The Kite Runner AKA The Promise I Couldn't Keep

I seriously thought I would stop reading tough books. Well, I'm more than halfway done through my toughest book yet. "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini.

WARNING!! SPOILER ALERT!

"The Kite Runner" is simply the best book I have ever read. It has everything a book needs. Great characters, characters that can make you believe they are real. The events and plot are heart breaking and depressing, and happy and joy full. There is action, and peace, calm, and turbulence, all combining to make Khaled Hosseini's masterpiece.

This book is told from the point of view of Amir, and follows him through his life. It begins with him as a child, with his best friend, a Hazara servant, Hassan. Hazaras are an ethnic group in Afghanistan, the group that is looked down upon. Amir is a Pashtun, the ethnic group viewed higher in Afghanistan. The book goes from the prejudice that the Hazaras of Afghanistan are forced to deal with to the outcome of Russia's invasion of the country. Amir doesn't realize how far apart in Afghan society he and Hassan are. Until one fateful winter day.

Amir enters a kite tournament as a flyer. Hassan is the best kite runner in town, and is Amir's partner.

Kite fighting is basically a sport in which you try to cut down your opponent's kite with your tar, a part of the string covered in shards of glass.

Amir wins the tournament and Hassan goes after the last kite to fall, which is a spectacular prize. Amir waits for Hassan to return with the kite. And waits. And waits, Finally he encounters Hassan in an alley blocked by a boy named Assef and Assef's two friends.

Assef is a Pashtun who believes that Hazara's should be dealt with the way Hitler dealt with the Jews. Hassan and Amir have encountered him once before. But Hassan was armed. And Amir was there now Hassan is all alone.

Amir watches as his best friend is raped in that alley. He runs away, shaken greatly by what he has just seen.

Amir is ashamed that he stood and watched Hassan get raped. He begins to avoid Hassan and eventually, Hassan and his father Ali join a Hazarajat.

Years later, Russia's leadership has become to much for Amir and his father, Baba. So they decide to flee Afghanistan to head to America.

In America, Amir marries and Baba dies of cancer. A little bit before where I am in the book, Rahim Khan, one of Amir's adult friends when he was a child, calls him and tells him he has fallen ill. When Amir arrives, Rahim Khan tells him of the Taliban's mistreatment of the people, the violence that has swept Kabul and all of Afghanistan, and most importantly, Hassan.

Hassan was killed by a Taliban right outside of Baba's old house. So was his wife. That left their child, a young boy, to a fate Hassan never wanted to see his child face. Hassan's child becomes one of the many orphans in modern day Afghanistan. And one other thing. Hassan was really Amir's brother. Rahim Khan's dying wish is that Amir go to Kabul and save his nephew from an uncertain fate. Amir decides to go, and is just realizing how much Kabul has changed from the city he grew up in. He now has to go and find his nephew, who has been taken by the Taliban.

This book manages to tell the story of Afghans and Afghanistan even though a good majority of it is set in San Francisco. It teaches you how awful things can get, and the importance of friendship and bravery. And it is the book that reminded me why I love to read.

Also, I commented on weismanww.blogspot.com.

I Have Got to Stop Reading Scary Books Before Bed!

I just realized today how many dark books I've been posting about. The first book was about the murder of ten people abandoned on an island. The second was about a boy who was going to die from a terminal disease. The third was about kids who have to kill each other in order to win food, fame, and the right to survive. The fourth was about a boy who got involved with drugs and death. And this one was about a serial killer who murders too close to home for the main character.

"The Christopher Killer" is about the daughter of the coroner of a small town of Silverton, Colorado, named Cameryn. She wants to be a pathologist, despite her grandmother's wishes, and when she is given the chance, she becomes her father's assistant. She thinks that she will love this job, but suddenly, the deaths come a little too close to home.

This book looks at the business of forsenics with two different views. One is the views of the pathologists, who are used to the procedure and look at the person they are working with as no longer human. The other view is Cameryn's. Her view is that the deceased are still very much human. At least they are when one of her friends is murdered by the infamous Christopher Killer.

Cameryn's friend is found strangled in the wilderness at the same place described by Dr. Jewel, a world renowned psychic. Dr. Jewel is famous for finding the bodies of the victims of the Christopher Killer and solving many cases with his special powers. At first, Cameryn is skeptic about Dr. Jewel, believing that he is a fraud like all other psychics. But when he points out things that he shouldn't know about Rachel, like what she was wearing when she was killed, begin to make her think Dr. Jewel is a real psychic. Soon, she begins to listen to Dr. Jewel and draws to the conclusion that the deputy of Silverton, Justin Crowley, is the killer. But then, during a private reading with Dr. Jewel, she finds out he takes DMSO (a drug often used for horses) for his stomach. She then begins to add 2 and 2 to discover who the killer really is. There are many facts that suggest who the killer is all throughout the book. And it isn't Crowley. The Christopher Killer is Dr. Jewel.

