Reading Challenge 2016 #4

Yadda yadda yadda, I used Goodreads (again) to find a book for this month's challenge. We had to read a book that takes place in another country. I've been using these lists to knock books off of my to read list that fit the criteria for the challenge. So far, it has been working out for me. My friend chose this book because of a previous experience with the author, I think. I just know that I felt pressure to find a good book since he had already found his. I went to Afghanistan to re(read) a popular school book and he traveled to Italy for a dark comedy.


Afghanistan 

So few books devastate me like this one has. I haven't cried this much reading a novel since The Book Thief. It completely gutted me, forcing me to feel things that I wasn't in the mood to feel but had to because of the words I was absorbing. I had forgotten that I had read this book once before for school so I never gave it a rating on here. But after finishing the first chapter, I realized that I was in for a familiar emotional roller coaster. My heart was broken again and again. From that destruction came a sense of rebirth, similar to what Laila and Miriam go through. This is one of those novels that changes you. I'm glad I forgot that I'd read this years ago so I could experience it as I am now. But I know I have no plans to reread this in the future. I don't think my heart could handle it a third time.





Italy

How do I describe the Serpent of Venice? For those that have read Christopher Moore’s The Fool, all I have to say is Pocket is at it again. But what if you’re not familiar with this salacious treatment of the Bards works? How do I describe the comedic interplay of status, station, situation and ambition which whirls from Venice to Corsica to Genoa and back with Pocket, the Motley fool at its center? That where Pocket goes plots and counter-plots, love and betrayal, wealth and debauchery of an absurdly outrageously inventive form follow. Oh, and a ghost, there’s always a bloody ghost. I describe it with one word, entertaining.