I started reading books of a more macabre nature when I was pretty young. Christopher Pike wasn’t cutting it and I found myself, aside from Carrie, not a Stephen King fan and even less of a Clive Barker, Dean Koontz fan so I turned to true crime, mostly serial killers and non fiction war novels.

All of the war novels I have read have been from the perspective of either the journalists risking their lives to be there, the experiences of UN, UNICEF, Red Cross [etc.] representatives or are straight up first person victim survival stories and I have one pretty interesting book written by an Anonymous spy for the Americans on the War on Terror.

So often in choosing to read literature of this nature it becomes too much, too real, too scary. During the years that I lived alone I stopped reading true crime. I remember thinking when I started reading various novels on Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka that it was too much because I’m from Ontario and relatives lived in the areas where they took their victims from and it was Canada and just too close to home, although that never stopped me from reading the books but Robert Pickton has pretty much blown every serial killer in decades off the map and he resides in a prison on the outskirts of the city I live in, he has pretty much taken the too close to home crown, I don’t know if I will read any books written on him and if I do whether I’ll admit it or not.

When I find myself affected while reading these novels, I will often lower the book between my legs and throw my head back, utter various oh gods and oh shits under my breath, groan and sigh heavily, shift uncomfortably in my seat, there are many tells aside from the obvious tears that some books, mostly the war ones, evoke in me.

I recently finished reading Ishmael Beah’s, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Solider. To say it was anything less than horrifying would be an understatement. Written in the first person by the now twenty-six year old author, he tells his toe curling story starting from the age of twelve when he first flees attacking rebels in Sierra Leone and is left wandering the country until at thirteen he’s picked up by the government army where he becomes a trained killer and remains one until rescued by UNICEF at sixteen. The rehabilitation that he faced and how he learns to heal and forgive himself follows.

It was impossible not to be taken in by this kid’s story, it was completely different from anything in relation to any war novel I had ever read before. I have read more than a few books on different countries in Africa and did not think that what has come across those pages could get much worse. But to read straight from the mind of a child killer in great detail what he did to his victims at the time with no remorse so hopped up on drugs and brain washed he had no idea what he was even doing or capable of was intense.

I brought the book up in session with Dr. B yesterday we discussed how it does put a lot into perspective I think back to what I was doing between 1993 and 1996 - graduating from high school and moving to Vancouver. At that time I didn’t think about Africa at all. Now I fill my head with literature on the continent but sit back and do pretty much nothing, the odd donation here and there, quite pathetic really. If only the amount of time I spent thinking of Africa meant anything. I have another book written by a journalist on Sierra Leone set in the capital of Freetown to be exact, I’ve had the book for years and never read it and now am literally dying to, it takes place in and around the same time period that Ishmael finds himself living in Freetown before the war forces him to flee to the United States.

I read so many non fiction novels that I plan books around them because the writing styles of non fiction are so much more obvious to me on a level of how fast I can read through them that I generally throw in at least two fiction novels for every one non fiction I read. At present I am right at the beginning of Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns and have already let out an involuntary OH GOD NO and cried once, I have a feeling I will be through it fast, some say it is better than The Kite Runner, I guess I will soon have my very own opinion on that, right now I’d say pick up a copy of Ishmael Beah’s novel and let the kid completly steal your heart and find a place in your soul.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 15th, 2007 at 6:53 pm and is filed under Books, T.V. & Movies, Depression & Therapy, War Torn. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. All content (c) 2005 - 2008 Gus Greeper, unless otherwise credited. All rights reserved.