A Thousand Splendid Suns

Title: A Thousand Splendid Suns

Author : Khaled Hosseini

Published: 2007

Genre: Fiction

Rating: 4 out of 5

After hearing all the great things about Khaled Hosseini, and being unable to complete 'The Kite Runner', I was able to read 'A Thousand Splendid Suns' at last. The book about love, hate, sacrifice, compromise, revenge, and the rebound has been wonderfully written.

This is a story about two women in Afghanistan, who are married to the same man. The story starts with Mariam, who is 'haraami', an illegitimate daughter to a wealthy man in Herat. Her life as a child and wanting to be with her father makes her leave her home and makes her change her mind when she sees the reality. Laila, another main character in the book, is a daughter of a professor who believes in women's empowerment. Laila has two brothers who become martyrs in the Afghan-Russian war. She is in love with her friend Tariq, who has lost a leg to a landmine. Both Mariam and Laila end up marrying Rasheed, who is a shoe merchant and believes in Taliban rules.

The book illustrates Afghanistan's struggle through the political changes and brutality of a male-dominated society. The life in the refugee camps in Pakistan, the daily struggles of Afghan people make the reader wonder about the living conditions in a war-torn country. 

Favorite lines from the book :

• Learn this now and learn it well, my daughter: Like a compass needle that points north, a man's finger always finds a woman. always. You remember that Mariam.
• A man's heart is wretched, wretched thing, Mariam. It isn't like a mother's womb. It won't bleed, it won't stretch to make room for you.
• He told her of the superstitions people had about shoes: that putting them on a bed invited death into the family, that a quarrel would follow if one put on the left shoe first. "And did you know it is supposed to be a bad omen to tie shoes together and hang them from a nail?"
• Because a society has no chance of success if its women are uneducated Laila. No chance.
• And the past held only this wisdom: that love was a damaging mistake, and its accomplice, hope, a treacherous illusion.
• This was a legitimate end to a life of illegitimate beginnings.
• "I'm sorry," Laila says, marveling at how every Afghan story is marked by death and loss and unimaginable grief. And yet, she sees, people find a way to survive, to go on.

The Kite Runner

Title: The Kite Runner Author: Khaled Hosseini Published: 2004 Genre: Fiction Rating: 5 out of 5

This is one of my all-time favorite books. I was blown away by the experience of the roller coaster ride of the book. Khaled Hosseini takes the reader to Afghanistan where the reader wanders into the beautiful landscape, the rich culture, and then the war! I did not know what to expect from the book before I read it. The story is about the friendship between a wealthy boy and the son of his father's servant. I was taken back to my childhood while reading about the carefree days of Amir and Hassan in the city of Kabul. Hassan is an expert in knowing where the kite lands is a successful kite runner for Amir. Both kids are motherless; while Amir's mother died during childbirth, Hassan's mother abandoned him and his father. Amir's father, who he calls Baba, treats the kids equally and buys both of them the same gift. One triumphant day, when Amir wins the kite tournament, Hassan encounters a tragedy while finding the kite. In the second part, Amir and his Baba escape to Peshawar, Pakistan, to escape the invasion of the Soviet Military, leaving Hassan and his father behind. The story continues with Amir makes his life, marrying, and becoming a successful novelist. The twist in the plot is when Amir receives a phone call from his father's old friend Rahim Khan, who talks about Hassan and the Taliban rule in Afghanistan. The story is very gripping and shows us how Afghanistan went from a liberal society to being ruled by religious police. How the lives changed forever for everyone who lives in fear every day. In the end, the story resembles a Bollywood movie. Either way, the story, narration, the beauty of Afghanistan, and the struggle make the book worth reading. Favorite lines from the book:

• And that's the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too.

• When you kill a man, you steal a life. You steal his wife's right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness.

• It always hurts more to have and lose than to not have in the first place.

• There are a lot of children in Afghanistan, but little childhood.

• That's how children deal with terror, they fall asleep.

The Longest Ride

Title: The Longest Ride

Author: Nicholas Sparks

Published: 2013

Genre: Fiction

Rating: 5 out of 5

What a wonderful book. Ira's feelings towards the love of his life and his wife of 73 years are very heartwarming. The story is about two couples Ira and Ruth and Luke and Sophia. 

Ira, a 91 years old driving on an icy road, loses control of his car and gets into a ditch. He hallucinates about Ruth sitting beside him and recollecting all the memories of their life from the day they met until Ruth died 9 years ago.

Luke is a cowboy who is managing a ranch with his mother after his father died. Sophia, who is a senior in Wake Forest College meets Luke in a local rodeo show.  They meet as friends and then fall in love with each other.

Both couples who have nothing in common, separated by years, yet somehow their lives converge with an expected ending.

