Saturday, November 13, 2010

War Through the Generations - Vietnam War - challenge completed


I have officially completed the War Through the Generations challenge for 2010.  This year the focus was on the Vietnam War.  This is a war that I've long been interested in reading about but needed the push this challenge gave me to actually read about it.   While I have completed 5 books, I have a couple more that I still plan to read, probably next year.  This is, by far, one of my favorite challenges.  I'm challenge to read about topics that, while interest me, I don't normally read about.  This year I focused on books that dealt with Americans.  Sure not every book was non-fiction, but the characters were still American, and that's what I wanted.  I feel very un-educated when it comes to the Vietnam war and I want to change that. While my interest lies more with the human interest side of things and not the technical, war theory, etc side of it, I still feel like I'm learning about the War and what it did to our men who fought and served for our country.

Here are the books I read for this challenge, click HERE to see reviews for all of them:

The Barracks Thief by Tobias Wolff
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
In the Wake of the Boatman by Jonathon Scott Fuqua
Paco's Story by Larry Heinemann
Dear American: Letters Home from Vietnam Edited by Bernard Edelman

6 comments:

Literary Feline said...

Congratulations on finishing the challenge, Kris! I collected quite a few books for this challenge and while I won't get to read them this year, perhaps one day in the future I'll get to them all. It's certainly a war that has had an impact on my life through my father's experiences.

Unknown said...

Literary Feline - same here..I have several more books I plan to read thanks to this challenge. I would imagine it does impact you more than me, my father was lucky enough not to be drafted and didn't enlist either.

Serena said...

I'm so glad that you enjoyed the challenge this year. The Vietnam War is my favorite topic, while Anna's is WWII. Thanks so much for participating. I have a ton of books on Vietnam yet to read, though I'm trying to get through a few more by the end of December. I'll probably reading more of them in 2011.

Unknown said...

Serena - WWII has always been an interest for me because of the Holocaust aspect of it, but I think also because I didn't know much about other wars. I really enjoyed learning more about the Vietnam war due to this challenge..can't wait for next year (I voted for Civil War since I've been wanting to read more on that one too..plus I have been collecting books on the topic. haha)

Anna said...

Congrats! I can't wait to read more about Vietnam myself to better understand all my father went through during the war. Thanks for joining us this year, and we hope you'll participate in the 2011 challenge.

Unknown said...

Anna - I can't wait to join the challenge again for 2011, I even voted already. haha!