Common Read 2008

After considering over 26 titles nominated by University of New Haven faculty, students, and staff, the Common Read 2008 Committee chose The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. The Committee chose this critically acclaimed, international bestseller for its inspiring story. The Kite Runner is about two friends growing up in Kabul, Afghanistan. Amir is the son of a wealthy businessman, and Hassan is the son of Amir's father's servant, who is also a member of a shunned ethnic minority. Author Khaled Hosseini has recently released his second novel called A Thousand Splendid Suns to rave reviews. Dr. Hosseini, a physician specializing in Internal Medicine, was born in Afghanistan and currently resides in Northern California. The Kite Runner is so compelling that once you start reading it you will not be able to put it down.

Riverhead Books, the publisher of the Kite Runner, provides information about the book.

From the Riverhead Books website you can download or stream video of Khaled Hosseini speaking about the Kite Runner.

E-mail questions to the author for an upcoming Book Group Discussion

Podcast from the Library of Congress 2006 National Book Festival featuring Khaled Hosseini

Podcast: Khaled Hosseini reads The Kite Runner
Listen to the author reading an extract from his book.

Podcast: July 9, 2003 on WBUR. The Kite Runner

Learn about the author - Dr. Khaled Hosseini

Picture of Dr. Hosseini

Biographical information from the Author's Website

Biographical information on the Publisher's website, Riverhead Books, a division of Penguin Books.

National Public Radio, August 3, 2007. "Khaled Hosseini, Spinning Tales of a Faraway Home." Interview of the author which first aired on August 11. 2005 entitled: "An Afghan Story: Khaled Hosseini and Kite Runner."

National Public Radio, July 27, 2003. "The Kite Runner." Host Liane Hansen speaks with Khaled Hosseini.

National Public Radio, May 22, 2007. "Khaled Hosseini's Thousand Splendid Suns." The author talks about his new novel.

Podcast on KPBS Radio, June 14, 2007. "Kite Runner Author Discusses Afghan Culture in A Thousand Splendid Suns"

Podcast on August 6, 2007 on PodBean.com from Barnes & Noble "Meet the Authors" series from with Khaled Hosseini

Author entry on LibraryThing.com

Author entry in Wikipedia.com

The Kite Runner - the movie.

National Public Radio, December 27, 2007. "Kite Runner Makes Big-Screen Debut" Peter Bergen, senior fellow at the New American Foundation and author of The Osama Bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of al Qaeda's Leader, talks about the movie.

National Public Radio, October 8, 2007. "Film Roles Lead to Fear in Afghanistan"
National Public Radio, December 14, 2007. "Film Version of 'Kite Runner' Faithful to Book" by Kenneth Turan
National Public Radio, December 5, 2007. "Child Actors Spirited Out of Afghanistan"
National Public Radio, November 16, 2007, All Things Considered. "Afghan Kite Runner Actors Say They Were Misled" by Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson.
National Public Radio, October 4, 2007, All Things Considered. "Kite Runner Delayed Out of Fear for Actors" by Kim Masters.
National Public Radio, September 20, 2007. "Film of 'Kite Runner' Novel Sparks Safety Concerns"

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Afghanistan

U.S. Department of State. Background Notes on Afghanistan.
CIA - The World Factbook - Afghanistan
CountryWatch.com - Afghanistan
World History Archives - Afghanistan
National Public Radio, November 1, 2007, Talk of the Nation. "Afghans Face Uncertain Future." Guests include Khaled Hosseini, Seth Jones, Afghanistan analyst at the Rand Corporation, and Sarah Chayes, who runs a cooperative in Kandahar and wrote The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban.
National Public Radio. "Afghanistan, Five Years On" This series includes: Preserving Memory of Afghanistan's Giant Buddhas; Afghanistan Works Toward Stability; U.S. Leads Efforts to Transform Afghan Police Force; Backlogs, Shortages Hamper Afghan Courts; Afghan Colleagues Offer Critical Help in Reporting; Afghan Army Making Progress, Still Reliant on NATO; U.S. Officials Assess Afghanistan Progress; Reflections on Afghanistan Reporting; Safety, Prosperity Return to Afghan Village; Taliban Attack Afghan Road Project; In Afghanistan, NATO Troops Fight to Build a Road; Villages Hold Key in fight for Control of Afghanistan; Remembering the Bombs: Kabul Five Years Later; NATO Beats Taliban in Battle, Works to Win War; and Resurgent Taliban's Strength Runs Deep.

