Month: August 2007

Children of Húrin, The

Tje Children of Húrin[rating:4/5]

I was first exposed to Tolkien a few gabazillion years ago, in fifth grade, when my teacher decided to read “The Hobbit” to our class – a work which we quickly devoured with gusto. That, of course, lead her to read the Lord of the Rings (many of us purchased our own copies) which, in turn, lead to the life-long admiration and fascination with anything Tolkien. Nearly four decades later (ugh!), The Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit remain my uncontested favorite books of all time – I’ve read them at least ten times (and each time still find something new in them).

Even so, I’ve found some of Tolkien’s other books to be quite academic (with regard to both language and construction) and, to be quite honest, rather dry. That does not; however, make me disdain them; rather, they are simply less enjoyable to read. Many of these have been compiled, posthumously, from the author’s obviously extensive notes and drafts that he compiled during his lifetime and, when reassembled into a narrative form remain rather pedantic; “The Children of Húrin” is yet another example.

While the story is a tragic one – in fact, it may be may be one of Tolkien’s darkest tales, it also shows the genius of the author as he created his epic tales of Middle Earth. The problem with that; however, is that like so many of his other stories (e.g., The Silmarillion), this tome is filled with an extraordinary number of genealogies compounded by the fact that many of the characters (especially the main ones) are continually changing their names – not dissimilar to that which occurs in the Bible. At times, so much effort must be made to identify the key figures, that reading becomes a real chore.

In many ways, reading this book seems somewhat analogous to examining the rough drafts of an exhaustive composition by a masterful composer; the working versions of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony (not my personal favorite) actually sounds laughable prior to the final polished opus. Audiences were not meant to savor anything but the composer’s finished work: the same seems to apply to many of Tolkien’s pre-Hobbit Middle Earth stories.

All in all, I would have to recommend this book to serious Tolkien fans, but only after they have developed a mature grasp of his true masterpiece – Lord of the Rings.

Kite Runner, The

The Kite Runner[rating:5/5]

Has it really been that long since I’ve read a book? Apparently so – just too many other things going on (almost none of which have been “fun”). Anyway, I just finished Kite Runner a few days ago and am finally getting around to writing a review of it; here it is:

Without question, this is a fabulous book; in fact, it is one of the most beautifully written that I’ve had the pleasure of reading in a very long time. Not only is the story extremely well crafted and the characters extraordinarily human, but the author, Mr. Hosseini, has an astonishing gift to tell a story in which each personality is fully exposed – the good, along with the bad. His work is so masterful, that one quickly becomes deeply immersed with key figures to an extent where their emotional tenor is almost felt as if they were your own. Considering that this story evolves around a boy from Afghanistan who later emigrates to the United States – a background that is most certainly foreign (no pun indented) to that of most readers (including myself) – Mr. Hosseini has been able to delve into the human psyche that transcends cultural boundaries.

One thing that I found to be particularly fascinating is the author himself comes from a background as a non-native English speaker, and yet reaches a level of expressiveness through his words that transcend even the most astute authors in a manner that makes his prose not only live, but conveys meaning through a richness that is uncommonly good.

Of course, not all that occurs in the Kite Runner is good; not by any means. In fact, some of it is rather horrifying and evil but, for the sake of spoiling the story for others, I will not go into those details here. Furthermore, the story takes many surprising and unexpected twists (I confess, I had no idea what the story was about prior to reading it), but that only adds to the effectiveness of the plot.