Friday, October 26, 2007

The Kite Runner- Or How i learned to stop crying and hate the Oprah


Oprah needs to stop recommending books. For real. Quit. You can hold the freaking world in your hands, make every single chick in the world do what you say, but STOP TELLING PEOPLE WHAT GOOD BOOKS ARE!

She recommended the Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, and suddenly, you were an ass clown if you hadn’t read it. ‘What are you, dumb? You haven’t read the Kite Runner?!?!?! It’s the greatest book of all time, Oprah said so!”

“Read this book. It’ll change your life.” Yeah, change your life by making you want to cut your wrists.

I’ve tried to read this hunk of dog poopies 5 times. I would get 15 pages in, yawn, put it back on the shelf.

But this last time, I decided I was going to just get through it. Maybe it’s slow. Maybe I don’t know enough or care enough about Afghanistan to get into, but I will learn some things. Maybe I’m just being lame, wanting something entertaining instead of a cut your balls off slow mess of a start.

I had a bunch of free time at work, so I sat down and just powered through it. Man, what a fucking downer this piece of shit is!

After I finally broke through the stranglehold that was the first 15 pages, I figured out the entire book. Before it happened. I predicted every fucking twist, every plot device, every single possible thing that would go down.

SPOILERS ewwww ahhhhh (I hate when web shits do this warning but anyway)

I figured this author guy was going to have to try to right the wrongs by coming back to Afghanistan to find out that his buddy was dead, on page two.

I knew Hassan was Baba’s kid, that was so freaking obvious, it made me pissed off that they tried to make it the BIG reveal at page 300.

I knew that the Hassan kid was going to get raped. How? I just had a feeling. My feeling was right again.

And I knew that the author was going to have to adopt Hassan’s kid. And when they said that they were going to look for a guy in sunglasses to get Hassan’s kid, I knew that guy had to be the guy who raped Hassan and was raping Hassan’s kid now. And I knew the kid was going to try to commit suicide.

END SPOILERS (God I hate that Spoiler shit!)

So what if it was predictable? It’s still a good book right?

Hardly. It felt manipulative and super melancholy on purpose. I understand the world sucks and Afghanistan and its people went through a ton of unnecessary hardships and pain. But really, do you have to punch me in the face with it?

Did I like it? Not really. I don’t like feeling sad for no reason and guilty for living in the US. It’s not that I want a super happy book either. I’ve read ton of sad books that didn’t piss me off after I read them.

Everyone just raves over this book, but it feels like a first time writer sat down, figured out what plot twists would have people crapping their pants over, killed the shit out of every plot point and made it so that you HAD to feel sad. LAME.

Fuck you Oprah and your stupid book club.