If this is your introduction to Bookcrossing, welcome. Please make as few or as many comments about the book as you wish. The book is now yours to do with as you choose. Keep it, pass it on, but please leave the label, so it can keep in touch with us. If you would like to know what happens to the book after you have passed it on, then do join - it's free, private and it's fun!
And if you do choose to join, I hope you'll consider using me gingergeoff, as your referring member.

Taking us from Afghanistan in the final days of the monarchy to the present, The Kite Runner is the unforgettable and beautifully told story of the friendship between two boys growing up in Kabul. Raised in the same household and sharing the same wet nurse, Amir and Hassan grow up in different worlds: Amir is the son of a prominent and wealthy man, while Hassan, the son of Amir's father's servant, is a Hazara -- a shunned ethnic minority. Their intertwined lives, and their fates, reflect the eventual tragedy of the world around them. When Amir and his father flee the country for a new life in California, Amir thinks that he has escaped his past. And yet he cannot leave the memory of Hassan behind him.

The Kite Runner is a novel about friendship and betrayal, and about the price of loyalty. It is about the bonds between fathers and sons, and the power of fathers over sons -- their love, their sacrifices, and their lies. Written against a backdrop of history that has not been told in fiction before, The Kite Runner describes the rich culture and beauty of a land in the process of being destroyed. But through the devastation, Khaled Hosseini offers hope: through the novel's faith in the power of reading and storytelling, and in the possibilities he shows us for redemption.

This was a fantastic book. I wasn't sure if I would like it and I only really picked it up because I recognised the title as it has recently been made into a film.

The story is heartbeaking at times and wonderful at others. I would recommend this to anyone and I am now on the look out for more from the same author.

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

Sent to Jalna as winner of the BCUK Sweepstake.

Or, as it turns out, as the decoy "winner", Gingergeoff being the real winner! ("Always the bridesmaid, never the bride" springs to mind as this is the second time I have been the decoy in a BC sweepstake!)

I, too, am not sure if I will like this book: I tend to shy away from Book Prize winners and hugely lauded books and a books set in Afghanistan wouldn't normally appeal. As it's part of the sweepstake, I am probably not "obgligated" to read it, however, I will add it to Mt TBR and give it a fair go in due course.

Well I reached a happy compromise with this book. I was really sure that it was going to be one I would not be able to finish, but I then had the opportunity to download an abridged reading of it. Very often can I can listen to a reading where I would never manage to read the book myself. Certainly this is not a book I would have chosen and I wouldn't have downloaded it, but for having been given this book.

Having said all that, I did find the story more appealing than I expected it would be. At times it is touching, at times very harrowing and all the way through really provokes thought.

Yet again, BookCrossing has introduced me to a new experience and that has got to be a good thing, so thank you Geoff. I will release the book soon.

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

I will take it to the meet-up in the Sun Lounge Café and if it is not claimed there it will be wild released somewhere in the vicinity.