From the Bookshelf of Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge…
Find A Copy At
Group Discussions About This Book
showing 2 of 2 topics
view all »
Other topics mentioning this book
What Members Thought
I just reread this for the first time since high school and seriously it is near perfection. The first story just blows my mind. And as part of my job I just wrote a reading group guide for it. AS of yet still going through copyediting and not online...
O'Brien takes the groteque and writes about it beautifully. War is ugly and awful but his writing lets it read like silk. This ranks right up there with my other favorite war novels, Catch-22, Slaughterhouse Five, and A Farewell to Arms.
...more
Dec 18, 2014
Lacey Louwagie
rated it
really liked it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
memoir,
non-fiction,
classics,
literary-fiction,
short-stories,
history,
100-book-challenge-2014
I hope that someday we will have a world in which no one must go to war. Now, we are fortunate not to have an active draft in the United States -- but we are still unfortunate to live in a country that relies upon military action and the sacrifice of other people's children's for sometimes questionable goals.
I hope most people never experience war. But to that end, I think it's incredibly important that everyone who is able to remain safe at home understands what war does, what it really means b ...more
I hope most people never experience war. But to that end, I think it's incredibly important that everyone who is able to remain safe at home understands what war does, what it really means b ...more
I loved this one. I was surprised by it, as I assumed it to be a "war novel." However, it was much more of a "life novel" - and O'Brien's observations about living and story-telling have had a profound impact on me.
"Forty-three years old, and the war occurred half a lifetime ago, and yet the remembering makes it now. And sometimes remembering will lead to a story, which makes it last forever. That's what stories are for. Stories are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for those late ...more
"Forty-three years old, and the war occurred half a lifetime ago, and yet the remembering makes it now. And sometimes remembering will lead to a story, which makes it last forever. That's what stories are for. Stories are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for those late ...more
I read Going After Cacciato in high school and I now want to read it again after reading The Things They Carried. That being said, I think TTTC is much more accessible and impeccably written. The storytelling is beautiful and O'Brien's style is just what I like. I will read this again.
Note: there is significant profanity and violence due to the Vietnam war setting. ...more
Note: there is significant profanity and violence due to the Vietnam war setting. ...more
I read this when I ta'ed a class on War a long time ago. Not only did I enjoy it but it was a required class and in a large class of non-English majors teaching novels and literature is often times a hard sell but almost everyone really enjoyed it and wanted to talk about it. The story/character that always sticks in my mind is lemon tree.
...more
Jan 21, 2007
Kaitlin
rated it
really liked it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
college,
historical
Sep 27, 2009
Ashley
marked it as to-read
Jun 26, 2011
Kai
marked it as to-read
Mar 09, 2013
Halsted Bernard
marked it as to-read
Feb 08, 2014
Mandy
marked it as to-read
Jul 10, 2014
Julie
marked it as to-read
Jun 10, 2015
Alexis
marked it as to-read