Favorite lines from the book:

• After all, if there is a heaven, we will find each other again, for there is no heaven without you.
•  Trust people, until they give you a reason not to. And then never turn your back.
• If we’d never met, I think I would have known that my life wasn’t complete. And I would have wandered the world in search of you, even if I didn’t know who I was looking for.

The Language Of Flowers

Title: The Language Of Flowers

Author: Vanessa Diffenbaugh

Published: 2012

Genre: Fiction

Rating: 1 out of 5

The Victorian language of flowers was used to convey romantic expressions: honeysuckle for devotion, asters for patience, and red roses for love. But for Victoria Jones, it’s been more useful in communicating mistrust and solitude. After a childhood spent in the foster-care system, she is unable to get close to anybody, and her only connection to the world is through flowers and their meanings. Now eighteen and emancipated from the system with nowhere to go, Victoria realizes she has a gift for helping others through the flowers she chooses for them. But an unexpected encounter with a mysterious stranger has her questioning what’s been missing in her life. And when she’s forced to confront a painful secret from her past, she must decide whether it’s worth risking everything for a second chance at happiness. (Goodreads)

I started this book with great enthusiasm, but the book never kept me glued! Completed about half of the book, but the story failed to captivate me!

The Ultimate Happiness Prescription: 7 Keys to Joy and Enlightenment

Title: The Ultimate Happiness Prescription: 7 Keys to Joy and Enlightenment

Author: Deepak Chopra

Published: 2009

Genre: Spirituality

Rating: 4 out of 5

The Ultimate Happiness Prescription shares spiritual principles for a life based on a sense of your “true self” lying beyond the ebb and flow of daily living. Simple daily exercises lead to eliminating the root causes of unhappiness and letting a deeper level of bliss unfold. (Goodreads)

Dear John

Title: Dear John

Author: Nicholas Sparks

Published: 2006

Genre: Fiction

Rating: 3 out of 5

For once, the movie was better than the book! Though chick lit, the movie narration was good and it was very fast-paced. 

This book about an angry rebel named John Tyree, who doesn't get along with his father, dropped out of school and is enlisted in the army. He is on a vacation and meets Savannah Curtis. Both of them fall in love with each other and John promises to attend her college graduation after a year when he finishes his tour. They promise to write to each other so that they feel they are together every day.

But the incident on 9/11 makes John feel that he needs to re-enlist. John returns home to meet Savannah now married and still is his true love, which is the hardest decision of his life to meet her!

The part I really did not understand was when John meets Savannah after his dad's death, she talks to him and asks him if he can help her clean the dens! Seriously....???

Favorite lines from the book :

• I finally understood what true love meant...love meant that you care for another person's happiness more than your own, no matter how painful the choices you face might be.
• Our story has three parts: a beginning, a middle, and an end. And although this is the way all stories unfold, I still can't believe that ours didn't go on forever.
• Regrets about the journey, maybe, but not the destination.

The Lucky One

Title: The Lucky One

Author: Nicholas Sparks

Published: 2008

Genre: Fiction

Rating: 3 out of 5

This book was a chick-lit and an easy read (easy-listen rather). This was my second book by Nicholas Sparks. A very good beach read.

This book is about a soldier Logan serving in Iraq, who finds a picture of a woman. No one claims the picture and he keeps the picture and like a lucky charm, he believes that that picture saves him through tough times, or at least all the other soldiers say so. After retiring from the Armed Forces, he is determined to find the lady in the picture. He walks all the way to Hampton, NC. Logan finds that the name of the woman in the picture is Elizabeth. He gets a job at a Dog Training Center which is run by Elizabeth's grandmother. Elizabeth is a divorcee and her ex-husband Keith is a law enforcement officer. She also has a son Ben.

Long story short, Logan becomes their best friend with Ben and falls in love with Elizabeth. It iss all romance for a while and Keith finds that Elizabeth is dating Logan and tries to stop. The end was really curious, but it was definitely predictable. As with any other chick-lit by Sparks, I would read more books by him. This was an audiobook and kept me thinking during the daily commute.

Favorite lines from the book :

• He was the toast to her butter.
• Most people don’t know how to appreciate the silence. They can’t help talking.
• There is nothing like love. You should try it.
• Always stick to the story. It was when you started backtracking that people got in trouble. Interrogation 101.
• And believe it or not, she has a phone and everything. She stopped using smoking signals last year.

Stolen Innocence

Title: Stolen Innocence
Author: Elissa Wall
Published: 2008
Genre: Memoir
Rating: 3 out of 5

I love to read books about women who have overcome oppression and abuse. Last year I read three books of FLDS escapees including 'Escape' by Carolyn Jessop. It is hard to believe even in this time and age, people are brainwashed and abused in the name of religion.

