I could have easily have given this collection 5 stars. The narrative is powerful, evocative and highly emotional, especially in the earlier stories included here. The title piece is actually my favorite, and it is cunningly put as the opening gambit in this sequence of interconnected anecdotes about a group of American infantry soldiers in the Vietnam War. Tim O'Brien claims authority of the eyewitness, uses the confessional mode, puts the focus on the human element, and combines all these to make a strong impression on my rather jaded imagination, saturated with various other written accounts, documentaries and Hollywood adaptations of the conflict. As I advaced through the text, though, I started to get annoyed with the principal voice. I still believe he tried to write an honest account of his life altering experiences at the front, but his insistent and often shrill declarations of authenticity put me in a "dost thou protest too much" mood. It's a writing technique (the unreliable narrator?) that was made too transparent in its use here, the ambiguity introduced deliberately and preemptively flagged by the author, probably in order to protect the identity of his platton colleagues or to avoid being called out for inconsistencies. To summarize: I would have liked either a non-fiction documentary approach, or a "made it all up" stance. The constant swinging between the two approaches from one story to the next served only to pull me out of the story right after a particular bit of dialogue or powerful description managed to pull me in. Also pulling me out was the habit of the author of breaking the fourth wall in order to insert his older self into almost every tale, endlessly explaining why he did this and that, and what the message is, and how we should interpret the text, as if the reader is incapable of doing it on his own, without all the metafiction. It feels like watching a movie for the first time, only with the commentary track turned on, and the director speaking over the original dialogue.

By telling stories you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself. You pin down certain truths. You make up others. You start sometimes with an incident that truly happened, like the night in the shit field, and you carry it forward by inventing what did not in fact occur but that nonetheless help to clarify and explain.

I can totally get behind the idea of the redemptive quality of stories, of putting things in perspective after the confusion of actual events, of capturing the moment and the people like the silver emulsion of photographic films, and I consider O'Brien is largely succesful in his attempt to recreate the attitudes of the young soldiers and the harsh conditions of the tropical land they
have come to conquer. In latter stories, the author insistence on posterity, on bringing the dead to life and offering them a kind of immortality through the medium gets heavy handed and the commentaries get lengthier than the actual content.

In ordinary conversation I never spoke much about the war, certainly not in detail, and yet ever since my return I had been talking about it virtually nonstop through my writing. Telling stories seemed a natural, inevitable process, like clearing the throat. Partly catharsis, partly communication, it was a way of grabbing people by the shirt and explaining exactly what had happened to me, how I'd allowed myself to get dragged into the wrong war, all the mistakes I'd made, all the terrible things I had seen and done.
or :
But this too is true: stories can save us. I'm forty-three years old, and a writer now, an even still, right here, I keep dreaming [them] alive. They're all dead. But in a story, which is a kind of dreaming, the dead sometimes smile and sit up and return to the world.
and again:
Forty-three years old, and the war occurred half a lifetime ago, and yet remembering makes it now. And sometimes remembering will lead to a story, which makes it forever. That's what stories are for. Stories are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can't remember how you got from where you were to where you are. Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story.

To be totally honest, I could probably blame some of my overtly critical attitude to the book on my own bias against the American POV insistence on their own heroism and innocence, coupled with a total lack of empathy for the people and the country they are invading. Just once, i would like to read a Vietnam war story written by the other side. The Things They Carried isn't that kind of book, despite some noise about the wrongness of the war, and the one gut wrenching account of coming face to face with one of the victims from the Viet Cong ( The Man I Killed )

The most important single sentence in the book for me, is about the average age of the platoon members: 19. I believe it is important to try to project ourselves to our own view on life and war and politics at that age, and not through the more cynical and circumspect lens of our older worldview (48 in my case). In the first stories, O'Brien comes through as more genuine, and more convincing than in the later stories included in this volume, where he lets his own older self (43) overanalyse every aspect of the narrative and tries to shoehorn them into a predefined moral or "war truth". One story in particular I read as a fanfiction for the M*A*S*H* TV series, and it is one where the opening paragraph is used as caution against its "truthfulness" ( Vietnam was full of strange stories, some improbable, some well beyond that, but the stories that will last forever are those that swirl back and forth across the border between trivia and bedlam, the mad and the mundane. This one keeps returning to me. I heard it from Rat Kiley, who swore up and down to its truth, although in the end, I'll admit, that doesn't amount to much of a warranty.). Apparently, it's also the one story that was considered good enough for a screen adaptation : Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong . It is indeed one of the most elaborate ones, featuring different characters than the usual cast of Alpha Company featured in the rest of the book: a rapid response hospital behind the lines, a young officer conspiring to bring his girlfriend over from the States, and the unexpected outcome of her emerging fascination with the jungle and with weapons of war.

