Splendid Food, Splendid Company, and A Thousand Splendid Suns
We only meet six times a year or so, but our book group has continued, and what once seemed a small, somewhat moribund group has gained steam. We gathered over the summer, first at Le Pain Quotidien on Melrose (a lovely spot on a very warm day! A shaded outdoor deck in a very trendy area… so très L.A.!) to discuss David B.’s Epileptic. This book is a fascinating graphic novel that takes a personal look at epilepsy viewed through the prism of a French family. It’s not a cheery book, nor a typical selection for a book group, but it definitely afforded us the opportunity to learn more about the disease and how disease/disabilities affect families. As deaf folks, this line of discussion of course hits home to an extent, and it was quite easy for us to veer off subject a bit and discuss the book in terms of our own life experiences.
We returned to the solid ground of fiction later in the summer, with our most recent gathering at a rather unusual location: the Yahoo! Center in Santa Monica (we couldn’t exactly fly to Redmond, Washington). We ate all sorts of flat foods (think fruit roll-ups, crackers, deli cheese, Pop-Tarts, and naturally, flat soda) and pondered Douglas Coupland’s Microserfs. I kind of wish one spouse of one of our members had been there– he might have had some insights for us. As it was, we dissected corporate mindlessness, peonage in today’s America, and pop culture as it relates to children of the 1970’s and 1980’s. The sad thing is, given the durability of companies such as Microsoft, I can imagine there are plenty of microserfs still dwelling in the corporate environs in Redmond. I’m sure we’ll have a personal memoir from one of them someday, reflecting on the 1980s and 1990s in corporate computing America– something like, “Confessions of a Microserf.” We didn’t see any lights on at the Yahoo! Center, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there was someone there on a Sunday. I suspect geekdom knows no bounds…
Today, we altered our usual meeting time and traveled both 45 minutes and more than 7,000 miles simultaneously, gathering at Azeen’s in Pasadena to discuss Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns. Most of the eight of us hadn’t had Afghan cuisine before, so even though we ordered our own dishes, most of us shared with each other. Afghan food is a mixture, blending Persian and Indian cuisines; our menu had familiar looking items such as sambosa, which is similar to a samosa. It’s interesting to think about how many different cultures have a similar treat– such a turnover can be found in the Cornish pastie, the Indian samosa, the Latin empanada. One of our appetizers (which a couple of us then ordered as our main dish) was mantu, which is somewhat similar to ravioli, dumplings, or potstickers.
Over appetizers and then dinner, we discussed Hosseini’s second book (his first, The Kite Runner, was a previous book the group discussed, will be a movie coming out later this year, and is one I haven’t read yet). Quite a few of us had criticisms, ranging from “the book’s writing was trite,” to “the author could have written it this way,” to “the character development could have been deeper, stronger, etc…” Yet we all agreed it was a good read overall, and quite a few of us explored what we identified as a central theme: sacrifice. Someone asked if we felt if the central plot was “a love story” or “the love story,” and we explored this avenue. I asked the female members of the group how they felt about the book from a female perspective, since the central characters were women. While we never fully plumbed the depths of this line of questioning, it did leave a few of us reconsidering what the book was about, and what it meant.
Since this is a pretty recent book, quite a few of you out there may have read it. If so, feel free to share your interpretation or thoughts about A Thousand Splendid Suns. Even though I think an in-person book group is fun, there’s nothing wrong with a virtual book club either. 
For me, the book touched on a theme that is present in a lot of works: domestic violence. Because of this, the book was rather depressing, and my first reaction when I finished the novel was, “What a depressing book!” However, in retrospect, it’s also a book about love and sacrifice. The locale is Afghanistan, which of course has been in the news quite a bit the last few years, and the author is aware of this– he introduces the reader to the history of modern Afghanistan, just a brief summary of the last 30 or so years. While this didn’t help his plot (I remarked this evening that there were times when I wasn’t sure if I was reading a novel or a history book/travelogue), I think anyone reading this book will probably emerge with a slightly better understanding of the chaos that is Afghanistan. As someone who is a political junkie and tries to keep up to date with current affairs, it’s rather sobering to realize that the Taliban, once scattered in the wake of the U.S. invasion, have regrouped and potentially could return to power in Afghanistan.
Our dinner, in an Afghani restaurant that had on its back wall a painting of the now destroyed Buddhas of Bamiyan, made me reflect on the willingness of many cultures and societies to oppress and destroy history, culture, education, and the free exchange of information. It also makes me wonder what the future holds for the Middle East, the United States, and for nations and societies everywhere. The book itself made me reflect on how willing man is to subjugate and abuse women and children, and how eager man seems to be to slaughter people. Will humanity ever be able to rise above such destructive behavior?
Still, even in the midst of these personal ponderings, I enjoyed the splendid food and splendid company. I’m looking forward to our next literary gathering later this year or early next!
No, seriously– as Bev put it, “Is the Pope Catholic?” I’ve been reading since as long as I can remember. There are five overflowing bookshelves in this place, and an additional 20 or so boxes of books in storage. Someday I’ll probably have enough inventory to open my own bookstore without needing to add additional books!