being a re-listen to the Hunger Games series, I haven’t had a lot to write about. Hope the next books I read will be page turners! But I guess not all books can be.

Don’t get me wrong, most of the time I don’t think a book being a slower read is a bad thing.  This one tells stories from the Erikson family, six people dealing with life in Iowa throughout the years.  It was a journey through life told in many perspectives, and reminded me of a mixture in styles from A Visit from the Goon Squad and Cutting for Stone. But unlike Goon Squad, it was chronological, and all perspectives were from the same family.

The thing is, with books like this that just talk about characters, that just have lots of chapters about people’s lives without any real overreaching theme or plot, it has to be really good for me to not lose interest. Goon Squad was more interesting in writing style than this one. Cutting for Stone was just flat out incredible. However, Cutting for Stone also had the benefit of only focusing on one character. This book skips around so much, often ending a chapter just as I’m getting interested. I wonder if just one character had been focused on, would I have liked this more? 

Just as I was getting involved in what was happening with which member of the family, that was when the chapter ended, time skips forward, and I get frustrated. It seemed like the author was constantly cutting out of the story just when things were getting interesting. Maybe that’s the whole point. But I found it slightly irritating. It’s similar to what happened with Goon Squad, so maybe I’m just not cut out for books that are more like short stories all sewn together. This one took me almost two weeks to read, and I think if it had been more of one overreaching story, I would have read it faster. Because I did like the book as I was reading it.

So, in summary, this was a good book, but not a great one. I liked it, but it wasn’t a page turner. Another three.