Two Books, Two Sleepless Nights

“Buy it,” Anna Banana said when she spotted A Thousand Splendid Suns on the shelf. “I couldn’t put it down,” she added.

A cursory reading of the rave reviews on the back cover (second book by Khaled Hosseini) didn't bite. I wasn’t keenly interested. I avoided books with depressing subjects. What has happened and been happening at Afghanistan is, at best, disturbing.

But I trusted Anna’s taste. By taste I mean, she likes many of the books I like and she shares the values I hold dear. Anna is a fellow believer of unlimited grace coming from everywhere, books among them. But, “couldn’t put it down”?! I have a great appetite for sleep; I catnap all the time.

In short, I bought it. 

After supper that night, I decided to read just the foreword and one chapter—like a sampler—as I am wont to do when I buy books. The rest of the pages I usually savor slowly over the next few days.

That was my undoing. After the first chapter, I rushed to the next, and the next, and the next. Suddenly, my clock said 3 AM, and I had an 8 AM class the next day! It took gargantuan will power to put it down in favor of what was left of the night.

Every bit of the rave reviews is true. The book is riveting, with excellent story-telling that weaves together characters and events in a seamless, surprising manner. Nothing is predictable. And the emotions it elicits are raw and unsettling.

I rushed to the nearest book store the day after I finished A Thousand Splendid Suns and bought myself Hosseini’s first book, Kite Runner. Only on page 104 and already, I had cried 104 buckets of tears.
Two books—worth the dark circles around one’s eyes. And I have to thank my friend Anna for my misery; I mean, ecstacy.