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The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Reviewed on: 26 November 2009

Oh wow. Where do I start with this. Should I just go straight ahead and tell you that this is the best book I’ve read since Enid Blyton’s The Faraway Tree? Or describe to you what this book is about first? Or maybe I should tell you how much I cried reading this that my eyes were swollen like a bullfrog’s the next day? How do I start telling you about this wonderful collection of processed papyrus?

Okay. Deep breath. Here goes.

I was in India when I bought this book. Before that I had already heard so much about it plus was tempted to watch the movie but somehow never did anything about it. Maybe it was the overwhelming hype about both book and movie that scared me away but now I only regret not having read it earlier.

So The Kite Runner is the first novel by Khaled Hosseini. And what a brilliant first try this is. This book is proof that you don’t always have to suck at your first try at something. It’s a story about 2 boys of different social statuses who grow up together in Kabul. The first time I ever read something about Kabul was when I studied literature in secondary school and one of the short stories I had to read was Tagore’s The Man From Kabul. Then, the Kabul I had painted in my mind was dusty, lonely and brown. The Kabul Khaled Hosseini writes about is also pretty much the same but with a lot of soul, like an animation brought to life.

Amir and Hassan are best friends, in a way. We all remember how it’s like when we were kids, having that less rich friend, who’s less smart, less well dressed. This friend is your closest friend but somehow you pull dirty tricks on him and say cruel things. You feel guilty afterwards and can’t really explain why you do it but you get over it and do it again the next time. This is Amir and Hassan.

Something bad happens to servant child Hassan when rich Amir betrays him and they lose their friendship. The Taliban come into power soon after and Amir and his Baba are forced to flee their comforts to take refuge in the U.S. Hereon they start anew as immigrants struggling to build a life. Amir learns more about his father whom he worships despite their complex relationship and at the same time living with the guilt of his betrayal to his best friend.

The characters in this book are simple people like you and I. But it is their complex emotions and reasons behind the things they do that make them so incredibly real, like you and I. I noticed I used the word “complex” twice in the past 3 sentences but this is what The Kite Runner is: a beautifully written book about the relationships we have and how we justify our actions with so much complexity. There are no answers in this book on why we do what we do. It merely asks us the question, are we willing to do what it takes to correct our past mistakes?

This book was released 6 years ago and Khaled Hosseini has written another book since, A Thousand Splendid Suns which I will review another time. But before I do that, please do get a copy of The Kite Runner, dedicate a whole weekend to reading it because you will not be able to put it down. Just make sure you have a box of tissues nearby.

Got a book to recommend? Tweet me up @julesisapen!

P.S. How odd, at the moment I’m emailing this review I get an email from Twitter telling me that Afghan Children is now following me…

Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas
Reviewed on: 26 November 2009

“To begin at the beginning.”

Is how the play starts. But not just any play, this is a play written especially for radio.

Welsh writer Dylan Thomas called Under Milk Wood “a play for voices”. It was first broadcast by the BBC in 1954 shortly after the tragic death of the writer and has been adapted for stage and later on, even made into a movie in 1972. I’ve heard the original voiced by Richard Burton and seen clips of the movie, also starring Richard Burton, but nothing can compare to reading this book by yourself.

Under Milk Wood tells the tale of the inhabitants of a fictional town in Wales called Llareggub. The characters dream of all kinds of bizarre longings and hidden passions as they sleep, and when they wake up, they move about their daily lives concealing their secrets.

Captain Cat is the first character you meet in the play who dreams of his old seafaring buddies, long dead and gone. There is Mr Pugh who dreams of killing his wife every night and Myfanwy who dreams of Mog Edwards, who dreams of her back but the farthest they would go with their love is by sending letters to each other. There’s Gossamer and Sinbad Sailors who dream of each other as well but never confessing their longings. Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard is constantly visited by her two deceased husbands in her dreams and sad Organ Morgan cries in his sleep while dreaming of music. Plus 24 other characters you will get to know whose lives are somehow all connected to each other.