Elissa writes about her polygamist family and childhood. She is ordered to marry her first cousin when she was 14 years old, whom she despises. Not knowing what comes after marriage, she is abused by her husband and gets pregnant, suffers miscarriages. She meets another FLDS member and falls in love with him. After Warren Jeffs was captured, she fights FLDS in court. All along she hopes that she would get out of FLDS, but extremely scared to do so.

It was quite interesting for me to read that her parents were converts to FLDS. I was unable to understand an educated man like him was brainwashed into FLDS! She talks about others in the community who she says knew things were wrong and why did not they take any action?

I am glad she has overcome the abuse and hard times and now leading a good life. But somehow her story left a lot of questions unanswered.

Favorite lines from the book : 

• Evil flourishes when good men do nothing. - EDMUND BURKE

The Survival Kit

Title: The Survival Kit
Author: Donna Freitas
Published: 2011
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 3 out of 5

This book was recommended by Goodreads. My first book by Donna Freitas, which was an easy read (young adult and chick-lit).

The book starts with the death of Rose's mother. On the day of her mother's funeral, Rose finds a 'survival kit' by her mom with Rose's name on it. The bag contains a picture of peonies, a crystal heart, a paper star, an iPod, crayons, and a paper kite. Rose tries to figure out the meaning of all those items left by her mother to continue in her life.

Rose has a great group of friends and one of them Krupa who is closest and does help Rose a lot to overcome the grief of losing her mother. Rose's dad turns alcoholic and self-destructive after the death of his wife. Her grandmother is very supportive and caring but rough around the edge. Rose's brother Jim is in college. Rose also has a neighbor who is a senior in the same high school and is a hockey player and a gardener, who has lost his dad to cancer too.

The high school life, dealing with grief, peer pressure, and trying to move forward for Rose was pretty difficult. As she tries to find the meaning behind every item in the survival kit, she finds happiness and clues to look forward to more things in life and let go of her sorrow.

The book was definitely a good read for young adults and not as much for a grown-up. Rose's rollercoaster ride to overcome the death of her mother is written very well.

Favorite lines from the book :

• Why is it that when we lose something big, we begin to lose everything else along with it? 
• The girl I am now, this girl--she survived. I just needed a little help getting here.

Unaccustomed Earth

Title: Unaccustomed Earth
Author: Jhumpa Lahiri
Published: 2009

Genre: Fiction
Rating: 4 out of 5

After reading 'The Namesake', I was pretty impressed by Lahiri's writing. So took up 'Unaccustomed Earth', which is a collection of short stories. Loved all the stories, though some could have been less draggy.

Unaccustomed Earth: This story is about a young mother Ruma in a new city. After the death of her mother, her father visits her for the first time. Ruma has never lived her with father alone and has never connected to him. Her father takes care of her son and tends to the garden in the backyard while keeping his friendship with another woman a secret. The father-daughter-grandkid relationship and how Ruma overcomes the unknown fear of living with her father has been written brilliantly.

Hell-Heaven: This is about a housewife and an acquaintance Pranab whom she falls in love with. He marries an American and the Bengali community is upset about him not keeping in touch with any of the old friends, which they blame on his American wife. All the friends are invited to Pranab's house for Thanksgiving after 20 years. The twists and turns after the gathering are interesting.

A Choice of Accommodations: This is about a couple who have planned a romantic getaway when they attend a friend's wedding and it takes a dark turn.

I did not quite understand this story, except for the ups and downs in a marriage that everyone faces. I didn't get what the author was trying to say!

Only Goodness: This is about a woman who tries to give a perfect life to her brother who is an alcoholic while dealing with her parents and their cultural differences.

Nobody's Business: Sangeeta is in love with Farouk and her roommate says that Farouk is cheating on her after a woman calls up home and asks if Sangeeta and Farouk are cousins. The story went on and on without any conclusion.
 
Hema and Kaushik: A three-story linked with two main characters named Hema and Kaushik. The story intensely deals with life, death, love, and fate. It is a very well-written story about two families and how one deals with death and loss. The way this story ended was totally unexpected and left me in disbelief.

Overall, the book was good and I enjoyed reading it. I like the intricacy of relationships, emotions and cultural differences are presented.

Favorite lines from the book :

• Megan laughed at such moments, wiping off their hands and faces, convinced that her children could survive anything. She spent her days with people who were fighting for their lives, and could not be shaken by a scraped elbow or a hundred-degree fever.
• "I'm not planning on getting married any time soon," I told her, and she said that she wished she could say the same for dying.
• Even my memories of my mother had begun to break apart in the three and half years since her death, the thousands of days I had spent with her reduced to a handful of stock scenes. I was lucky, compared to Rupa and Piu, having had my mother for as long as I did.
• I had never traveled alone before and I discovered that I liked it. No one in the world knew where I was, no one had the ability to reach me. It was like being dead, my escape allowing me to taste that tremendous power my mother possessed forever.