I already mentioned the first ambiguity that the text is based on (unreliable narrator). The other big one is about the author's attitude towards war. He presents himself as a pacifist, aware of the "wrongness" of the cause and a very reluctant draftee in the one story set before his deployment. Rather surprisingly, after reading the whole book, the major tonality of the collection is not one of horror, but one of nostalgia, a Vietnam Blues syndrome that stops former soldiers from reintegrating in a peacefull society and drags them back in fascination to the testing grounds:
War is hell, but that's not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead.

in another place: It wasn't a war story. It was a love story. But you can't say that. All you can do is tell it one more time, patiently, adding and subtracting, making up a few things to get at the real truth. And the horrible truth that I got more than once, is that the narrator misses the war, craves the heightened awareness that your life might end at any moment and that you must live life fully in the present. His "truth" also has a flavor of pride, of having survived the worse, and of having been a member of some exclusivist club, one that people who remained at home cannot understand and appreciate:
And in the end, of course, a true war story is never about war. It's about sunlight. It's about the special way that dawn spreads out on a river when you know you must cross the river and march into the mountains and do things you are afraid to do. It's about love and memory. It's about sorrow. It's about sisters who never write back and people who never listen. .

Conclusion: A memorable journey, a very talented storyteller. One that I would recommend to my friends and probably re-read at one point in the future. But it had less of an impact than, for example, The Quiet American .

Having been born just at the beginning of the war, my memories of it are shadows of TV news stories, all Black & White, whispers of adults and talk of the Viet Kong. It is only in recent years that I have become aware of balanced viewpoints on the Vietnam conflict and see a widespread effort to understand and dialogue.

This book was fascinating in that in blending fact and fiction, O'Brien show us the true nature of war stories and gives us an inside look at what it was like to be there in 'Nam. It makes me sad to see how that war affected an entire generation. Hopefully books like this and projects like The Big Read that is happening right now will continue to bring healing and closure for those who served our country as well as those who followed their consciences and fled to Canada.

And in the end, of course, a true war story is never about war. It's about sunlight. It's about the way that dawn spreads out on a river when you know you must cross the river and march into the mountains and do things you are afraid to do. It's about love and memory. It's about sorrow. It's about sisters who never write back and people who never listen.

Veterans of wars that preceded Vietnam were known as the quiet and silent types who never revealed the private hells they suffered. Vietnam inverted that paradigm and we were given an open window into the drugs, dysfunction and destruction this conflict waged on attacker and defender alike, leading to anti war protests that shook America. This book, a compilation of vignettes of the author’s tour of duty in 1969-70, takes us into the mind and predicament of the American soldier in this hopeless war and hammers home the message from multiple directions.

The title story, sums up most of the book. It focusses on what a soldier carries with him into war, not just equipment, rations, weapons and uniforms, but germs, scars, dreams, letters, photographs and talismans. And also fear – of the night, of the tunnels hiding the enemy, of the booby trap that picks off soldiers at random. The death of a colleague leaves, guilt, loss, second-guessing, and anger.

There are shocking set pieces that create vivid imagery:
-tThe dancing girl outside her house, inside which lie all her dead relatives, killed by the US military.
-tA soldier plays with a hand-grenade mindful not to dislodge the safety pin, only to step on a land mine and be blown up into a tree.
-tThe platoon camps for the night in a field of excrement beside a flooded river. In the ensuing enemy bombardment, a soldier is drowned in the shit as that is the only cover provided.
-tAnother soldier wears his girlfriend’s nylons to around his neck to protect himself from death. Even after they break up, the good-luck-charm continues to protect him.

O’Brien obsesses over the Vietcong soldier he kills with a grenade – the image haunts him even twenty years later. When shot in the butt, he plots revenge on the colleague who saved him – why? Wounded pride? And how does one pull pranks to exact revenge on one’s mates without being court martialed for posing as the enemy?

War transforms. Mary-Ann, a 17-year-old girlfriend of one of the soldier’s, is smuggled into the camp and is consumed by Vietnam. She becomes a sniper, a killer more deadly than the Green Berets she defects over to. Other relationships also break up, as war changes not only those in it, but also those left behind.

