Khaled Hosseini's Kite Runner

Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner
Begin: 06/19/07
End: 06/26/07
Quality: Four out of Ten.
Reason: Unread. Recomendation.
Genre: Fiction.
Original Language: English.
Date of Publication: 2003
Fog Index: 7.1/88% are harder.
Flesch Index: 73.7/88% are harder.
Flesch-Kincaid Index: 5.5/86% are harder.
Complex Words: 7/88% have more.
Number: First.
Synopsis: Well, it starts off as the story of two boyhood friends in Kabul and then follows Amir's life as he travels to America and makes a life for himself before he is pulled back into his past life in Afghanistain.
Thoughts: Well, I started off really liking it. It was really sweet and poigant story of two boys growing up in Kabul but then Amir did something which so completly disgusted and enraged me, that I ended up hating him. I don't want to give it away but I found him to be quite detestable. I finished the book. It was okay. I thought that the begining was quite magical but that my hatred of Amir never really let me enjoy the rest of the book. Plus, I thought some of it was quite obvious and cliched. And to further prove this point..."A creative writing teacher at San Jose State used to say about cliche: "avoid them like the plague." Then he'd laugh at his own joke. The class laughed with him, but I always thought cliches got a bum rap. Because, often, they're dead on. But the aprness of the cliched saying is overshadowed by the nature of the saying as a cliche."

David Eddings' The Belgariad

David Eddings' The Belgariad
Begin: 06/13/07
End: 06/18/07
Quality: Ten out of Ten
Reason: Comfort Reading.
Genre: Fiction. Fantasy.
Original Language: English.
Date of Publication: 1982
Fog Index: 7.8/87% are harder.
Flesch Index: 73.4/87% are harder.
Flesch-Kincaid Index: 5.8/88% are harder.
Complex Words: 8/82% have more.
Number: Countless.
Synopsis: It's your basic fantasy story. Garion is a farm boy living with his Aunt Pol. They leave in a hurry and get caught up in a magical adventure to reclaim the Orb of Aldur and save the west from Torak.
Thoughts: I was feeling kinda low so so I decided to re-read this series. I love it. I am a little embarrased as it is not exactly literature. It's pretty cheesey and follows the general pattern of fanstay novels. The thing is that I read this story when I was in sixth grade for the first time and constantly come back to it. I know this characters. I love this characters. They are my friends, old old friends. And one cannot live on Shakespeare alone, nor on Morrison alone. Plus, I haven't really been reading that much lately so I figured I needed something light.

William J. Mann's Kate: The Woman who was Hepburn

William J. Mann’s Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn.
Begin: 06/01/07
End: 06/07/07
Quality: Nine out of Ten
Reason: It’s Kate!
Genre: Biography. Cinema.
Original Language: English.
Date of Publication: 10/2006
Fog Index:.N/A
Flesch Index: N/A
Flesch-Kincaid Index: N/A
Complex Words: N/A
Number: First
Synopsis: This is basically just the newest biography of Hepburn. This was goes into very explicit detail over her sexuality and the way in which she shaped her own image.
Thoughts: Damn. It was good. It was also a little disheartening. He dispelled more than a few myths about this woman that I love so very much. I always liked the idea of her and Spencer Tracey’s love affair. It was so romantic and scandalous.
I also liked that it was so very thorough. I mean, it is like a six hundred page tome and it details almost every aspect of her life. Incredible!

Jesse Archer'

Jesse Archer’s You Can Run
Begin: 05/30/07
End: 06/01/07
Quality: Nine out of Ten
Reason: It’s Jesse Archer.
Genre: Queer Studies. Travel Literature. Non-Fiction.
Original Language: English.
Date of Publication: 2007.
Fog Index:.
Flesch Index:
Flesch-Kincaid Index:
Complex Words:
Number: First
Synopsis: This book follows the wacky and hysterical adventures of the author through South America.
Thoughts: God, this was so damn funny. I would be on the bus or the train and just laughing out loud uncontrollably. I got some funny looks for this book. It was so damn amazing. Archer has some very keen observations about so many facets of not only American life but also life in south America as well as about gay men. This book was really amazing.



“As a teacher I discover many different ways to express many different things, and yet in the puzzling language of the heart there is so much incapable of communicating, so many elusive, ineluctable feelings you can’t pin down with so inadequate a function as speech, and instead they are articulated through unforgettably bizarre fucking behavior.” (149)