The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

Let me start out by saying The Kite Runner is my new favorite book. It has taken the place of Wicked in my top five books. I have been hearing about this book all year; it is a required text for UCF's freshmen comp classes, and many of my students have been suggesting it to me. Once I began this book, I could not put it down.

This is the story of Amir, a young boy growing up in Afghanistan before, during, and after tyranical political shifts. The Kite Runner describes Amir's transformation throughout the drastic change of his country and family. It is beautifully written, descriptive enough for you to envision your position in the story. This is a fiction novel, but at times, it feels very real. When I finished this book, I put it down and just wept. I wept for Amir, for the atonement of his sins, for his life, but then for the people who actually live/lived in this country. This is a must read for everyone!

"In his debut novel, The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini accomplishes what very few contemporary novelists are able to do. He manages to provide an educational and eye-opening account of a country's political turmoil--in this case, Afghanistan--while also developing characters whose heartbreaking struggles and emotional triumphs resonate with readers long after the last page has been turned over. And he does this on his first try.

The Kite Runner follows the story of Amir, the privileged son of a wealthy businessman in Kabul, and Hassan, the son of Amir's father's servant. As children in the relatively stable Afghanistan of the early 1970s, the boys are inseparable. They spend idyllic days running kites and telling stories of mystical places and powerful warriors until an unspeakable event changes the nature of their relationship forever, and eventually cements their bond in ways neither boy could have ever predicted. Even after Amir and his father flee to America, Amir remains haunted by his cowardly actions and disloyalty. In part, it is these demons and the sometimes impossible quest for forgiveness that bring him back to his war-torn native land after it comes under Taliban rule. ('...I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded, not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.')

Some of the plot's turns and twists may be somewhat implausible, but Hosseini has created characters that seem so real that one almost forgets that The Kite Runner is a novel and not a memoir. At a time when Afghanistan has been thrust into the forefront of America's collective consciousness ('people sipping lattes at Starbucks were talking about the battle for Kunduz'), Hosseini offers an honest, sometimes tragic, sometimes funny, but always heartfelt view of a fascinating land. Perhaps the only true flaw in this extraordinary novel is that it ends all too soon." --Gisele Toueg

Read at Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1594480001/qid=1150819756/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/104-5804579-5127935?s=books&v=glance&n=283155

Lucky by Alice Sebold

I read Sebold's book The Lovely Bones a few years ago, and really connected with her genuine writing style. Once I finished Lucky, I realized why she writes the way she does. Lucky is the true story of Alice Sebold.

Lucky starts out with the very detailed, very gruesome description of Sebold's rape when she was a freshman in college in the early 1980s. The reader is then taken on Sebold's journey through the healing, the trial, and the depiction of rape victims. This story is a very heavy story, it not light-hearted at all, yet it is very captivating. When I finished reading, I put the book down and contemplated on the way I handle things in life. Sebold's message is a message of inspiring strength. I highly recommend this book.

"When Sebold was a college freshman at Syracuse University, she was attacked and raped on the last night of school, forced onto the ground in a tunnel 'among the dead leaves and broken beer bottles.' In a ham-handed attempt to mollify her, a policeman later told her that a young woman had been murdered there and, by comparison, Sebold should consider herself lucky. That dubious 'luck' is the focus of this fiercely observed memoir about how an incident of such profound violence can change the course of one's life. Sebold launches her memoir headlong into the rape itself, laying out its visceral physical as well as mental violence, and from there spins a narrative of her life before and after the incident, weaving memories of parental alcoholism together with her post-rape addiction to heroin. In the midst of each wrenching episode, from the initial attack to the ensuing courtroom drama, Sebold's wit is as powerful as her searing candor, as she describes her emotional denial, her addiction and even the rape (her first 'real' sexual experience). She skillfully captures evocative moments, such as, during her girlhood, luring one of her family's basset hounds onto a blue silk sofa (strictly off-limits to both kids and pets) to nettle her father. Addressing rape as a larger social issue, Sebold's account reveals that there are clear emotional boundaries between those who have been victims of violence and those who have not, though the author attempts to blur these lines as much as possible to show that violence touches many more lives than solely the victim's." Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Read a few pages: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316096199/ref=pd_bxgy_img_a/104-5804579-5127935?%5Fencoding=UTF8

The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks

After reading the action-packed, technical Da Vinci Code, I decided that I needed some brain candy to ease into my summer reading. Since I have already read The Wedding, and watched the movie numerous times, I decided to read The Notebook.

If you are looking for an easy, romance novel, this is the book for you. It is a very sweet story of two lovers separated by circumstances such as war, parents, and the human body. If you have already seen the movie, don't read this expecting the movie (like I did). There are enough similarities to ruin the picture in your head, but there are planty of differences to keep you on your toes.

"In 1932, two North Carolina teenagers from opposite sides of the tracks fall in love. Spending one idyllic summer together in the small town of New Bern, Noah Calhoun and Allie Nelson do not meet again for 14 years. Noah has returned from WWII to restore the house of his dreams, having inherited a large sum of money. Allie, programmed by family and the 'caste system of the South' to marry an ambitious, prosperous man, has become engaged to powerful attorney Lon Hammond. When she reads a newspaper story about Noah's restoration project, she shows up on his porch step, re-entering his life for two days. Will Allie leave Lon for Noah? The book's slim dimensions and cliche-ridden prose will make comparisons to The Bridges of Madison County inevitable. What renders Sparks's sentimental story somewhat distinctive are two chapters, which take place in a nursing home in the '90s, that frame the central story. The first sets the stage for the reading of the eponymous notebook, while the later one takes the characters into the land beyond happily ever after, a future rarely examined in books of this nature. Early on, Noah claims that theirs may be either a tragedy or a love story, depending on the perspective. Ultimately, the judgment is up to readers, be they cynics or romantics. For the latter, this will be a weeper." Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Read a few pages on Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0446605239/sr=8-2/qid=1150817746/ref=pd_bbs_2/104-5804579-5127935?%5Fencoding=UTF8