Rating: 
Summary: A Brilliant Novel
Review: The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien is a spectacular fiction story of the Vietnam War. The story focuses on the lives of a group of soldiers and their hardships throughout the war.O'Brien does a great job of taking many little stories and putting them all together to form a big novel.When I first started to read this book i really didn't think i was going to finish it, but as I went on I became more interested in getting to the end. This is probably one of my more favorite books that I have ever read because it kept my attention throughout the whole story. It is realy hard to think that this is a fiction story because O'Brien does a good job of making it seem like a realty. He descibes each character both physically and emotionally very well. He also tells of what each soldier carries with them throughout the war. I would really encourage people to read this novel. It is a very action filled and educating book of how the Vietnam War changed many people's lives. The Things They Carried is truly a great piece of work that should be enjoyed by many more readers.
Rating: 
Summary: The things they carred were weed, crack, and a giant bong.
Review: "The things they carried were weed, crack, and a giant bong." That's what I said when asked to describe this book. Well, actually I didn't really say that; my friend Nick did, who hadn't actually read the book. But I did tell him about it, and I was there. I just didn't say it.
The paragraph above really has nothing to do with the book; it's just something I made up to provide an accurate example of the writing style author Tim O'Brien uses in The Things They Carried. He states things and then denies them, and then changes them. The constant changing of themes and facts can sometimes be annoying, but there annoyances are outweighed by the brilliant descriptive detail of Tim O'Brien. My biggest mistake in reading this book was trying to read to much into it. I found that the chapters I enjoyed most were the ones I read without thinking about whether or not it was true or logical. While reading this book, the reader needs to forget about knowing what really happened and instead focus on immersing themselves in the descriptions of the book. Different chapters are appreciated in different ways; some slow with meticulous detail, some overflowing with human feelings. Tim O'Brien does a great job portraying not only the everyday life, but also the emotion and physical stress endured by soldiers during Vietnam. It is for these reasons that I recommend this book to anybody interested in learning about the war; the pictures Tim O'Brien creates are simply amazing.
Rating: 
Summary: easy reading
Review: the book is not a children's book when I say easy reading, however it is easy to read and flows very well. Once you start reading you'll be amazed at how fast you finish the book. The book is made up of many different stories relating to war, all of which come together very nicely. GR8 book :)
Rating: 
Summary: What did they carry?
Review: When I started reading The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien, I thought that it was going to be a book full of good, enticing short war-stories. I thought wrong. In fact, most of the stories in the book are rather sappy. Also, while reading this book, I thought that the whole thing was true, but in the end Tim left me not knowing what was real and what was not real. For example, he freely admits that he didn't really kill anyone, and that he doesn't even have a daughter, and also that he didn't ever think about hopping the border to get away from the draft and that made me think that how much of the other stuff he said isn't real. For example, did they really carry those things? It made me feel a bit betrayed as a reader. Although, I do commend O'Brien on his ability to communicate what the war might have been like for other people. It makes the reader really think about how it might have been like for a soldier in the Vietnam War. Overall, for an assigned summer reading book or if you are into war sotries, I would say that his book was a good choice, but just as general reading I would say that there are better books to be read.
Rating:
Summary: The Things they now Carry inside their Mind
Review: This is an excellent book of a man's remembrance of the Vietnam War. It is written like a collection of short stories, most dealing with fellow soldiers who are killed in action. The author does a great job of portraying the horror of war and the acts he is now embarrassed by, but more importantly, the tight bonds that were formed with other soldiers and the trauma caused by their death. While I assumed this to be autobiographical with some basis in fact, some parts read like you're watching "Apocalypse Now". There is one story of an American's young girlfriend flying over and hiding out with the soldiers and how it changes her. Clearly, this didn't happen but I believe he's trying to demonstrate the mental battle fought by all the men. This is a fine book but not exactly what I was looking for. My favorite Vietnam book is "They were Soldiers Once ....." as it tells a specific battle tale, shows the horror of war and the heroics of our men. This is more a thought provoking look at the travesty of war. An excellent read, just not the type book I was looking for.
Rating:
Summary: The Harsh Realities of War
Review: Over all "The Things They Carried" was a fairly good book. It let the reader see into the horrors of war and feel the pain and fear that was felt by these young men everyday. The only major let down of the book was the lack of clarity concerning what was true and what was exaggerated. On the other hand it can be argued that "truth" is of no relevance and all that matters is that the reader try to understand the atrocities of war. One of my favorite parts of the book was that the impact that the war had on the soldiers. The reader was let into the minds of these confused, scared, and brave warriors. I suggest you read this book if you are interested in the Vietnam War or any War for that matter, this is a very good source of knowledge and wisdom.
