Reading...Douglas, Maeve, Khaleed, Diane (...)

I have this habit of stretching myself thin in everything that I do, including reading! I had to do less of the net, moreso, less of Facebook and get back to living! I spend so much time behind the computer in that reading a novel from Kindle, a notepad et al! is totally not in my list-of-things-to-do. So two weeks ago I walked into this bookshop and stumbled upon a small section of English reads and that's how I ended up alternating between four novels and tonnes of other self-help books.

Douglas Kennedy on "Five Days" - How long does it take to fall in love and leave your life behind? - is what will give you that mushy lovey-dovey stuff of the modern generation of middle aged personalities that'll leave you aweing all the time. You see the characters in every word and want to reach out and touch them, and join them in their dreams and hopes! It's a truly easy read that'll break your heart at the end! It's full of surprises and lots of other good things! 

An excerpt, "But the truth is, the love I felt, the love given, the love we shared ... it was nothing less than matchless. All these amazing plans. All within the realm of possibility. Because love - at its truest - allows all the impediments to fall away. You see a vision of the life you want to lead. A fulfilled life."

Who wouldn't want that?! Taken in the context of what was going on between those two characters, I swear all you can think of is that love is indeed such a beautiful thing! Get it! Read it! Then come we lament together.

Khaleed Hosseini is simply a brilliant writer, a magician with a pen. I love reading his books so far - The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns - purely because he takes you all the way to Afghanistan, a country which the very few people I know never dream of visiting. Khaleed in "And The Mountains Echoed" is unstoppable. More characters than in Douglas Kennedy's above, that'll lose you in the beginning but once you get a grip of them you just want to keep following them. It's magical how you get to figure out a part of Afghanistan in a story told on two families. I swear I loved it. He is also full of surprises! There's a mention of homosexuality albeit mildly but enough to get the reader thinking of - what if?  The reader gets a picture of Afghan before and after the Mujahideens, a description of social disparities between a family of the rich and the poor. Buy it! Read it! There'll be no lamentations.

My favourite quote from Khaleed, "They say, find a purpose in your life and live it. But, sometimes it is only after you have lived that you recognize your life had a purpose, and likely one you never had in mind."

As for Maeve Binchy (r.i.p) I'm not sure why the French love her so! Maybe because hers is always full of gossip. She reminds me of those FB groups where women gather to talk about either their lovers, side-dishes, etcetera...this one lady for instance was narrating what I'd equate to a fantasy, "My life with a millionnaire" but when you take a look at her profile you can spell out "S-U-F-F-F-E-R-E-R" even with a blind fold on. Okey, I digress as her writing can never compare to Maeve's :-)

Last night Maeve almost killed me with this phrase;

"They tell me you are an actor, Norman,' she said, (...) 
'Is it an advertisement?' (...)
'Norman's a real actor you know, Joyce,' said Sally. 'He's not just in advertisements.'
'Lots of real actors are in advertisements,' said Joyce, flustered. She had thought he might be playing a fat Italian eating a tin of beans or some funny, clowning window cleaner falling off a ladder to get to his pint of beer. She was annoyed with herself, for her efforts to put this fatso at his ease were rebounding on her in an unexpected way.'

Last in this series is "Femmes de Dictateur 2" - the Dictators' Wives by Diane Ducret. This is the bf's read. I saw there's also the part one of it, I'll need lots of grace to read it. This particular one that I'm reading covers Castro, Saddam, Milosevic; Ayatollah Khomeiny, Kim Jong-il and Bin Laden. I am reading it because it talks mostly about the wives. Never in my life would I be interested in the biographies of the personalities, I don't do biographies anyways. I guess I just wanted to know how the women in their lives coped because I imagine I'd do well as a wife of a dictator, especially if I'm the one who is pulling the strings. I totally related to Mira Markovich, Slobodan Milosevic's wife, former Yugoslavia and Serbia's president. I simply love her personality and loyalty. It's a nice read but not one to be hurried.

When I pick a book to read, I pay my hommage to the author. I admire their skills, I respect their work and when pages keep turning - and the characters, the places mentioned even though fictious become alive in your mind - and at the end of it you shelve the book because you know you are going to read it once more in future, then you know without a shadow of doubt that the author has accomplished their mission.