Currently reading
Alex
The Glass Room
Peter the Great: His Life and World
If I Can't Have You: Susan Powell, Her Mysterious Disappearance, and the Murder of Her Children
Skin Deep
The Good Daughter
A Boy in Winter
The Tie That Binds
The Idiot (Everyman's Library, #254)
The Velvet Hours
The Bookseller of Kabul
I was slightly confused about this book as when I read the blurb I thought the book was going to be about the bookseller himself and his book shop and about how he defied the authorities to supply books to the people of Kabul but this book sways away from the blurb and concentrates more on Sultan Khan's family.I am not sure I like the way the story reads, In spring 2002 award winning journalist Asne Seiratad spent four months living with the bookseller and his family but while the story is told by Seierstad about the Khan family she does not appear in the book and I found this off putting as sometimes I felt I was reading a novel as I can’t believe that the characters especially the Afghan men would discuss or trust a western female journalist. Throughout the book I was waiting for something to happen or for conclusions to individual stories and I know this was my expectations so therefore perhaps this is the reason that I found the book lacking.
I did find the historical content of the book really interesting and felt such sadness for some of the characters especially the women who are treated so badly and have no control over their futures, I found the power fathers, husbands, brothers and sons have over their wives mothers, sisters and daughters so disturbing that I found it difficult reading as I wanted these women to triumph over these self obsessed men but that I am afraid this would not be true in the society they live in.
This is an interesting book and I think would make an excellent book club read as there is plenty to discuss here.
