skip to main |
skip to sidebar
So far I'm around 100 pages into the Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini and I really like the book. Most books I read are very girl oriented and are not nearly as powerful as this book. It's a fictional recount of a boy's childhood in Afghanistan. It almost seems like it's nonfiction though because it is in first person and is immensely descriptive but since I found it in the fiction section of the library I guess not. This book is both intense and sad because you see the happiest moments of a rich Pashtun boy named Amir's life and also the saddest. He is a boy who just wants to be loved by his well-off father whom he calls Baba. One of the most traumatizing moments of any piece of literature I've ever read happened within the last couple of chapters. Amir had just won a kite running contest and his Hazara servant/best friend Hassan had just run to get his winning kite. Amir had waited for a long time for him but then grew impatient so he went looking for him. What he did find was Hassan getting beaten by a blue-eyed well off boy and his cronies. What got to be even worse was that this same blue-eyed boy, Assef, raped Hassan because he refused to give up the kite to Assef. What was most traumatizing was that Amir was there stooped behind a wall watching. He did nothing to help his best friend. This is partly because he grew up in a society where Hazaras are looked down upon and it's not socially acceptable for him to admit that Hassan is his best friend. So far in the book Amir always is looking for attention from his father. He constantly feels unloved and almost unwanted. At one point he actually thinks to himself that Baba blames him for his mother's death. His mother died in child birth and that feeling is so severe and for him to feel responsible for the death of his mother is unthinkable. Baba also always seems to treat Amir and Hassan equally and this bothers Amir because sometimes he just wants to be noticed over Hassan. So far this book is extremely interesting, sad, and it also invokes so many more emotions. It almost feels as if you know Amir personally and he's recounting the story to you over a cup of tea.
Another Sarah Dessen book I read this summer was Lock and Key. This book was just as easy as the other read but was also completely different. A similarity between this book and The Truth About Forever was that both main characters lost a parent. The main character in this book didn't have her mother die, her mother abandoned her. A mother is supposed to have unconditional love for her child so how could she leave her?! Ruby then moves into her sister's house. She's very against the idea at first and wants to run away but then ends up making friends with her neighbor Nate. They have a kindling romance and it's a kind of a character that when she finally lands the guy, you feel like your best friend just landed the guy of her dreams. This book also has a moment where Sarah Dessen includes characters from her other book, The Truth About Forever. It's very subtle and pretty insignificant but it's still a cool experience to see an author's book have a connection to another one of her books that aren't in the same series. It's sort of like a shout out to her fans that says "Hope you enjoyed that connection, thanks for reading all my books to notice!". Bottom line is that this book was really good and really addicting. It was simple yet great.
This summer I read multiple books. One of which was The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen. It was by no means a hard read and I actually loved how quick of a read it was. The plot was very sad because one of the first things you find out about the main character is that she witnessed her father die. If I had lost a parent it would be extremely devastating, but if I had seen that parent die it would've made it 100x worse. The character, Macy, found stability in her brainiac boyfriend and SAT prep. Throughout the book you see her branching out and breaking out of her shell and it's so interesting. She has a tricky romance with a guy named Wes that you find yourself rooting on and reading more just to see what would happen between them. The plot is not that eventful or powerful but I like how it wasn't. It was not a difficult summer read, it was a fun enjoyable one. Sarah Dessen captivates the teenage girl as her audience and she fails to make it boring. It was a really great read! I would recommend it to anyone looking for an easier, enjoyable read.
