This Week I are mostly reading (contd)

chris jericho - a lions tale

I finished "We Need To Talk About Kevin" by Lionel Shriver.

It took me an absolute age. The first 200 pages are a struggle, I kept putting it off and reading graphic novels instead. Kevin's mother is a self-important shrew - but as the book develops and Kevin becomes older, it starts to get more interesting/disturbing and you're up until 2am trying to finish it.

That said, I wouldn't necessarily recommend it. I can imagine it having more of an impact when it was published in 2003. Still, there's some interesting questions here based on nature vs. nurture so I can see why it seems to be so popular with book clubs.

half way thru Les Miz - Victor Hugo

I have seen musical a couple of times and the movie with Liam Neeson, so I know the story, but the book has been on my shelf for years and I have never read it.

Its Brilliant - which is my folks still read it a couple of hundred years later

The Kite Runner was one of my all time favourite books and expectations were high for A Thousand Splendid Suns - too high unfortunately. As one would expect, the story is joyful in parts, and heart wrenchingly sad in others. The plight of the women in the novel is truly awful and the story is depressingly tragic. It gives the reader an interesting insight in to life in Afghanistan during such troubled times. At times the story is compelling and there is no denying Hosseini's impressive writing abilities.

I found however that the book became tedious after a while as it was very slow moving. As the chapters passed I was losing interest and it took considerable effort to finish reading it. At times the descriptions of the people and countryside are written beautifully but other times they feel very drawn out, with Hosseini dedicating paragraphs to describing characters or background stories that have very little relevance to the story. It's hard not to empathise with the two main characters, Laila and Mariam, who suffer from so much cruelty and oppression. However, I found myself much less absorbed in them compared to Amir and Hassan in TKR. I realise that, from a male perspective my review is more subjective, and I could understand how female readers might take more from the novel. The fact that there is very little light-heartedness in the story and no real sense of adventure, takes from the book. It was a thoroughly depressing read.

The story is written, for the most part, from the perspective of the two main characters with chapters alternating between Laila and Mariam. This I found unnecessary and confusing, which added to my disappointment. Sometimes it was hard to remember who was who. The book for me was always going to be compared to the Kite Runner. Maybe I expected too much. Educational, yes, enjoyable, not really. 4 out of 10.

Just started reading Quirkology by Richard Wiseman - a book about quirky scientific experiments in psychology. Funny and interesting so far.

Finished Paddy Clarke, I liked it, although I found it ended quite abruptly.

Next: Animal Farm -George Orwell

Just finished reading "The shadow of the wind" by Carlos Zafon, a very entertaing read with excellent character development. Next up is a toss up between a science read ("pale blue dot" by C Sagan) and general fiction ("My Sisters Keeper" Jodi Picoult). I'll decide at the bookshop