While all this murder stuff is undoubedtly the most important part of the book, there are other things in the story. For instance, when the book begins, for some reason, Cameryn's dad hates Deputy Crowley. He hates him because, as we discover later in the book, Deputy Crowley dated Cameryn's mother, who abandoned Cameryn and her father when Cameryn was young. The end of the book reveals, in a letter to Cameryn from her mother, that the death of Cameryn's sister, Jane, drove her mother into a manic state of depression. She left, not wanting to harm Cameryn, and cured herself. I believe she will meet Cameryn in the later books.

"What later books?" you may be asking. Well, this book is the first of a series, and I really want to read the rest. It was a very good book that had me on the edge of my seat the whole time. But hopefully, I won't choose such a dark book for my next post.

This book talks about science vs. psychics a lot. Cameryn's best friend, Lyric, and an odd boy named Adam, both are big Dr. Jewel fans (until they find out he killed innocent girls in order to maintain his image.) Cameryn lets psychics lead her to suspect someone else of the murders, even though she knows the tricks of many phsycics. However, even today, police officers use psychics, like in a couple episodes of "Numb3rs". Do you think this is a good choice? Tell me in your comments to this post, or answer in my poll.

Darkness, Death, and Drugs: Welcome to "Jude"

I noticed this book, sitting on the bookshelf of a certain classroom, due to its title. Jude is the German word for Jew, so I thought the book might be about the Holocaust. Boy, was I wrong.
"Jude" is a book about a boy named (any guesses?) Jude, who lives on the wrong side of the tracks. He has lived for fifteen years in West Hartford, Connecticut, a place where you can hear automatic gunfire every night, according to Jude. He has stayed with his abusive, drug dealing father, and tries to make the best of his bad situation. At the beginning of the book, Jude's father is murdered. When the police arrive, they find Jude watching T.V. When Jude gives them an alibi, they immediatly recognize it is a lie. But what does Jude have to hide?
Jude is taken to the police station where he meets the D.A. (district attorney). The D.A. also happens to be his mother. Jude goes to live with his mother and her, boyfriend Harry, in his mother's lavish house. He attends Benton Prep School. And for a while, things go great. Then, Jude meets Nick.
Nick is the most popular boy at Benton, and he has heard of Jude's life in the ghetto. He knows Jude has connections with hustlers (drug dealers) and wants hin to get him some weed. Jude thinks this will be a one time thing, but it soon turns to an every day thing.
Nick is soon selling drugs with Jude's best friend from West Hartford, R.J. R.J. is selling heroine at Benton, a drug which Nick is addicted to. One day, R.J. tells Nick to snort 3 times the regular dose, because the heroine he sells at Benton is not good. However, R.J. made a mistake. A mistake which kills Nick.
Nick's death is more harmful than it seems. Jude's mother has decided to run for mayor, and she is known for his fierce anti-drug policiy. When a boy dies of an overdose and nothing is found out, the Anna's (Anna is Jude's mother's name) opponent accuses the D.A.'s office that they are not working hard enough to find the dealer. These claims begin to take a toll o Anna's campaign.
Harry eventually discovers that Jude was Nick's connection to drugs. Jude convinces Harry that he was not selling drugs, just taking Nick to his old neighborhood. Harry tells him it doesn't metter whether Jude was the dealer or not, it has already done too much damage to Anna's campaign. There is only one thing Jude can do. And that is pretend to be the dealer.
The scheme is crazy, but it works. After Jude is caught, everyone admires Anna for her courage to prosecute her own son for the greater good of the city. I have just reached the end of the trials, and Jude was found guilty of possession with intention to distribute and crimnally negligent homicide. He has been given five years without parol. I am about half way through the book, and I love it. I really want to know what happens in the end.
This book talks not about drugs as the way we usually think of them, which is basically people getting high and acting all stupid. This book talks about the business of drugs, and how much dealing goes undetected.
This books does have a lot of tough things in it. Jude's life is never very good, the kids taking drugs, and the language make this book not for 3rd graders But the lesson is clear. Drugs never do anyone good.

The Hunger Games... Not So Good

Person reading this, if you have read "The Hunger Games", by looking at the title, you can guess that I do not think like you. There has been a lot of hype about this book, and a lot of good things said about it. But I don't think it is really that good.

First of all, it is a survival book. I cannot stand survival books. I think they are really bad (unless they are by Gary Paulsen). There is no dialogue. And there is always low action. When I read a survival book, all I remember is the fact that making clothes was the main focus.

This book has dialogue. And no clothes making. However, it gets very redundant and may I say boring at times. But it is okay.

