*** In chronological order of what was read first
*** To find out what ratings mean, click on this
Book: A Thousand Splendid Suns
Author: Khaled Hosseini
Genre: Novel, Fiction
# of pages: 415
Started: May 1st, 2019
Finished: June 7th, 2019
Average pages read per week: 78.4
Average pages read per day: 11.2 pages per day
Rating: 😁
This book was really great. It took me a while to finish this book because I was quite busy writing essays and I read other books as well. I had picked it up from my high school library because it was part of a book study in ELA 30-1. I was excited to read this book because I recognized Hosseini’s name from his earlier novel, “The Kite Runner.” I liked his first book, so I expected no less from this book. The story revolves around just four to five main characters along with the political history of Afghanistan and the notorious Taliban. The main character, Mariam, is depicted in such a way that it melts even a stone-hearted person. Right from the beginning of the story, we feel compassion for Mariam because she is in the midst of verbal abuse from her mother and she has a father who is ashamed of her being conceived out of wedlock. As well as she is forced into a miserable life after she was married to a sadist male chauvinist. The author tried to show the world about the women like Mariam and Laila who were victimized in domestic violence, and that the pain they undergo for being female where male chauvinism wins all the time. There was a scene where a lady has to undergo a cesarean without anesthesia. My heart felt so unsettled because while reading that particular part I can’t even imagine the pain of all the mothers in this world who bear just to see their child’s face. It also reminded me of a part in a book called, The Color of Our Sky where Mukta, forced into prostitution, went into labor without anesthesia as well.
Book: The Handmaid’s Tale 
Author: Margaret Atwood
Genre: Novel, Speculative fiction, Science Fiction, Fantasy Fiction, Dystopian Fiction, Feminist science fiction
# of pages: 311
Started: May 1st, 2019
Finished: June 7th, 2019
Average pages read per week: 78.4
Average pages read per day: 11.2 pages per day
Rating: 😁
I started reading this book after watching the television series on Netflix and I must say it was amazing!! As well as intriguing! Most people say that the book is always better than the movie, however, I actually quite liked both, to be honest. I find books of this genre are not always understood by the teenage mind. I found this book a bit weird and off-putting at first until I started to see how easily something like this could happen in the future. How easily women could lose their rights for being able to enjoy such simple pleasures. In the movie and both the book, infertility is the big problem of the new world and the reason for many of its institutions. A dramatically lowered birth rate has forced women into becoming just breeders with no satisfaction. That being said although this idea is gruesome it was nice to see a visual as well as visual in my mind. Many people in this story pretend to be bible believers but are secretly very sexual if not perverse. Young men have very little to do so are employed by the military, or paramilitary, groups to protect the theocracy. It shows how in times of crisis a nation can abandon its democratic principles to preserve humanity in the most inhumane ways.
