And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini

Five days of vacation with family equals a ton of reading time. A ton. As in three books in five days. What can I say. I like to read. So I'm spending my Sunday night writing three posts, one of which will be revealed as soon as I'm done. I'm saving the other two for the following two Sundays (but I'll spare the suspense - I read Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell and Insurgent by Veronica Roth).

I received Hosseini's first book, The Kite Runner, as a secret Santa gift a few years ago. I was glad I got it, because I knew it was a good book but I had yet to read it. I ended up really liking the book. Before the vacation, I stopped at Barnes and Noble and decided to pick up Hosseini's most recent book, And the Mountains Echoed.

The story spans a lifetime. Literally. It starts with a brother and sister in Afghanistan. They live in a very poor village. When the brother is ten and the sister is three, the father decides to give up his daughter to a wealthier family. From there, the book goes on about all the people who came in and out of the brother's and sister's lives. They are reunited at the end of their lives as their health is deteriorating (sorry for the spoiler, but it's really obvious that's the ending).

The storytelling is great. This author may be one of the best at telling stories. But the book dragged on as more characters were brought into the story. We dive into obscure characters' lives for no apparent reason. I got bored with it. I finished it only because I was curious how all these random people's lives intersected. Unfortunately, the ending didn't make up for me fighting to the end.

My rating for And The Mountains Echoed: 2 stars out of 5. Get it here!

Quick Side Story: I was in Saratoga this weekend, and the hotel I stayed had a "Read & Return" library. You could take a book and return it whenever you stayed at another one of their hotels. I love ideas like this. My only complaint is many of the books were old and not very popular. More current books in the circulation would make something like this very popular.

Question...should I make stories like these separate posts? Like when I haven't finished reading a book for a Sunday post. I have a few other musings I could write about.