War makes the return to peacetime easy for some over others. O’Brien is able to integrate back into America and become a writer specializing in war stories. But Norman drives round and round the lake in his small town upon his return, unable to reconnect emotionally, until he is faced with making a fatal choice. The emotional damage wreaked on all of them spills into a whole generation of post-Vietnam America.

O’Brien works on the reader’s emotions with conversational prose, repeating sentences, and by using words to exact maximum impact; he paints vivid scenes and returns to them from different viewpoints to hit the reader several times over. Quite cinematic.

There have been many books written about the Vietnam War, and I guess movies like Apocalypse Now and the Rambo series have coloured our perceptions of this much publicized war. And yet the inside view from one who actually trod the path, who suffered the fears, uncertainties, and who witnessed the wastage is worth a read even so many years after the ending of that conflict. Would it deter us from entering similar conflicts again? I doubt it.

First of all, this isn’t a book about a war story — it is a group of short stories that relate to a war. That said, this aspect did not take away from the overall goal and was even one of its better characteristics. It’s written in a simple and uncompromising way, and the author often crosses the fourth wall to discuss what it means to tell a story and what happens when you impart a story involving death.

As someone interested in understanding how writing works, I enjoyed reading the authors explanations. My favorite line was probably, “The thing about a story is that you dream as you tell it.”

Because of the author’s forthrightness, involving what is true and what is not, certain descriptions stuck out. The explanation of being shot made me feel as though I now know about going through that experience.

This book could have been entitled The Stories They Told. It is a series of interconnected essays based on the author’s experience before, during and after Vietnam, though he freely admits to fictionalizing the narrative to give the reader a more visceral feeling of what it was like. I particularly appreciated how the author linked the physical “things they carried” to their emotional burdens. These accounts show how the soldiers tried to retain their humanity in the face of war, and how war inevitably changed them. They could be killed at any time with no warning, and they tried to cope as best they could. What they lived through carried over into life after the war. I would venture to say this book is as much about the importance of story-telling as it is about the Vietnam War. It is a way to remember those lost, distance oneself from horrific reality, and attempt to deal with almost unbearable pain. Themes include mortality, guilt, shame, obligation, fear, and the transience of memory.

I went into it thinking it was non-fiction, but somewhere in the middle of the book, the author acknowledges that the stories are invented or embellished. I found the author pointing out the mechanics of his craft took me out of the immersive feel of the book. However, once I got past the idea that it wasn’t exactly what happened, I realized that the book was what the author wanted to convey to those of us who have never been to war. I could see the rain, the mud, and the dense forest. I could sense the fear. This book is not subtle. It contains wartime gruesomeness, death in many horrific forms, animal cruelty, and morbid humor. Recommended to anyone interested in the Vietnam experience.

Memorable quote:

“There were times in my life when I couldn’t feel much, not sadness or pity or passion, and somehow I blamed this place for what I had become, and I blamed it for taking away the person I had once been."

National Book Critics Circle Longlist 1990; Pulitzer Prize Longlist 1991. These interrelated stories are beautifully written. The soldiers had to carry much on their young shoulders—not just their gear, but the letters and memories of home. They also carried the memories of war home with them; which sometimes haunted their dreams.

I kept thinking of that first draft lottery in 1971 with my male friends anxiously waiting to see where the number of their birthdate would fall, indicating the likelihood of them being drafted and sent to Vietnam or not. Would they be able to attend college as planned, or would those plans be deferred—or denied altogether? There were those that were considering Canada, or joining a ‘safe’ alternative like the Coast Guard, or even becoming a Conscientious Objector. And a few were actually looking forward to the ‘adventure’ of fighting the VC and being ‘patriotic’ Americans. We were all so young—so idealistic.

My only complaint concerning O’Brien’s excellent book is that it is unclear what is fact and what is fiction. O’Brien suggests that a recitation of facts omits the ‘truth’ in the experience. Perhaps he is right. Highly recommend.

5.0 Stars. The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien is a book that no reader could possibly forget. He wrote it when he was 43 years old, but it is about his experiences and the experiences of his closest compatriots during the Vietnam War, in 1968-1969. It is fiction, but it is based on Tim’s real experiences, and I think there are a lot of places where only the names were changed.

It is one of the most powerful books I have ever read about the war of my own youth. The war that was the background of my own life for my entire childhood and into my early teens.

