50 Books in a Year: 1. The Kite Runner

My husband has challenged me to read 50 books in a year. He's attempting the same challenge, and time was I would have outpaced him easily, but since I've had children my literary appetite has been somewhat lacking compared to my days as a bookaholic teenager and student.

However, now the baby days really are fast disappearing behind me and a full night's sleep is the blissful norm now, I've become quite the avid reader again, and I can feel parts of my brain that have lain dormant for the last five years waking up and feeling great relief that there is life yet. 

So I've accepted the 50 Books challenge, and wanted to blog about it, as quite frankly I struggle to keep count, and I want to remember what I thought of them. 

Number 1 is a very worthy opener; The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, although I cheated a bit with this one as I finished it in 2016 but started it in 2015. I say 'worthy' because this is one of those novels that everyone knows they ought to read but doesn't, and I count myself as 'everyone' until December 2015, when our newly founded Book Club selected this for our first joint read. 

I was apprehensive as I knew it was set in Afghanistan and involved sad things and there's a part of me that just wants to bury my head in my own little sandpit of school runs and meal planning and forget that there is a horrible world out there full of war and children who don't have enough to eat, let alone so much to eat they can afford to throw it on the floor in a strop. Nonetheless I'm far too much of a competitive perfectionist not to rise to the challenge, so I dove in.

I didn't get hooked straight away, although I know a lot of people do. It wasn't long though until I was compelled to read it whenever able. 

It's beautifully written, and so in one sense easy to read. In another though, there are some gruesome and stomach-turning events that make it almost impossible to read at points. The voice of the story is Amir, and his character is wonderfully complex, garnering sympathy and disgust from the reader at turns. 

Others would describe The Kite Runner as a very sad book, and although there are threads of deep sadness running throughout, not only in Amir's life but in the depiction of the ravages of Afghan history, I didn't shut it feeling devastated or distraught; rather there is a note of hope left ringing in your ears too. 

Since reading it I have been told by many people that A Thousand Splendid Suns by the same author is equally good if not better; and I'm interested to read that, especially as at times I struggled with the lack of female characters in The Kite Runner, and ATSS has central female characters. Hopefully that will make it onto my 50!