Most of the readers 'enjoyed' the book, meaning that they were glad that they read it, rather then that they took pleasure in reading it. Bruce bucked the trend by hating it, as far as I can tell, simply because it's been presented as something new, and the latest fad, when civil wars and atrocities have been going on in Africa for close to half a century. (That he remembers. He is a bit older than me.) Carolyn mused about what the point of reading the book might be - that is, what could we possibly do about atrocities in another country.

This sparked a lively discussion between the idealistic, naive college students and the worldly, cynical old farts. Mostly, it was about root causes of conflict, human nature, 'knowledge is power', and other social issues, rather than talking about the book itself.



A largish crowd, of nearly all new people (including Courtney and Jeanne, from PDOT) who had come out for the 'Everybody Reads' discussion. It was a difficult book to read for pretty much everyone. It was a memoir, rather than a history, told by a child. The middle part, when he was a soldier, was disjoint and sometimes incoherent. It's possible that he spared us the worst of the descriptions of the violence. Or maybe, between the drugs the the killing, he just couldn't remember the most of it.