There is definitley a lot of action. All the murder, fights, and running away sometimes leave me at the edge of my seat, couch, or bed. But other times, there is full chapters about hiding in a cave during the rain.

I love the characters in this book. They are well developed and have personalities only a great author can come up with. And if they are not developed, it is on purpouse. Peeta has many mysteries he is kepping secret.

I have not finished this book, but I basically know how it is going to end. Katniss will win. She has to. That girl should be dead already, I mean, seriously, she is alive because of luck and other people mostly. She has had to much luck to die now. Besides, I don't think people would like the book as much if she died. So I can pretty much guess she will win. So will Peeta. He has roughed it out for to long, too hard to die now. He hid in the mud for days without food. And he didn't move at all. How can you kill him? You can't. This book is predictable. That is not good.

I read on the dust jacket that the idea for this book came from the author watching reality coverage of the war in Iraq. This tells me that maybe, we think that watching Katniss die on T.V. for real would be awful, but it barely fases us to watch these people die in Iraq. What do you think about that?

Out of five stars, this book gets three. It really is good, just not great.

Terminal Illness+Ice Water+ A Shocking Secret=A Great Book!

What would you do if your friend told you that they had only six months to live? That is the question that Antsy Bonano, a wise-cracking 14-year old who's not afraid to say what he thinks, is faced with when his friend Gunnar says he is suffering from a rare disease known as Pulmonary Monoxic Systemia, and has only six months to live.

Antsy isn't quite sure what to do about this until one day, when Gunnar says he is living on borrowed time, Antsy decides to give him one month of his life. Antsy thinks it will just be something for him to give to Gunnar to show him he cares about what is going to happen. He never expects it to turn into the school wide charity project that it does.

One day, while Antsy is doing pointless things on the computer, he discovers a "Dr. Gigabyte", who is a fake online doctor. Antsy decides to look at it because he remembers that the doctor who diagnosed Gunnar is named Dr. G. In one faithful night, Antsy discovers that Gunnar has been faking his illness all along and is not going to die. There is a rally after that unfortunate discovery, and Antsy is there with his whiny Aunt Mona, his mother, father, and little sister. During the speech, his dad comes up and donates two years of his life to Gunnar. Immediatley after, he has a heart attack.

Antsy's dad barely survives the heart attack. After he does, he starts working less at his resteraunt (a place which Antsy never fails to mention how much is stresses everyone out) and appreciates the little things in life. Ansty also apprectiates these things too, realizing he almost lost his father and maybe his freind.

You might be thinking "Why does Gunnar want to die?" Is it for attention? Is it because he belives in Dr. Gigabyte? No. You see, Gunnar's dad is a gambler. An eccentric one. In fact, he gambles away his own car. And his house. Eventually, Gunnar and his sister Kjersten are forced to move to Sweden with there mother.

However serious this book seems, it is actually funny, witty book that will make you laugh at some of the things that happen. Antsy pours water on the senator's head, there is a strange boy named Raoul that is blind, but instead of using normal methods of of "seeing", he uses echolocation, just like a bat.

You don't have to, but I reccomend you read the fist book of this series, "The Schwa Was Here" by Neil Shusterman. Also, leave a comment about what would you really do if a friend told you they were suffering from a terminal disease. Would you do what Antsy does, or would you do something else? Leave a comment and let me know.

"And Then There Were None" summary

Hello, person who happens to be reading this blog. I hope you like stories about mystery, suspense, and murder (dun dun DUN!!!!!). Because that is what I'm going to talk about.
I am very close to the end of Agatha Christie's acclaimed mystery novel "And Then There Were None". This is probably the smartest written book...ever!
It is about ten complete strangers, named Edward Armstrong, Emily Brent, William Blore, Vera Claythorne, Philip Lombard, John Macarthur, Anthony Marston, Thomas and Ethel Rogers, and Lawrence Wargrave, who are invited to an infamous island called Indian Island by a mysterious Mr. U. N. Owen. Mr. Owen is not on the island when they arrive, nor does he ever appear. You see, there is know Mr. Owen at all.
All of the strangers are accused of several wicked acts, all of them murderers. One by one, these people reveal the secrets of their dark pasts. And one by one, they die.
This book was also published as "Ten Little Indians". While this might seem a strange title, it actually goes along with the story. There is a poem about ten little Indian boys, who all die at the end of the poem. Each person who falls prey to the insanity of the scheme dies according to the poem. There are also ten little china figures that look like Indians. After one of the strangers dies, a china figure disappears.
The mystery of this captivating novel is who is committing the murders? As far as I know, it was none of the people on the island. Or was it? Who is the mysterious Mr. U. N. Owen (or Mr. Unknown, as the ten people call him?), and will anyone survive? Read mystery's #1 bestseller "And Then There Were None" by Agatha Christie to find out.