en-US Mon, 15 Apr 2013 06:23:10 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 43015
My new friends have begun to suspect I haven’t told them the full story of my life.
“Why did you leave Sierra Leone?�
“Because there is a war.�
“You mean, you saw people running around with guns and shooting each other?�
“Yes, all the time.�
“C´Ç´Ç±ô.â€�
I smile a little.
“You should tell us about it sometime.�
“Yes, sometime.�

This is how wars are fought now: by children, hopped-up on drugs and wielding AK-47s. Children have become soldiers of choice. In the more than fifty conflicts going on worldwide, it is estimated that there are some 300,000 child soldiers. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them.

What is war like through the eyes of a child soldier? How does one become a killer? How does one stop? Child soldiers have been profiled by journalists, and novelists have struggled to imagine their lives. But until now, there has not been a first-person account from someone who came through this hell and survived.

In A Long Way Gone, Beah, now twenty-five years old, tells a riveting story: how at the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he’d been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts.

This is a rare and mesmerizing account, told with real literary force and heartbreaking honesty.]]> 229 Ishmael Beah 0374105235 Lauren 5 4.16 2007
author: Ishmael Beah
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at: 2013/01/15
date added: 2013/04/15
shelves:
review:

]]> 6297309 The Story of O relates the progressive willful debasement of a young and beautiful Parisian fashion photographer, O, who wants nothing more than to be a slave to her lover, René. The test is severe—sexual in method, psychological in substance� The artistic interest here has precisely to do with the use not only of erotic materials but also erotic methods, the deliberate stimulation of the reader as a part of and means to a total, authentic literary experience.

—Eliot Fremont-Smith, The New York Times]]> 204 Pauline Réage Lauren 4 3.44 1954
author: Pauline Réage
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.44
book published: 1954
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2012/01/19
shelves:
review:

]]> 9712 348 Gabriel García Márquez 140003468X Lauren 0 to-read 3.92 1985
author: Gabriel García Márquez
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1985
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/11/03
shelves: to-read
review:

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