Rating:
Summary: The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
Review: 'The Things They Carried' was the first novel that I have ever read that gave me a direct insight to the Vietnam War. Sure, I've seen movies such as "Platoon" and "Full Metal Jacket", but I think that reading this book made a bigger impact on my thoughts of the war. In my opinion, there were not many weaknesses to the story. I thought that overall, it was a good read and kept me entertained throughout. Before I started reading the book, I thought that I was going to learn about what each soldier carried around with them for 250 pages. Much to my chagrin, that was not the main plot of the story. The novel did tell the reader what each soldier carried, Henry Dobbins always wrapped his girlfriend's pantyhose around his neck and Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters and photos of a girl named Martha. But there was more to it than that. After the war, each soldier carried home more than decorations on their uniforms. They carried the post war nightmares and in some cases suicidal tendencies that many men experienced.
Rating: 
Summary: One of the not so good war stories
Review: After reading many reviews on Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried" I am going to have to disagree with almost all of them. Many people I have talked to seemed to enjoy this book, I on the other hand did not. "The Things They Carried" started off boring. The first 23 pages were literally about the objects that the men carried while of fighting in Vietnam. For example, "They carried Sterno, safety pins, trip flares, signal flares, spools of wire, razor blades, chewing tobacco, liberated joss sticks..."(p.14) I particularly would have rather liked to read about a man who actually 'fought' in the war. Also, every time O'Brien would say something interesting the next chapter he would come back and say it was not true. For instance, "Norman did not experience a failure of nerve that night. He did not freeze up or lose the Silver Star for valor. That part of the story is my own."(p. 161) I thought about that this and figured what is the point of reading a war story if it is all made up. Well, I did not like this book and I do not recommend it to anyone wanting to read a good war story.
Rating:
Summary: An Amazing Novel by an Outstanding Author
Review: They Things They Carried changed my life. As cliche as it may sound that is the power of this book, of Tim O'Briens writing. I was given the book to read in an English class my second year of college and tore through it in a day. This book is really a collection of essays that deals not only with Vietnam but with how people deal with truth in their lives, how they go about telling the stories of what has affected them.
I can't really put into words how great this book is but I have to say that there are stories in this novel that stick with you for days. Stories that bother you, hurt you, make you laugh, make you cry, make you feel a thousand times over every single emotion in the human heart. Tim O'Brien is a master writer and has written other great books but if he wrote this one alone I would still hold him up as the talent he is.
This book made me want to write, if only once, anything that would come close to how The Things They Carried affected me. I just wish I had a tiny bit of the talent O'Brien has so I could do just that. Read this book. It is more than you can imagine.
Rating:
Summary: A fusion of war and emotions
Review: "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien is one of the best war stories I have read. Tim O'Brien both lives and writes about the emotions of the soldiers in Vietnam that usually gets forgotten in war stories. Instead of all action, all the time, he explores soldier's feelings about fighting in a war they don't think should be happening. I like how he showed love, compassion, hate, anger, suspicion, and confusion all in one novel. In the story, O'Brien describes everything very well. This style of writing allows the reader to feel like they are in the middle of the war themselves. The good descriptive language throughout the novel adds a sense of reality. Tim O'Brien has the difficult task of making sense of everything while in Vietnam. I think he does a very good job of capturing that aspect throughout the novel. The one thing that really confused me, and I am guessing many other readers as well, was differentiating between reality and fiction throughout the novel. Tim O'Brien tried to explain his style of writing in the short story "Good Form," but it still did not clarify why he wrote the way he did. I don't know why Tim O'Brien would make up things just for the novel if he was in the war himself. For example, I thought the story "Sweetheart of Song Tra Bong" about the woman coming over to Vietnam to be with her boyfriend was very unrealistic. It was hard to decipher what was real and what fiction in the story. Despite this, the novel was well-written and well-expressed by Tim O'Brien. I would recommend this novel to anyone who wants to learn a little more about the Vietnam war or likes to read war stories. Not being a very avid reader myself, I found this novel kept me interested until the very end. Usually I am counting the pages to see how many are left until I am done, but this book kept me interested because of the action, adventure, and detail. This novel was very good and I would give it 4 out of 5 stars.
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