The Good Soldiers is on the list of possible books to select for 2011 because it was a 2010 Alex Award winner. Some information:
Please post a comment to leave your review of this book and whether you think it would be a good selection for the SJSU Campus Reading program and why. Thanks.
3 comments:
I tried to get through The Good Soldiers but after about 1/4 the way through gave up. I'll send my copy back to you, Annette.
Has the committee ever considered The Glass Castle? I'm reading that now and can't put it down. Both sad and funny (in a distorted way) this is a true memoir of growing up in a dysfunctional (really quite wacko) family. The parents are nuts but also brilliant, and they raise brilliant children, against all odds. I'm only half way done with the book but I just know there will be triumph in the end.
We considered The Glass Castle a few years back and almost selected it. At this point, it is too old for our criteria.
I don't think this has the right tone to help us build a community around a shared reading: it is an important, significant work, but the dire message could overwhelm to the point of stifling discussion and it could also lead to conflict not always easily resolved even by a thoughtful discussion leader. Anyway, here is my review from Goodreads:
Powerfully written--to the point of sometimes numbing while engendering a growing sense of pervasive helplessness--this is an account in the tradition and style of Tom Wolfe's "New Journalism" (well, that's what it reminds me of). The author, a Pulitzer Prize winner for earlier work on U.S. support efforts in Yemen, here takes on the considerable task of conveying what the war experience was like during the Surge in Iraq for Battalion 2-16, a group of infrantrymen known as the Rangers, who were stationed in one of the more dangerous sections of Baghdad. The time period covered spans roughly one year, from April 2007 to April 2008.
He reminds us of the horror and ultimate agony of war. To be honest, this is a painful book to read, and I could only take it in small doses. We get to know many of the young men, and then we get to see them cope with comrades dying, or having some limbs blown off or their faces rearranged by shrapnel. We see young, callow new recruits, more seasoned soldiers, and a patriotic lieutenant colonel by the name of Ralph Kauzlarich leave Ft. Riley for this mission, head into Iraq, and in many ways, begin a psychological descent into Hell. One of the threads that runs through the book is the constant awareness that not all will return; one of the ways to tell time here is by the advancing number of war dead--not just statistics anymore, but distinctive individuals, their "death shots" posed before American flags serving as a somber appendix to which I found myself periodically flipping as a strategy for grieving.
I would surmise this will endure as one of the finer works of literature conveying the experience of this particular war, and most particularly of that component of it known as the Surge. It is, in some ways, a literary emotional equivalent of the excellent film The Hurt Locker, directed by Kathryn Bigelow, which out of a full slate of ten films still managed to secure the Oscar for Best Film in 2010. But this reflection pushes deeper than The Hurt Locker, and leaves a more haunting awareness.
Why only 3 stars? This book did what it intended to do and it did it very well, but I can't say I really liked it. On being instructive, I would give it a 5.
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