1- Those of you who have read those pages may consider:

a- skipping this posting

b- writing about them.


2- If you haven't finished them, and are feeling discouraged (the beginning is rather slow) , here is my (unorthodox?) suggestion:

Read some of those pages, skip others, keeping in mind that , at this stage, what matters is not being discouraged and not giving up on the book. Those pages are necessary to appreciating the rest of the story, but you could go back and read them later, once you had decided whether you liked / were interested in the book

I read the first six chapters this evening, and got through them pretty quickly. The beginning didn't strike me as slow; it's an engaging story.

However, I keep wondering what kind of bad stuff is going to happen. My wife read the book already, and told me that the characters went through some really nasty experiences. Considering that the protagonist is a low-status Afghan woman who will reach adulthood in the 70's, you know that some horrible events are going to occur.

Opinions vary as to the beginning, I'm glad we have an enthusiastic reader here Julian.



Well...yes. I felt so shaken by this that I would have been unable to write anything and just gave a very general heading in the "male vs female" posting.

SPOILER: I'll assume that everyone reading this has completed the first 8 chapters. If you haven't gotten through them yet, my discussion will give away what happens. I just finished chapters 1-8, and here's my initial reaction.

Thus far, the novel describes what life is like for a young woman who has low status (a bastard), but isn't destitute, in a traditional Muslim society. As a girl, her mother is hostile towards her, while she's starved for attention from her father who visits her once a week. While she's worse off than the rest of her father's family, in terms of living conditions and not going to school, her basic physical needs are being met. After her unstable mother commits suicide, she's forced to marry a much older man living in a distant city.

It's a lousy life, but it's typical for a woman in an Islamic country. Unfortunately, millions of women have lives like that. Of course, given that the story takes place in Afghanistan, things will get a lot worse for everyone in a few years.

Unlike Kite Runner, Thousand Suns is gripping right from the first page - although I was horrified at the way she was treated, I couldn't close the book.

I've read right through this book and might read it again at some point.

I usually order in an audio version of my books so I can listen to them while gardening or walking in summer.