Book Blogger Hop (3)

The Book Blogger Hop is a weekly meme hosted by Jennifer at Crazy for Books, to help book bloggers and readers interact, and to find new blogs. Every week, a question is posted for participants to answer.

Question:

"What book influenced or changed your life? How did it influence/change you?"

Answer:

This is an especially difficult question for me to answer, as every book has some impact on my life. For the purposes of the Hop, though, I'll focus on a book allowed me to see something in a different light. Even though I had already received the message I got out of this book before, this particular book, A Rumor of War by Philip Caputo, gave me new insight into what that message actually meant.

The book is Caputo's account of his experiences as a United States Marine in the Vietnam War. Prior to reading this book, I'd had little to no knowledge of the war in question. What little I knew consisted of atrocities committed by United States soldiers sent overseas. But upon reading this book, I discovered that when it came to war, nothing was ever as black and white as it seemed. When the guilty and the innocent looked exactly alike, everything became complicated.

That made me realize that war in general is much more complicated than everyone says. It's not just "this is the enemy." Because the enemy is a person, too, and as long as the enemy stays invisible, a person is safe, because the enemy cannot possibly be a person.

So along with solidifying my views on the nature of war and its psychological value, I also learned to criticize every article of information I came across. Every point of view is going to be different, and it's important to know what that point of view is--and to whom it belongs to--before making any decisions regarding the issue at hand.

It also gave me inspiration for a story I'm writing, but that's another story.

Hoppy happing!