Bookworming

Yesterday I took time out from The Mists of Avalon and read Kabul Beauty School (which I kept embarrassing myself at the library by calling "The Kabul Beauty Shop"). Some books, and not always the ones you love, seem to get inside your skin and become part of you from then on. The KBS is one of those, and the lingering images from it promise to be disturbing far into the future. So was Kite Runner, which is the reason I quit reading it near the beginning.

Books that don't matter, such as horror (aux Stephen King, Thomas Harris, etc.) and most ghost stories and the like, don't affect me this way, because every word has the author's style which fails to open up the empathetic door into my brain. The KBS is real, written in the author's real, slap-dash, very mod conversational tone, and it gets to you. Well, it would get to you, even if the author's style were different, because it's true. One of the most poignant images is that of the little cow; you'd think there were enough human images to grieve or shiver over, but no, she had to throw in the little cow.