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That's an awesome experience. And the sword part may not be true, but it might as well be.

"A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth." -- Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

I'm a little embarrassed to say it's the only book I've had the motivation to finish this year. It's a fantastic book though, and during the age of the "war on facts" it's quite relevant.

The Things They Carried by O’Brian - it’s ostensibly a war book but is nothing about war. It’s about empathy. The world, unfortunately, mostly operates without empathy. Knowing that helps to understand various actions people take.

“The Things They Carried” a haunting book about American soldiers in the Vietnam war. It’s helped me understand the horrors of war and life, the significance of a person’s perception of an event rather than pure facts, and appreciate life in general.

I found myself in a similar position recently. I've gone back and read books usually assigned in high school and really enjoyed returning to them after all these years. Anything Vonnegut, East of Eden, and The Things They Carried, to name a few.

Very similar to "The Things He Carried" by The Atlantic back in 2008. Bruce Schneier shows how worthless the TSA is.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/11/the-thin...

Anyone looking for context of what it was like as a soldier fighting for the north in the Vietnam war, I highly recommend The Sorrow of War[0].

I read it in college in a Vietnam and the US History class and it was blown away.

This book, along with The Things They Carried[1] are worthwhile reads.

[0] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sorrow_of_War

[1] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Things_They_Carried

Slouching Towards Bethlehem (Joan Didion)

Flowers for Algernon (Daniel Keyes)

The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds (Paul Zindel)

The Things They Carried (Tim O' Brien)

This Side of Paradise (F. Scott Fitzgerald)

Something Wicked This Way Comes (Ray Bradbury)
Essentially a children's sci-fi novel, but it doesn't read that way.

A Moveable Feast (Ernest Hemingway)

My personal favorite (along with his short stories, which I highly recommend), but if it's your first time reading Hemingway, might be better to go with The Sun Also Rises.

Revolutionary Road (Richard Yates)

On the Road (Jack Kerouac)
*One of my personal favorites, but most people either love or hate it, so maybe save this towards the end.

On my own reading list:

Speedboat (Renata Adler)

Money (Martin Amis)

Love in the Time of Cholera (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)

Err, someone emailed me about the "wolf reference." The reference was to The Things They Carried by Tim O'brien and not to a work by Tobias Wolff whose name I spelled incorrectly.

High school and college literature classes dealt a serious setback to my readership too. Most (not all) of the books I had to read were worth reading, but like a fine beverage, many should be sipped and savored, not gulped and dismissed. What teachers seem to forget is that a student has a great many things on his plate, and can find it difficult indeed to set aside enough time to give a really good book its due.

Then they give you an assignment like, identify ten symbols in the work, and explain what you think they symbolize. Remember, there's no single right answer--symbolism and abstract meaning is a result of the interaction between the reader and the text. When I hear someone say "there's no single right answer," I hear, "...but there are an awful lot of wrong answers, and chances are, yours is one of 'em."

What I can say, though, is that once you get out of academia, give your mind a little time to refresh itself, and no longer feel the threat to your GPA if you interpret a book incorrectly, the enjoyment returns to reading. In some cases, you'll even go back to those books you had forced down your throat, re-read them, and enjoy them this time round!

But not "The Things They Carried." I don't mind being surprised in a story, but I get annoyed when the style clearly suggests one thing, and then in a pique of self-referentiality, the author tugs the rug out from under you and tells you that... well, I don't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't had the misfortune yet. (No, it's really a pretty good book, and I have to admit the author got me good.)

Currently: Emma, by Austen, and Debt: The First 5,000 Years by Graeber. Both good.

Recently finished Austen's Persuasion and Dickens' Oliver Twist. I'm trying to fill in big gaps in my reading of major English novels. Both were good. Dickens seems to have more compassion, which I appreciate. The two most moving scenes belong to his two worst villains. Persuasion was great though, and in many ways (compassion aside) a better novel than Dickens', not that they really deserve to be compared to one another. Persuasion's the first Austen novel I've managed to finish; usually I bounce off them in the first chapter or two. Looking like I'll make it through Emma, too, but it's certainly rougher going. Made it farther than I did on my last attempt, anyway.

The Things they Carried by O'Brien is up next after Graeber, probably, on recommendation (and loan) from a friend.

I haven't read it recently, but I feel compelled to recommend Revolutionary Road by Yates at every opportunity.

I listen to books during commutes and errands, and give them a letter grade when I'm done. I read a lot of different genres as I believe there's value in all genres (and mediums too).

These are some of the books I've given an "A" over the last few years, roughly grouped by genre:

Nonfiction:

- A Short History of Nearly Everything

- Fabric of the Cosmos

- Dataclysm

- The Righteous Mind

- Merchants of Doubt

- Dead Wake

- Man's Search for Meaning

- Evicted

- The New Jim Crow

- Night

Sci-fi:

- We

- The Sirens of Titan

- Hyperion

- Stories of Your Life

- Frankenstein

- The Day of the Triffids

- Childhood's End

Fantasy:

- The Stormlight Archives

- The First Law Trilogy

- The Lord of the Rings

Literature:

- The Stranger

- Dubliners

- Things I've Learned from Dying

- The Things They Carried

- Cloud Atlas

- Stoner

- Pillars of the Earth