May Book

I was a little nervous that having a real deadline (i.e. library due date) would discourage me from picking up The Kite Runner. No matter how interested I was in reading this book, the idea of a deadline threatened to leave it collecting dust on the coffee table. I picked it up and could barely put it down.

I haven't read many books in which the setting is not somewhere like the US or England. Besides The Good Earth which I had to read in high school, Love In the Time of Cholera was the first book I read and began to embrace another culture though its literature. The Kite Runner was another such book. It's a story set in Afghanistan and America. While I don't pretend to understand every nuance of Afghanistan's history and customs, the book shed some light on a people who have experienced things I can't even wrap my mind around.

It's a story about the bonds of family, friends, and those that you feel to your country. It's a story about atonement. Not the lightest of subject matter, but it's most definitely a book to put on your reading list.