I had such grand visions of my summer reading this year. I was going to read a Shakespearean play each week, delve into new series, expand my repertoire of world classics, revisit some Brit Lit I hadn’t perused since college, etc, etc. Well, needless to say, I didn’t quite get through the stacks I made for myself, but I do have a few worthy reads on which to comment.
First new love…The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns both by Khaled Hosseini. I’ll be honest I had avoided these titles because they were New York Times best sellers. I’ve had great disdain for The Times ever since they made a separate category for Children’s Literature just because J.K. Rowling was dominating the main list. So what if the vast majority of Americans are fascinated with Mr. Potter? He is pretty fantastic, but I digress. The Kite Runner and Splendid Suns both deal with coming age stories set in war torn (or tearing) Afghanistan. Kite Runner focuses on a young man’s journey, Splendid Suns on two female characters. While both storylines are largely fictional, there are nuggets of truth throughout. I literally could not put either book down and breezed through them in less than a week’s time. In a culture climate of misunderstanding regarding terrorism and Muslims, I’ll admit I was ready to chalk any Middle Eastern society up to Al Quaeda, Taliban-loving creeps. These books, though fictional, gave me better insight into the struggles facing some of these nations who are being destroyed by warring factions. At the heart of each novel are stories about human trials and suffering with which any of us could relate.
The second series I’ve taken a liking to is much more light hearted. A friend of the family introduced me to the Amelia Peabody series by writer Elizabeth Peters. Peters is a pseudonym for Barbara Mertz, an Illinois native who holds a PhD in Egyptology from the University of Chicago. She has written some 20 books under Elizabeth Peters all focusing on murder mysteries set in Egypt. The main character, Amelia Peabody, is a British lady who discovers a love for archeology and a certain archeologist in the first story, Crocodile on the Sandbank, published in 1975. Subsequent titles follows Amelia’s escapades throughout Egypt and surrounding areas solving mysteries with her husband and son. I’ve read the first four books of the series so far and am pleased to have found an American author who writes like she’s British! Even though the main cast of characters repeats itself in each story, supporting roles introduce new faces and each story has new secrets to flesh out. At this point I’d have to call it a cross somewhere between Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie. I find Amelia’s dry sense of humor, paired with her volatile, passionate husband, Emerson, to be engaging and entertaining.
Finally, I’ve just recently been introduced to author Jasper Fforde. He’s a Welsh author with two series I’ve come across. The first series features a character called Thursday Next who works for an agency called Jurisfiction which explores anomalies in the BookWorld. Basically she’s a special forces agent who helps to keep plots, characters, and literary devices in their places so that the Outlanders remain blissfully unaware that a “real” world exists within and between the pages of it’s beloved stories. I’m thoroughly fascinated with Fforde’s style and wit. Having a lit degree and working as an English teacher it’s rare that I find something truly new as far as storytelling goes. This guy’s got talent in that regard. His other series explores the underworld of Nursery Crime and features a main character, Detective Jack Sprat, who appears to do for nursery rhymes and fairy tales what Thursday Next is doing for the larger whole of literature. Haven’t started that series yet but I have the first book, The Fourth Bear sitting here waiting for me when I finish with Thursday.
