Books!

My goal is to read 52 books this year. So far I've read 15, which hardly seems fair since over half of those are Charlaine Harris books. But Sookie counts, man. Sookie counts.

In fact, I didn't read a book that wasn't about vampires or parenting until last week.

There's not much to say about all of the vampire books, is there? You either like them or you don't. I happen to like them. Well, most of them. Some of them aren't so great, especially Dead and Gone which was simply atrocious. But I'm committed to the Sook and I'll read the next few and hope they keep getting better.

Same thing with the Blue Bloods series. I will keep reading them until they get so bad I can't stand them anymore. This last one was wildly uneven, but it was a million times better than the one BEFORE that, which I suspect was actually written by a robot.

I've read two (non-vampire) YA books so far. Al Capone Does My Shirts and Speak. Spoiler for the Book Club - I really liked Al Capone. Really cute and really fun to read. I just finished Speak today and I'm still processing it. It was fine but I'm not sure I liked it. At least, not yet. I still need to think about it.

The three parentings books I've read are The Happiest Toddler on the Block, Love and Logic Magic for Early Childhood, and Easy to Love, Difficult to Discipline. I'm not linking to those because they are boring and I doubt you will care. I really didn't like The Happiest Toddler on the Block, but the other two were pretty great. They both had overlapping ideas that I think will serve me well as I bumble my way through parenting an almost 2 year old.

The main reason I wanted to post was to tell you about The Kite Runner. It was FANTASTIC. Far and away my favorite book I read this year. And definitely one of my favorite books ever. We're talking top 5 favorite right here. While I was reading it, I wasn't sure if I liked it or not. The story is dark and it can be really difficult to read because it's so incredibly sad, but unlike other sad books (*cough* Little Bee *cough*), I didn't want to bleach my brain and forget all about it. I wanted to know more about Afganistan. I wanted to spend more times with the characters. I was heartbroken at some of the tragedy in the book and cried at least 3 times. The story has stuck with me and I keep going back to it. Hosseini's style is really simple and clean. He's not as much of a minimalist as say, Hemingway or McCarthy, but there's not a whole lot of flowery language here. It's straightforward and just plain GOOD. I bought it on a whim for one dollar at Half Price Books because we've had the movie in our Netflix Instant Queue for months now, just waiting to be watched. And it was BEYOND worth it. The best dollar I have spent in maybe ever. The fact that Hosseini can get a little white girl in Texas invested and empathic with a bunch of male Afghani Muslims is a testament to his writing abilities. I cannot recommend this book enough.

I've got a few books lined up that should last me through the end of March. I'm always open for suggestions. What are y'all reading?