A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

A Thousand Splendid Suns is a story that is about family, friendship, and the salvation to be found in love. This book takes place in Afghanistan during the invasion of the Russians, then the Taliban, and finally of the U.S. Throughout this book, a major theme is the mistreatment of women in Afghanistan.

First of all, women are not allowed to choose their husbands and cannot refuse if a man asks to marry them. Women also have very few rights, especially under the Taliban. Women are not allowed to be outside of their house without a man at any time. A hisband may also force his wife to wear a burka, which covers literally the entire body except for the eyes.

My reaction to this book is that it is horrible what they do to women in that country. To think that this is based on real events is very scary. Overall this is a very moving story.

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

One of the books I read over the summer was Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. I really enjoyed this book. When I began reading the book, I got very frustrated at first. It seemed that all of the characters were idiotic and the book made no sense at all. After a few chapters, I began recognizing the humor behind the absurd way of how the military is presented.

I believe that this book is essentially an anti-war novel. This idea is presented in a humerous way. For example, in the militery, whatever is on paperwork is what all soldiers are to believe and trust and not question. In the book, a report after an airplane crash shows that Doc Deeneka is dead. But, he is still alive. So even though he is still walking around and talking to people, they ignore him because they are supposed to believe he is dead. Also, the high-ranked officials in the military don't really care about their men in this book, they just try to do things to look better in front of the generals so that they can achieve a higher rank.

Overall, this book is a very funny mockery of war that has an underlying theme of anti-war.