A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

Another good, yet disturbing book by Khaled Hosseini (he wrote The Kite Runner, which I reviewed previously).  It made me VERY thankful to be a woman in the US.  This book follows the lives of two Afgani women whose lives eventually intersect.  The author is obviously knowledgeable when it comes to Afgani customs and the impact the Taliban had on the country.  The lack of freedom for women over there is unbelievable.  As with The Kite Runner, this book has some difficult scenes to get through, but they come together into a compelling story that is hard to put down.

For One More Day by Mitch Albom

A short, sweet book about a depressed guy who wants to kill himself, but ends up spending one last day with his deceased mother.  Odd concept, but it works in this book.  He learns about himself and his mom and is able to get his life back on track, but not fairy tale spectacular.

We had an interesting question at our book club meeting regarding a recurring line, "...every family is a ghost story."  This refers to how the dead can sit at our table long after they are gone.  The discussion went the way of most people saying that everyone has a specific person as a "ghost" in their past.  I don't know that I agreed with that so much.  I think that we all have voices that speak to us and we may put them into that "ghost" from our past category, but I don't think just one person can fill the role of that "ghost."  I think we take so much from the people in our lives and are constantly recreating  the "ghost." As we go we can choose to listen to our current "ghost" or try a different path and see what voices we can remove or add to our "ghost."  I'm not sure I really care for the term ghost either, but that's how it's presented in the book so I'll stick with it here.

Peder Victorious by O.E. Rolvaag

The sequel to Giants in the Earth.  I liked this book better than the first.  This is the story of the youngest son of the family, that settled in the Dakotas during the first book, coming of age.  The mother is still around.  She actually adds a bit of an interesting theological aspect to this book so at least I wasn't continually wishing she would die this time around.  She makes her boys' lives very difficult and the book ends with her on her way to probably ruin her son's marriage, but now I have to read the third, and last, book in the series to find out about that.