Columbine in Reading with Style

Jun 20, 2018 Wendy rated it really liked it

Shelves: nightmare-fuel, true-crime, 2018, non-fiction, audiobooks, edgar-award

This isn't an easy book to review. For me it was an uncomfortable nostalgic trip. I was a sophomore at a Colorado high school roughly an hour away when the Columbine attack happened. I have vivid memories of being at a track meet that afternoon, while various coaches/parents monitored the situation throughout the afternoon by radio, and the announcer gave periodic updates over the loudspeaker. We were the first generation of students to subsequently endure active shooter drills in the classroom, ...more

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Jul 25, 2009 Athira (Reading on a Rainy Day) rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2010, format-print, nonfiction, source-library, nf-true-crime

Some of my blogging friends wondered how I could read Columbine so soon after April 16th: Virginia Tech Remembers. I didn't think I could do it either. But something in me wanted to understand why both incidents happened. How can someone walk into one's own school and kill students and teachers? Fellow students you might have played with or talked to. How can someone have so much anger in them? (Of course, terrorism is no longer limited to the school playgrounds now. But that's a discussion for ...more

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Aug 22, 2014 Karen Michele Burns rated it it was amazing

Shelves: my-5-star-books

I have struggled with whether or not to read Columbine since its publication. Just this year, I retired from my job as a high school librarian, and I just couldn’t face the terror of reading about these events when they felt awfully close to home, even though they occurred quite a while ago now. It was still a difficult and emotional reading experience, but I am glad I took it on. I grew up in Colorado (now living in WA state) and went to Wheatridge High School in Jefferson County, so when I hea I have struggled with whether or not to read Columbine since its publication. Just this year, I retired from my job as a high school librarian, and I just couldn’t face the terror of reading about these events when they felt awfully close to home, even though they occurred quite a while ago now. It was still a difficult and emotional reading experience, but I am glad I took it on. I grew up in Colorado (now living in WA state) and went to Wheatridge High School in Jefferson County, so when I heard about the shooting (I was teaching in an elementary school at the time) it hit me hard. I followed the story closely at the time and remembered a lot of the details Cullen writes about. The structure of the book moving back and forth in time and reporting on the build up, the aftermath and the ongoing lives of those involved was what made the book a riveting read and earned it 5 stars from me. I wasn’t convinced that every single bit of the book was accurate, but there were certainly many details brought out that painted a different picture of this event from the original story and I am glad to have learned of them. My husband worked as an orderly at Craig Hospital, so Patrick’s recovery story was also engaging and encouraging.
I was interested in the backstory for how the book She Said Yes was published even though the story was not accurate. As a librarian, I had already heard of this lack of accuracy, but not learned of the reasons behind it. We had an event called “Rachel’s Challenge”, an anti-bullying program, at my high school a few years ago. It is named in honor of the first girl killed and her brother is the speaker. I was surprised that program wasn’t mentioned in the book since the author makes a case against bullying as the cause of the Columbine shooting. As a high school teacher, I can attest that bullying is a definite cause of concern in our high schools and whether or not it played a significant role in this horrific event at Columbine, it certainly exacerbates problems for any student struggling. At the very least, we are more vigilant in our efforts to stop bullying regardless of whether it caused this shooting or any other mass murder. The portrayal of the mental health issues of the boys was frightening and informative. I hope we can learn to deal with mental illness better as a society in general: treat it early when the signs are there, recognize and isolate those who are truly deemed dangerous (and this book makes a case for that being true in the case of these boys), and stop criminalizing those who are not dangerous but just different and struggling to deal with the challenges of their condition. The problem comes in recognizing the differences between the benign and the toxic, and that’s what Cullen helps us sort out in Columbine.
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Mar 06, 2010 Erin (NY) rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: books-i-own, non-fiction, read-in-2010

I have been reluctant to read this book, because the whole thing just makes me so sad! But I am glad I finally read this book. It definitely helped me to understand what happened. I only vaguely remember Columbine, because I was only 15 when it happened, so I was glad to have such a great book written about it. The author does an excellent job in describing the motives, the event and the aftermath.

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