I am going to go ahead and open a thread for our discussion of Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns. It's a powerful book and one I do not want to forget.

The extent of the suffering and resilience of the book's two protagonists, Mariam and Laila, are fresh in my mind and I must commend Hosseini for writing a second novel with characters so real and likable and whose lives as page-turning as his first novel The Kite Runner.

Because The Kite Runner is one of my all-time favorite books and its characters almost all men, I was afraid Hosseini would overreach in writing about women. I expected disappointment. But I found my heart in my throat, nervous for these women, loving these women and unable to put this book down until I knew what happened to them. I was crestfallen when that man at the bus station turned them in, hoping they would escape and live happily ever after in Pakistan. But Hosseini is right that these women's fateful punishment by their abusive husband Rasheed was more realistic in Afghanistan today. (See the non-fiction book Kabul Beauty School.)

That said, Hosseini offered a glimpse of hope in the way of the orphanage, which is not unrealistic. In Kabul Beauty School, the women take immeasurable risks to learn a trade and earn some money. Afghan women like Laila do exist.

Which leads me to some discussion questions:

Do you think the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan will free women? (This thought crossed my mind as I felt that the women living under Russian communist control were much more free than under the Afghan-backed Taliban!)

I found this question on About.com and wondered the same thing:

When the Taliban first enter the city, Laila does not believe women will tolerate being forced out of jobs and treated with such indignity. Why do the educated women of Kabul endure such treatment? Why are the Taliban accepted?

Finally, do you think Mariam did the right thing in calling no witnesses or an attorney to defend her at her trial? This woman had much more balls than anyone, including her mother, gave her credit for IMHO. I thought it was brave and "gladiatoresque" of her.

What other scenes or passages stood out to you? Did you like this book? Why or why not?

Recently, a reader asked me if there was any truth to this American bride-selling website, Marry Our Daughter. It claimed to be a Christian fundie site that assisted “those following the Biblical tradition of arranging marriages for their Daughters.”

The site, which looked professionally made, was rife with satisfied customer testimonials and photos of 14 and 15-year-old girls. Gross.

Thankfully, it turns out that the website is a hoax, according to the New York Times and urban legend-debunker Snopes.com. Still, the site’s owner, John Ordover, got the public tongue-lashing he deserves:

But not everyone is in on the joke. The site has gotten 20 million page views in the last two weeks and now elicits around a thousand, mostly angry, emails a day. In the last few days, the site’s “publicity director” has also appeared on at least half a dozen talk radio shows around the country, including on Las Vegas (MIX-FM), Houston (KRBE-FM) and Philadelphia (WYSP-FM) and mixed it up with belligerent on-air-personalities and hostile listeners, whom he neglected to let in on the ruse.

“People get angry so fast they don’t stop to question whether its real,” says the creator of MarryOurDaughter.com, John Ordover, who masqueraded as the site’s fictional publicity director, the unlikely surnamed Roger Mandervan.

Mr. Ordover is a science-fiction editor with a prankish history and an interest in urban nudism.

Contacted through MarryOurDaughter this morning, Mr. Ordover quickly conceded the page was a parody aimed at drawing attention to inconsistencies in state marriage laws. States consider it a crime for adults to have sex with minors, but they allow kids as young as 12 to get married with parental and sometime judicial permission.

“As far as I can tell, in every state but Oregon, parents can marry off their children,” Mr. Ordover said, pointing to this Cornell University Web site which tracks the various state marriage laws. Texas has a particularly ridiculous legal discrepancy, he says. Kids as young as 14 need parental permission to get married – unless, the law says, they have already been married before.