There's so much to be said on this book. I'm writing my senior paper on it, so I suppose I'll keep it short. There's no better way to get into the interesting and peculiar heart and mind of author Rudyard Kipling than to read this depiction of a richly diverse and beautiful India, a divided young Kim living in between two paths of being in a third identity, and the Lama, whose love transcends the usual roles of imperialism in British-ruled India.

I enjoyed listening to this. Part spiritual journey, part spy novel. Who will Kim be? The important adults in his life recognize his great gifts and he chooses love. I'm pretty sure, not 100%.

The Great Game vs. The Wheel.

Audiobook was definitely the way to go.

I loved this book, although that love was overlaid with deep discomfort at times. It has fascinating, complicated characters, suspense and intrigue, and paints a vivid portrait of its complicated and multifarious India. Kim's relationship with the lama is wonderful. Many of the other characters are wonderful.

On the other hand, Kipling is still clearly an imperialist. He's an imperialist who loves India and writes wise, fully human Indian characters and doesn't make the Europeans out to be superior, but at the same time believes in the essential necessity and beneficence of the British imperial project, and he writes a world in which acceptance of the empire is naturalized and accepted by his characters on a very basic level.

I read this because I needed a book that takes place 5,000 miles away from where I live for the Book Riot Read Harder Challenge and it had been sitting on my shelf for quite some time.

I am never quite sure if I like Kipling or not. There's a very interesting element of juxtaposition between east and west but I'm not always sure which side he's coming down on? There's at least a tinge of Imperialism in this tale of a young Irish orphan named Kimball O'Hara. He's raised in India with little supervision and becomes, more of less, a child of the street; feeling very much like a native but always straddling the line between Indian and "sahib".

2.5/5
When it comes to children’s stories, Rudyard Kipling is amazingly fun and creative. This is not a children’s story and it is very mediocre.

I never write reviews, but I decided to write something about this book. It is certainly the worst book I have ever read. Simply horrible. It's impossible to follow what is happening - new characters are added in the middle of a conversation without any context, and there is a thousand of them for some reason. Most of the time I didn't know who is speaking or what is supposed to be happening in general. I had to go back and re-read most of it, and it was not worth it. Add to that the most pretentious language imaginable and you get a hellish experience.

My favorite part of this book were the unique characters. Kim’s inquisitive & impetuous nature paired well with the sage lama.

I found the plot slow and at times dull. As a historic view of colonized India it may have been more interesting if I knew more about the setting. This was described as a “spy” novel but doesn’t compare to more modern books of that genre.

2021 reading goal: book published in 1901

It took me a while to realize that Kipling was using an Olde Englishe structure to represent conversations in other languages. Once I caught on, and once the story got going, I found the whole book really fun. Though there were a number of times where I lost the thread of what was happening, I just passed over it, deciding that it was a 'period/culture' thing that I wasn't going to get, at least, not without researching it.

I loved how he represented all the different cultures, and appreciated the way he interwove the Great Game with the lama's spiritual quest. Almost as if the two were a purposeful contrast. It's amazing to think of how many of the ideas that he presented were new and strange to his readers, and we now (though the words are a little different) can find them around us in any community in the US.

I really appreciated that, in the end, it was a little story of regular people. Nothing epic. I went into the book knowing nothing about it, other than memories of reading "Riki Tiki Tavey" as a kid, and seeing "The Jungle Book" (the original animated movie). So I had some concerns when the Great Game wove its way into the story, that it would take a turn away from the lama into wars. I was glad it didn't. It actually left me feeling like I had meditated.

I kept finding myself 'watching' the book, now and then imagining it as a movie, with the characters speaking Urdu with subtitles. It's a movie that I'd love to see. But there's probably not enough action for Hollywood to do it without mucking with it.

One thing that I do wonder. The particular edition that I got had a forward by some scholar. Which had spoilers. So I stopped reading it, read the book, then went back and read the forward. Seems to me that, with classic books, it's much more helpful to put a forward at the back. I guess the publishers assume that these books are being reread, rather than read for the first time.