Book Reviews of the past

I realized I have forgotten book review on some past books I have read:


Drum Roll Please.......................this is one of my favorite books EVER. I LOVE the KITE RUNNER by Khaled Hosseni.

There is one scene that it hard for some to read, but it sets the premise of the story and explains so much of the main character's loyalties and guilts, etc. This book hit me hard because it is modern day history............and you realize that the story you are reading  is someone's life RIGHT NOW. Wow, it makes you grateful for the life you were dealt.

The Kite Runner tells the story of Amir, a young boy from the Kabul, whose closest friend is Hassan, his father's young Hazara servant. The story is set against a backdrop of tumultuous events, from the fall of Afghanistan's monarchy through the Soviet invasion, the exodus of refugees to Pakistan and the United States, and the rise of the Taliban regime.

The Kite Runner is the unforgettable, beautifully told story of the friendship between two boys growing up in Kabul. Raised in the same household and sharing the same wet nurse, Amir and Hassan nonetheless grow up in different worlds: Amir is the son of a prominent and wealthy man, while Hassan, the son of Amir's father's servant, is a Hazara, member of a shunned ethnic minority. Their intertwined lives, and their fates, reflect the eventual tragedy of the world around them. When the Soviets invade and Amir and his father flee the country for a new life in California, Amir thinks that he has escaped his past. And yet he cannot leave the memory of Hassan behind him.
The Kite Runner is a novel about friendship, betrayal, and the price of loyalty. It is about the bonds between fathers and sons, and the power of their lies.

It was also adapted to film......BUT PLEASE ONLY SEE THIS MOVIE IF YOU READ THE BOOK. There is NO WAY you can condense this book down to a 2 hour film and really understand the characters and their motives. I'm glad I saw the movie, but it sure wouldn't have hit me as hard if I only saw the movie without reading it first.

A Thousand Splendid Suns also by Khaled Hosseini

The Kite Runner was an A+++++ for me and this was an A. Still loved it. This is written about a girl this time.

A Thousand Splendid Suns is a breathtaking story set against the volatile events of Afghanistan’s last thirty years—from the Soviet invasion to the reign of the Taliban to the post-Taliban rebuilding—that puts the violence, fear, hope, and faith of this country in intimate, human terms. It is a tale of two generations of characters brought jarringly together by the tragic sweep of war, where personal lives—the struggle to survive, raise a family, find happiness—are inextricable from the history playing out around them.

Propelled by the same storytelling instinct that made The Kite Runner a beloved classic, A Thousand Splendid Suns is at once a remarkable chronicle of three decades of Afghan history and a deeply moving account of family and friendship. It is a striking, heart-wrenching novel of an unforgiving time, an unlikely friendship, and an indestructible love—a stunning accomplishment

 A Long Way Down by Nick Horby

 My brother and step-sister reccommended this book to me, I did enjoy it, but if you have a hard time with foul language DO NOT READ. There is quite a bit of cussing amongt the characters.
The story is written in the first-person narrative from the points of view of the four main characters, Martin, Maureen, Jess and JJ. These four strangers happen to meet on the roof of a high building called Topper's House in London on New Year's Eve, each with the intent of committing suicide. Their plans for death in solitude, however, are ruined when they meet. The novel recounts their misadventures as they decide to come down from the roof alive - however temporarily that may be.

The Magnifiscent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington

Not a big fan. But I felt that since I read 100 pages, I might as well finish. I'm realizing I don't care for books written before 1930. The writing is NOT MY STYLE. When things are over descriptive I just want to throw up with boredom.  I guess that is why I have never bothered with Jane Austen, I worry I won't like the Writing Style.
The novel traces the growth of the United States through the declining fortunes of three generations of the aristocratic Amberson family in an upper-scale Indianapolis neighborhood, between the end of the Civil War and the early part of the 20th century, a period of rapid industrialization and socio-economic change in America. The decline of the Ambersons is contrasted with the rising fortunes of industrial tycoons and other new-money families, which did not derive power from family names but by "doing things." As George Amberson's friend (name unspecified) says, "don't you think being things is 'rahthuh bettuh' than doing things?"
The titular family is the most prosperous and powerful in town at the turn of the century. Young George Amberson Minafer, the patriarch’s grandson, is spoiled terribly by his mother Isabel. Growing up arrogant, sure of his own worth and position and totally oblivious to the lives of others, George falls in love with Lucy Morgan, a young though sensible debutante. But there is a long history between George’s mother and Lucy’s father, of which George is unaware. As the town grows into a city, industry thrives, the Ambersons’ prestige and wealth wanes and the Morgans – thanks to Lucy’s prescient father – grow prosperous. When George sabotages his widowed mother's growing affections for Lucy's father, life as he knows it comes to an end.