I've finished The Kite Runner. Well, I won't say I love it, because it's not really my type of novel. You know, I'm a sucker for trashy, quick and mindless reads, not literaturesque, get you all serious and contemplative stuff like this one. But yes, it's undeniably a good, solid read and certainly lived up to every expectation I had had. The writer's a great storyteller, and the plot unfolded in a suitably detailed but none too draggy manner, even if it meant telling a life story worth thirty nine years. I'm glad it has a good ending too, the sort which leaves you satisfied with a sense of closure yet doesn't scream happily ever after.

So I don't have a problem with it except one thing. I find it entirely too depressing to read. Because it's not all fiction. Because it slaps you on the face and wakes you to the horrid plight of people elsewhere in our world, to the pillage and bloodshed that were taking place, and to how we have been living all too comfortably, pretending that these things don't actually exist in the ideal, warped-in-our-mind version of the real world. These are things I casually read about on the papers from time to time, and it's sad that they didn't really hit home until a book did it for me.

And that is why I insist on reading trashy pop fiction.