The four of us are all white college students in the Midwest. None of us have studied the Afghani lifestyle so this book is a new experience for us. Because of the United States' involvement in Afghanistan, it is important for us to familiarize ourselves with the culture because it does affect us indirectly. Along with lack of knowledge about the Afghani culture, Melissa was interested in reading The Bookseller of Kabul because she had read book reviews that highly praised the book, as it is an international bestseller. Abby chose to read The Bookseller of Kabul because she thought the book sounded interesting. Heather wanted to read this book because she is a sociology major and is very interested in culture, gender, religion, etc. and this book does a great job of talking about all of those topics. Luke was excited to read this book because he has never read a novel written about daily life in Afganistan. We tend to have a little bias against a different culture because we are not used to it and we tend to associate people from the Middle East with the negative outcomes of radical Islam. Because we each have our own set of beliefs living in the United States, it could possibly affect how we read this book because the culture is so different from our own and it will be interesting to see how we view the culture after we have finished reading.