Yes, there are the sad stories of the deaths of 4 of his friends in the jungle and 1 three years later. There are the stories of himself getting shot twice. There are the stories of seeing and having to do awful things. There is even the story that made me cry the hardest - the story of how Tim almost went to Canada to avoid the draft; at 19 years old having to contemplate such things. But mostly, this brook is an attempt at healing, and at bringing his dead buddies back to life once more, to say the things they wanted to say, and to hear the things that Tim wanted to say to them and about them.

At the very end of the book, the idea is presented that death is like an old book that no one is reading. It’s up high in a shelf and you are safe there….and you hope that one day someone will pull down the book and start reading, and bring you back to life for a while.

I hope that by Tim O’Brien writing this book, and by the reading of it by hundreds of thousands of people over the years, that Ted Lavender, Curt Lemon, Lee Strunk, Norman Bowker, and Kiowa have lived some of the life that the Vietnam War took from them. I know that I, for one, will never forget them.

Awestruck may be the best way to describe how I felt upon reading this book the first time. So how did I feel upon reading it the second time? I just want to bow at Tim O'Brien's feet while muttering a Wayne's World style "I'm not worthy, I'm not worthy."

Using non-linear narrative and stringing together seemingly unrelated stories into one ultimately cohesive work, O'Brien achieves something that traditional narrative never could: his work reflects the emotional truth of what it was like to be a soldier in Vietnam and to be a veteran still living with memories that, when triggered, seem as real and visceral as if they were happening in the present. This is memoir, metafiction, magical realism, and a whole grab bag of other literary genres rolled into one. O'Brien himself admits that we as readers may not know which of the stories are "happening-truth" (what objectively happened) and which of the stories are "story-truth" (stories that may not have happened but because they strike the right emotional chord are more valid than what really happened). However, the reader should not feel manipulated by this storytelling technique as it seeks to forge a connection between those who were there and those who were not; it does not seek to tell what happened, but to make you feel what it was like to be there. The book is nothing short of a masterpiece.

Cross posted at This Insignificant Cinder

The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien is an unforgettable book, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1991. It has taken me many years to read this book because of the personal experience that I had with this war back in the volatile years of the 1960s and 1970s. This book is a beautiful but haunting collection of linked stories based on the personal experiences of novelist Tim O’Brien when he served in Vietnam. O’Brien describes it as a blurring of fiction and non-fiction as he sometimes is a protagonist in this book. It must be said that this is considered one of the finest books about the Vietnam War.

This is a profound narrative of war as often it has the feel of a fog or dreamlike state as we swirl around in an abyss of events, some imagined and some real. I found this such a difficult book to read because of the impact of war and what was the breaking point for so many, not only in that brutal war but so many others. I was so taken by what these soldiers carried into war to give them a sense of solace. I think of my own son deployed to Iraq on a Blackhawk helicopter crew insisting on a shamrock on his helmet. No worries that he was ordered to remove it, it would be back!

n  

”They carried all they could bear and then some, including a silent awe for the terrible power of the things they carried.”

“What they carried varied by mission.”

“The things they carried were determined to some extent by superstition.”

n

There was a lot of sorrow and truth that comes through in this semi-biographical collection of short stories focusing on the experiences in the Vietnam War. What I found most striking in this narrative was the honesty of Tim O’Brien as he not only tries to achieve a better understanding of war and human nature but the struggle to survive. This was a painful and sorrowful but powerful book.

It was in the spring of 2006 and I was on patrol in Kirkuk Iraq with a unit in the 101st Airborne. I had my full “battle rattle” on: helmet, body armor, vest with extra magazines, M4. We were in the Kurdish part of the city and it was a beautiful day in the bazaar.

I came to love the Kurdish people, they were hardworking and resilient. Many people don’t know this but a percentage of Kurdish folks are red headed. No kidding, fair skin like me and RED hair. It was the kind of day where in the back of our mind we were maybe more vigilant than necessary because the threat of anything bad seemed so far away – so therefore we needed to be more on the guard. But for the most part, it was a quiet day and people were out shopping and enjoying the day.

I was on the sidewalk and looking at the goods on display. Huge bags of nuts and seeds, fabric, plastic toys, a little bit of everything. A mother was walking with her little boy, he looked about 2 or 3, with a cute brown outfit that was tailored to fit him, perhaps homemade. I noticed her looking at some goods and he saw something across the street and like little boys the world over, took off past me and headed into the street.