How to Research for More Information

UNH Online Catalog - Searching the UNH Online Catalog for books and U.S. Government Documents will be a good starting point to explore some of the major themes of the book. A subject search will be most useful under terms such as Afghanistan, human rights, poverty, friendship, immigrants, and refugees to name a few.

Databases
Databases are also good places to search for information on the various aspects of different subjects.. Searching by keyword and subject will probably yield the best results. Here are some suggestions for search terms to get you started: Khaled Hosseini, friendship, Afghanistan, etc.
The M. K. Peterson Library subscribes to a variety of subscription databases some of which are listed below. PLEASE NOTE: You will need your 16-digit UNH ID number handy in order to search many of these databases.

General and News Sources

Newspapers by ProQuest. Full text coverage with images of the Christian Science Monitor, 1988 on, Hartford Courant, 1992 on, Los Angeles Times, 1985 on, New York Times, 1999 on, Wall street Journal 1982 on, and Washington Post, 1987 on.
Lexis/Nexis Academic Universe from iCONN. A general purpose database that provides the full text of journals and newspapers from around the world. You can search for news by type of publication, (newspapers or magazines), by area of the country or the world, by topic. Medical news will be particularly helpful in finding information about public health issues and particular diseases.
Expanded Academic ASAP from iCONN. Provides access to citations and abstracts from 3,200 sources, and 2000 full text titles in both scholarly and popular journals, as well as newspapers. Subjects covered include health, education, history, science, psychology, economics, and cultural studies.
InfoTrac OneFile from iCONN. 4,200 full text titles covering a broad range of subjects. Access to 8,000 titles from general interest magazines, academic journals, business and technology publications, law journals, health care periodicals, newspapers and news services. Largely full text with some citations and abstracts.

Health, Psychology, and Social Science

Berkeley Electronic Press . Contains a vast repository of working papers and preprints, with a complete list arranged by subject.
BioMedCentral. Online journals in the sciences.
CINAHL (Cumulative Index to Nursing & Allied Health Literature). Designed to serve the needs of health care professionals.
Directory of Open Access Journals. Freely available online journals, organized by subject. Hosted at Lund University, Sweden, a co-project of SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) and Open Access Institute, Budapest. Browse by title or subject, or choose a keyword search.
Health and Wellness Resource Center from iCONN. Specialized database which concentrates on current medical news and information, including alternative medicine. Full-text coverage for many of the journals. Includes an online encyclopedia, Mosby's dictionary, directories of health providers and Associations, links to web sites and government databases.
Highwire - A Stanford University site that indexes to articles in over 350 online journals from many publishers, largely in the science and health fields, with some free full text.
Lexis/Nexis Academic Universe - Medical - Indexes and abstracts of medical literature with some full text. Includes abstracts from MEDLINE.
PsycARTICLES - A definitive source of searchable, full-text, peer-reviewed scholarly and scientific articles in psychology. The database contains more than 40,000 articles from 56 journals--45 published by the American Psychological Association (APA) and 11 from allied organizations.
PsycINFO - From the American Psychological Association (APA). The online version of Psychological Abstracts. Contains more than 2 million citations and summaries of scholarly journal articles, book chapters, books, and dissertations, all in psychology and related disciplines, dating as far back as the 1800s. Journal coverage, which spans 1887 to present, includes international material selected from nearly 2,000 periodicals in more than 25 languages.
Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection from EBSCOHost. Mostly full text of non-APA (American Psychological Association) journal literature from the 1970s on. Includes book reviews, conference proceedings and reports.
PubMed - The National Library of Medicine's PubMed database. Some full text, many more citations.
SCIRUS: for Scientific Information Only An Internet search engine designed to retrieve scientific information, directly at http://www.scirus.com/. Free to all.

Want to help?

Relief International
International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent
Doctors Without Borders
University of New Haven - Community Service Office
University of New Haven - SMILE (Students Making an Impact on their Living Environment)
Habitat for Humanity of Greater New Haven
Partners in Health
United Nation Volunteers Programme
Cross-Cultural Solutions
International Volunteer Programs Association
International Medical Volunteers Association
Idealist and Action Without Borders
World Volunteer Web
United Planet "the world's largest cultural exchange"
Serve Your World - Travel With Purpose
metasite from UC-Irvine's International Opportunities Program
World Health Organization. Donor Centre
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Comments, additions, and suggestions are welcome and can be sent to: hdobi@newhaven.edu

This page was last updated on 4 April 2008.

Common Read 2008

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