As you can tell, the dreams of the characters are dark and oh so slightly twisted but oddly enough, this doesn’t make the play creepy. Under Milk Wood is like your eccentric aunt you’ve known your entire life who takes colourful pills. You never really know what’s wrong with her, nor do you bother because all she does is make quilts out of scrap materials and say offbeat things that are funny.

I remember reading the play for the first time and after the first page, couldn’t help restarting again but this time reading it out loud. It’s so beautifully written that at times you can almost feel as if you were dreaming yourself. This is the kind of book you want to read on a wet Sunday afternoon when it’s cold and you just feel like not taking a shower the entire day. Hey come to think of it, there have been many of days like these lately so the next time you go to a bookshop, make sure you look for Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thonas.

Got any books to recommend? Tweet me up @julesiapen!

Interesting facts:

1.    The town of Llareggub is actually a word spelled backwards. In some editions, it is spelt as Llaregyb to be less offensive.

2.    The Edge Of Love starring Keira Knightly, Matthew Rhys, Cillian Murphy and Sienna Miller was made based on Dylan Thomas’s life.

3.    Dylan Thomas was very proud of his alcoholism. He died just 13 days after his 39th birthday due to suspected alcohol related causes.

4.    If you ever go to the UK, make sure you make a stop at Swansea where Dylan Thomas was born to check out his house and the pub he frequented.

Animal Farm by George Orwell
Reviewed on: 17 September 2009

This book and I have a strange history. It’s quite unnecessary for me to tell it to you but I feel like I must justify why I picked Animal Farm for this month’s review. Okay I’ll make it as quick and painless as possible.

When I was 10, my mother’s best friend would take the whole lot of us to the library in Kelantan where we used to spend our school holidays. One fine day I borrowed a slim book simply because it was about animals. I managed to complete almost the entire book when I had to return it but I thought it’s okay, I’ll borrow it again the next time. Woe behold, when I went back to the library I couldn’t find the book and worst still, I forgot the title!

Years passed, books came and went and occasionally I would ponder about that book I lost about the animals. By now I had given it my own imaginary title, Rebellion.

Then when I was 17, I found it on the shelf of a bookstore! I picked it up because it had animals on the cover and upon reading the synopsis, I realized it was the book I had lost so long ago to the library in Kelantan. This time I found out the real title: Animal Farm.

You would think the saga ends here right? Nope. Because I was supposed to be studying for my SPM, my parents had to go to great lengths of not giving me allowance to deter me from buying any books to read. So when my mum walked in on me reading Animal Farm instead of my Physics text book, she promptly ripped the book in half (it’s a really slim book).

Fast forward 7 years to the present time. I meet Amrita who hears my lack of fate with Animal Farm, brings me the book the next day and I finish it, finally, in 2 hours, after 14 years.

Here’s the verdict. It’s bloody brilliant.

The first time I picked it up I was too young to understand what George Orwell was writing about. All I knew was that the farm animals had decided to rebel against the humans to form their own society and this eventually led to the pigs abusing the power as the smarter species. But behind the fairytale, Animal Farm is really a satire of the Stalin doctrine before World War II. The animals start out as communists in the beginning but like in any self respecting society or organization, the notion of capitalism = personal benefit kicked in because it is a fact, some are made cleverer than others, as in the case of the pigs in Animal Farm.

In retrospect George Orwell might’ve actually predicted the swine flu in this book he wrote in 1945. The last scene in Animal Farm is where the rest of the animals realize a resemblance between man and pig. Man becomes pig, and pig becomes man; was George Orwell psychic or am I overanalyzing too much?

If you’re not much of a reader and want to try an intelligent read without it being too heavy, then check this gem out. Admittedly, the end to my 14 year wait was slightly anti climatic but for sure, George Orwell’s Animal Farm is one of the books that deserves to be on your shelf.

P.S. I found an online used book store with a decent selection. Scoot on down here to www.booksybooks.blogspot.com

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