I am a father of three boys and at that time they were 16, 13 and 6 and I thought about them everyday if not hourly. My wife and I had been chasing healthy and happy, mischievous boys for years and if I was hyper vigilant for bad guys, I was even more sensitive to children getting loose.

As natural as if I were on the sidewalk in Middle Tennessee, I reached down and caught him, said something incomprehensible to him like “whoa little man, don’t loose momma” and I smiled at his mother and she smiled at me and then in that moment, I was not an armed soldier occupying her city and we spoke the same language and we were neighbors keeping a little boy out of the street.

That was years ago and so much happened over there, but I will always remember that moment because it was an instance of unconditional and timeless humanity during wartime. The reality was and is that labels like "soldier" and "enemy" and "foreign national" do little to assuage the inherent and complicated humanity that we all bring with us and share between us.

What Tim O’Brien accomplished in The Things They Carried, his 1990 collection of short stories and essays about his experiences in Vietnam two decades earlier, is to demonstrate that even in the middle of a horrific war experience, that the soldiers and residents of that country were fundamentally and undeniably all human and capable of experiencing the wide scope of human emotion amidst wartime, and further that the very lethal nature of war made the emotions more vivid and alive.

Whereas all of my brothers in arms and I volunteered, O’Brien and his fellow soldiers were mainly drafted and were thus accidental warriors because of conscription. Here were young men who did not want to be there, for the most part, but O’Brien takes an expansionist and objective stance and reveals that some people did find their place there and learned things about themselves they would not have otherwise discovered but for that martial experience.

Poignant, touching, endearing, heartbreaking, terrifying, saddening, maddening, O’Brien has succinctly stated what so many have before tried to and failed. He has formed a voice from this wilderness of human experience and has documented for us all a glimpse into moments of humanity during wartime.

4.25*

UPDATE 01/02/19

n  "Một chuyện thực về chiến tranh chẳng bao giờ là về chiến tranh. Nó là về ánh nắng. Nó là về chuyện bình minh trải ra trên một dòng sông trông mới đặc biệt làm sao, dòng sông mà ta biết ta sẽ băng qua để rồi hành quân vào núi và làm những việc ta sợ phải làm. Nó là về tình yêu và kí ức. Nó là về nỗi buồn. Nó là về những cô em gái chẳng bao giờ hồi âm thư và những người chẳng bao giờ chịu lắng nghe."n

Khác với những cuốn sách lấy chủ đề chiến tranh Việt Nam mà tớ đã từng đọc, Những Thứ Họ Mang của Tim O'Brien không tập trung khai thác về nỗi niềm của những người lính Việt mà chủ đề chính của cuốn sách này là sự nhìn nhận qua lăng kính phe địch của ta - lính Mỹ.

Những Thứ Họ Mang là tuyển tập những mẩu truyện ngắn nhưng có tính liên kết với nhau chặt chẽ, truyện này nối tiếp truyện kia, đan xen theo góc nhìn của từng nhân vật trong một nhóm lính Mỹ gồm: Tim, Jimmy Cross, Chuột Kiley, Mitchell, Henry hay Kiowa - kể về những sự việc xảy ra trong suốt quãng thời gian họ khoác trên mình bộ áo lính. Với tác phẩm này, Tim O'Brien như đã mở ra cả một vùng trời mới, một điểm nhìn hoàn toàn khác lạ khi dẫn dắt chúng ta đi theo hồi ức của chính tác giả xuyên suốt thời kì chiến tranh. Những câu chuyện tâm linh rùng rợn nơi rừng thiêng nước độc, những giây phút nhớ nhung người yêu đến não nề, những sợ hãi, những ân hận và đau đớn hay cả những ám ảnh kinh hoàng của những tên lính Mỹ được khắc họa rất chi tiết và tỉ mỉ.

Như đã đề cập ở trên, sự yêu thích của tớ dành cho tác phẩm này là bởi ngòi bút của Tim O'Brien đã tập trung tái hiện lại những khía cạnh rất khác của nhóm lính Mỹ, rằng đằng sau những trận chiến vấy máu khói lửa, suy cho cùng họ vẫn là con người, có những giằng xé khổ tâm khôn cùng khi phải chứng kiến quá nhiều cái chết tàn khốc xảy ra ngay ở trước mắt, phải chịu bệnh dịch, nỗi nhớ nhung người yêu hay gia đình đến cồn cào nhưng họ vẫn phải lên đường ra trận, trở thành một phần của cuộc chiến tranh. Những Thứ Họ Mang không chỉ đơn thuần là vũ khí hay bom đạn, mà còn cả những gánh nặng của quá khứ, của nỗi ám ảnh luôn đè nén và giày vò lấy tâm can trong suốt đời người. Thậm chí chính tác giả còn có cuộc đấu tranh nội tâm khôn cùng giữa việc nhập ngũ và trốn đi để khỏi phải tham gia cuộc chiến vô nghĩa này.

