The Things They Carried

by Tim O’Brien

According to O’Brien:

A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor sugest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie….As a rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscentiy and evil.

These felt like true war stories.

Don’t get me wrong, it was a great book. But it was hard to read. At the same time, it was hard to put down…no matter how much I wanted to stop. The stories were too — compelling? weird? frightening? Real.

I have a themed release in mind for this book, but first my boyfriend wants to read it.