This was a very enjoyable book. Told from the perspective of a child, it covers the author/narrator's life growing up in Iran, becoming a refugee, and living in Oklahoma, with a lot of family/cultural history weaved throughout. This was a very unique book where the author's voice was very distinctive. I enjoyed the weaving of the stories and patchwork presentation and how it tied to the imagery of the weaving of the Persian rugs and patchwork story and memories of a refugee and the telling of the stories in the 1001 Arabian Nights. I also liked how the book title came from The Lord of the Rings, surprisingly. He mentions the part where Sam sees Gandalf come back after thinking he was dead, "And Sam thinks maybe all the sad parts of the adventure will come untrue." That was a fun little discovery. Very solid and very enjoyable book. Another one I would highly recommend to really any reader of any age.
Lots of great quotes and thoughts throughout; here's a few:
"If we can just rise to the challenge of communication -- here in the parlor of your mind -- we can maybe reach across time and space and every ordinary thing to see so deep into the heart of each other that you might agree that I am like you. I am ugly and I speak funny. I am poor. My clothes are used and my food smells bad. I pick my nose. I don't know the jokes and stories you like, or the rules to the games. I don't know what anybody wants from me. But like you, I was made carefully, by a God who loved what He saw. Like you, I want a friend."
"It's a miracle that anyone would ever fall in love with someone else and -- of all the people in the world -- that person loves them back. Like if you fell off a building and landed in a pillow truck, somehow."
"Making anything assumes there's a world worth making it for."
"[H]ow many Christians do you know who give a tenth to the church?"
"It seemed so obvious that everything was already eternal. That something made all of it."
"[T]he only way to stop believing something is to deny it yourself. To hide it. To act as if it hasn't changed your life."
"Love is empty without justice. Justice is cruel without love."
"He's a God who listens as if we are his most important children, and I think He speaks to tell us so."
"[A]bove all other laws is the law of love."
"Reading is the act of listening and speaking at the same time, with someone you've never met, but love. Even if you hate them, it's a loving thing to do. You speak someone else's words to yourself, and hear them for the first time. What you're doing now is listening to me in the parlor of your mind, but also speaking to yourself, thinking about the parts of me you like or the parts that aren't funny enough. You evaluate, like Mrs. Miller says. You think and wrestle with every word."
"[W]hat you believe about the future will change how you live in the present."
