Light & serious reading = Egypt & Afghanistan

I've been trying to trade off between lighter fare and actual literary fiction. So this week I started out with an Elizabeth Peters mystery - Serpent on the Crown - and then moved on to The Kite Runner, the rather well-known book by Khaled Hosseini. I know there was a movie at the end of 2007, but I don't remember the source of the hype before. Was it a big book club selection?

Anyway, I knew what to expect with the Peters, although really I miss having Ramses as a more interesting character. I'm not sure she knows what to do with him as a full-fledged adult. Somehow I managed to not know much about The Kite Runner, except vaguely about one of the climactic scenes. And I think that Hosseini is a doctor, like Chekhov. (Yep.) But this novel seriously wore me down. Every time you think, okay, enough tragedy, something else goes wrong. Yet I think that Hosseini managed to avoid melodrama, which is impressive. The book is famous enough that I don't really feel like I'll have anything to add to the conversation, esp not today, when I am worn out from hiking in Griffith Park and very ready to go to bed. Perhaps next time I read a book, I'll manage to blog about it when I'm more awake...