n  "Quan điểm của tôi hồi đó, mà bây giờ cũng vậy, là ta đừng nên gây chiến nếu như không biết vì sao."n

Thêm một điểm cộng nữa, đó là tớ thực sự thích giọng văn của Tim O'Brien trong Những Thứ Họ Mang. Ngôn ngữ của Tim giàu hình ảnh, cảm xúc và đan xen linh hoạt cả giọng văn dí dỏm hài hước cực kỳ thừa muối mà tớ nhiều khi đọc cũng phải cười chảy nước mắt. Đặc biệt là qua cuốn sách này tớ cũng có thêm một hướng nhìn mới mẻ về lính Mỹ, ấn tượng nhất là nỗi sợ đi nha sỹ của một trong những tên này, những câu chửi thề suồng sã đời thường hay nỗi ám ảnh phụ nữ đến hoang mang dẫn tới những hành động kì cục nữa, thề đọc đến đó cười như được mùa. Mà ấn tượng hơn cả là tình bạn của nhóm lính Mỹ này cũng sâu sắc và khăng khít không kém, đúng kiểu bromance son sắc thủy chung trong truyền thuyết. Cực kỳ thích cách tác giả tạo dựng lên những nhân vật trong Những Thứ Họ Mang, cảm giác họ rất thật, rất sống động như hiện ra ngay trước mắt vậy đó. Thêm nữa, đó là cuốn sách này cũng cung cấp cho người đọc những câu chuyện không thể tin là có thật, nhưng nó đã xảy ra trong chiến tranh. Đúng kiểu cuốn này mở ra một thế giới mới với tớ luôn.

Nhìn chung, Những Thứ Họ Mang là một câu chuyện chân thực về chiến tranh và chắc chắn ẻm sẽ góp mặt trong list sách yêu thích của tớ. Dịch ổn không có vấn đề gì. Những Thứ Họ Mang như kiểu là "Nỗi Buồn Chiến Tranh" phiên bản Mỹ vậy, đọc để biết và cũng để có thêm một hướng nhìn khác khá mới mẻ về cuộc đời lính Mỹ. Tuy nhiên lưu ý ở phần đầu, tác giả có giới thiệu và dùng từ chuyên môn về vũ khí hay bom đạn khá nhiều, bạn nào oải có thể skip cũng được vì cũng không liên quan quá đến mạch truyện đâu. 4.25/5, cực kỳ ưng.

Find all of my reviews at: http://52bookminimum.blogspot.com/

n  “You can tell a true war story by the way it never seems to end. Not then, not ever.”n

I had every intention of reading this on Memorial Day, but once I started I began having feelings and y’all know I try my best not to ever let that happen so I put it on the backburner. Buuuuuuuut, since the library’s Summer Reading Challenge is all about pushing your shelf, I knew I was going to have to finally bite the bullet and read this one.

The Things They Carried isn’t really anything most people of a certain age haven’t experienced before. If you are of the dinosaur generation, you’ve probably seen most of the content contained in this collection of vignettes a time or twelve on the big screen over the years . . . .

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That’s not to say it is a book that should be skipped. It earns its spot on the “100 Books To Read Before You Die” list as well as every one of the 4 Stars (and a nearly unheard of 4.41 collective Stars amongst my friends) I’m giving it. This book is brutal, and nauseating, and horrifying and most definitely serves as a reminder that . . . .

n  “War is hell.”n

But maybe that’s exactly what people need to remember. People like most of us who sit safely on our couches and question whether or not we’re watching “fake news covfefe” on a nightly basis while others who are barely more than children are the potential pawns in a grotesque game of chess. The Things They Carried should be a required read for all because if you can’t stomach reading about it, you need to be paying attention to who you are voting for in order to make sure you don’t force a new generation into reliving it. A generation made up of people like this young man, who did what his country asked and fought in the Vietnam War, but was never the same again upon his return . . . .

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I think of you almost every day and this book was almost impossible for me to read because of it.

Book #2 of the “Push Your Shelf” challenge. I will definitely fill this glass with beer and raise it in memoriam of my uncle once I receive it.

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