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4.32 AVERAGE
4.32 AVERAGE
This one really messed me up. I was expecting it to, but not this badly.
Disturbing but well written and organized. I had to finish the whole thing, including the bibliography! This is the most comprehensive collection of material on the Columbine shooting available.
This wasn’t always an easy book to read, but it was a really powerful story. Author Dave Cullen challenges the established narrative, especially the idea that the shooters were outcasts who were bullied until they snapped. Using their journals and video taped messages, he presents the killers as ticking bombs who didn’t need any provocation to explode. Cullen explores what the police, the media, and the local authorities did right and what they did wrong before and after the shootings. He paints a picture of a disaster that could have been prevented — or could have been ten times worse — if things had played out just a little differently.
The school shooting itself makes up a fairly small portion of the book. Most of the time, Cullen bounces back and forth between the months leading up to the killings and the years of aftermath. He tells the stories of several victims and survivors, as well as their families. There are a lot of uplifting moments throughout.
I can’t say I enjoyed the book, but I am glad that I read it.
The school shooting itself makes up a fairly small portion of the book. Most of the time, Cullen bounces back and forth between the months leading up to the killings and the years of aftermath. He tells the stories of several victims and survivors, as well as their families. There are a lot of uplifting moments throughout.
I can’t say I enjoyed the book, but I am glad that I read it.
Really interesting. Perspective on the whole story and not just what the media ran with in the moment.
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
(Popsugar Challenge: A non-fiction book)
The amount of time (ten years!) and work that went into compiling and researching and writing this book is astounding. I highly recommend reading this if you have an interest in both the Columbine murders and investigative journaling. I was in high school when the massacre took place so it's always felt close to home, but I found it fascinating how little I actually knew about what really went on.
It's not a light read; it took me way longer to get through than I hoped, but it's an important one.
The amount of time (ten years!) and work that went into compiling and researching and writing this book is astounding. I highly recommend reading this if you have an interest in both the Columbine murders and investigative journaling. I was in high school when the massacre took place so it's always felt close to home, but I found it fascinating how little I actually knew about what really went on.
It's not a light read; it took me way longer to get through than I hoped, but it's an important one.
FANTASTIC! So very well written. I couldn’t put it down.
An excellent readable and thorough analysis of what happened (and what didn't happen) and who the two killers were.
Go read this review of Columbine. It is what made me want to read this book:
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/118329725
This book is written by a journalist who thoroughly investigated the Columbine tragedy. He interviewed victims, parents and countless people who were affected by the shooting.
It jumps between chapters focusing on the killers to chapters focusing on those affected. It was very effective to read the book this way as I would've found it too hard if the book had focused on the killers for an extended period of reading.
This book wasn't exactly what I was expecting. The author seemed to not go too into depth with the journal entries of the shooters. There was actually a part where he only quoted a short excerpt of a violent journal entry and in his notes he said he didn't want to include much more because of how brutal it was.
I guess he didn't want to publish much of the hatred the two shooters wrote about. I can understand that. The only thing was that the killers were even more evil than the book portrayed.
The chapters about the killers, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, were both revolting and interesting. I found it hard to be reading about their lives. Part of the horror was how obviously disturbed they both were. I found it so hard to read about police not taking things as seriously as they should have.
But the book seemed to be provoking anyone reading it to ask themselves questions, such as
How can you tell the difference between normal teenage angst and a more serious problem?
The book brought up an incident where Dylan Klebold wrote a brutal story about murder for his creative writing class. The teacher was very disturbed and brought it to the attention of Dylan's principal. Dylan argued that it was just a story and didn't mean anything.
This chilled me to the bone because how can someone tell the difference between a person writing a story for creative purposes, versus a troubled person writing out their dark fantasies. I can definitely see the argument that it was a creative writing class but it's hard to know where teachers should draw the line, if at all.
I found this book painful to read and to be honest, even though it was a brilliant account of events, I still had questions. I found it hardest reading about Dylan and his parents. I couldn't understand completely why he decided to kill. Compared to Eric Harris, who was a psychopath, Dylan seemed to just be depressed and desperate for love.
After I finished the book, I read the wikipedia article about the killers. The article talks about them being bullied, where the book says they were not. The book says they both had active social lives and a fair amount of friends. As this book is considered the definitive study of the Columbine shooting, I'm guessing that there is still a lot of false information on the internet.
I'm just rambling about stuff here. Check out the link to the other review. It's a more cohesive review. I can't say I "enjoyed" this book but it was an interesting read. I definitely learned a lot about the subject and it was good to read about survivors who didn't let it define their lives. It was just good to read about the strength of the survivors.
There were thirteen victims that day, plus the suicides of the two shooters. That left fifteen families struggling to understand why and just trying to cope. It shook the whole town and in a way, the world. I know when I heard about it, I was 12 years old and I honestly couldn't understand why two people would do such an evil thing.
Now thirteen years later, I've read a book that tried to explain their motives.
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/118329725
This book is written by a journalist who thoroughly investigated the Columbine tragedy. He interviewed victims, parents and countless people who were affected by the shooting.
It jumps between chapters focusing on the killers to chapters focusing on those affected. It was very effective to read the book this way as I would've found it too hard if the book had focused on the killers for an extended period of reading.
This book wasn't exactly what I was expecting. The author seemed to not go too into depth with the journal entries of the shooters. There was actually a part where he only quoted a short excerpt of a violent journal entry and in his notes he said he didn't want to include much more because of how brutal it was.
I guess he didn't want to publish much of the hatred the two shooters wrote about. I can understand that. The only thing was that the killers were even more evil than the book portrayed.
The chapters about the killers, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, were both revolting and interesting. I found it hard to be reading about their lives. Part of the horror was how obviously disturbed they both were. I found it so hard to read about police not taking things as seriously as they should have.
But the book seemed to be provoking anyone reading it to ask themselves questions, such as
How can you tell the difference between normal teenage angst and a more serious problem?
The book brought up an incident where Dylan Klebold wrote a brutal story about murder for his creative writing class. The teacher was very disturbed and brought it to the attention of Dylan's principal. Dylan argued that it was just a story and didn't mean anything.
This chilled me to the bone because how can someone tell the difference between a person writing a story for creative purposes, versus a troubled person writing out their dark fantasies. I can definitely see the argument that it was a creative writing class but it's hard to know where teachers should draw the line, if at all.
I found this book painful to read and to be honest, even though it was a brilliant account of events, I still had questions. I found it hardest reading about Dylan and his parents. I couldn't understand completely why he decided to kill. Compared to Eric Harris, who was a psychopath, Dylan seemed to just be depressed and desperate for love.
After I finished the book, I read the wikipedia article about the killers. The article talks about them being bullied, where the book says they were not. The book says they both had active social lives and a fair amount of friends. As this book is considered the definitive study of the Columbine shooting, I'm guessing that there is still a lot of false information on the internet.
I'm just rambling about stuff here. Check out the link to the other review. It's a more cohesive review. I can't say I "enjoyed" this book but it was an interesting read. I definitely learned a lot about the subject and it was good to read about survivors who didn't let it define their lives. It was just good to read about the strength of the survivors.
There were thirteen victims that day, plus the suicides of the two shooters. That left fifteen families struggling to understand why and just trying to cope. It shook the whole town and in a way, the world. I know when I heard about it, I was 12 years old and I honestly couldn't understand why two people would do such an evil thing.
Now thirteen years later, I've read a book that tried to explain their motives.
3.5 stars. Good research but the organization wasn't always the most logical to me. Could have used a list of characters to refer back to and some edits.