Nineteen Minutes refers to the amount of time it took one teenager to get inside his high school with four guns and destroy the life of a town forever.
Don’t be fooled by the cover, the content is billions time better:
The strenght of this book really is how in 455 pages it manages to dig into the messed up hormonal lives of teenagers and show you how cruel they can be to each other. I kept thinking back of my days in high school and it is really easy to believe that such an event can happen.
I hated high school. Everything about it. I wasn’t part of the popular kids, but luckily, I wasn’t part of of the freaks either and I did have some muscular jock-like cousins who would have loved a reason to beat up some asshole making my life a misery, lucky little me. At school, I was too often a silent witness to some other kids not having such a charming time, I didn’t know how to act about it, I don’t know how many times I faked being sick to stay home instead for fear it could happen to me one day, I was almost held back one year. Let’s just say I’m very happy guns weren’t so easily accessible, but then again, I probably would’ve have been “sick” at home if something big would’ve happened like a bullied kid coming to school with a bag full of weapons. The one thing that changed it all for me was the arrival of New Wave music and fashion, it seemed like I finally had a place to fit after all. Thank you B-52′s and your friends, you made me make new ones.
But back to the book: I really enjoyed the pace of the author, going back and forth between the time prior to the killings and the time following as well. You will not fall out of your seats by the conclusion, I saw it coming a mile away, but it didn’t destroy the effect the rest of the story had on me. I would’ve preferred more time spent on the teenagers and a bit less on the adults, although the most touching moments did come from the parents reacting to the main event and the main character. One of the things we find out in the story is how one kid developed a video game taking place in high school where he goes from classroom to classroom, getting access to new weapon and killing the popular kids who bullied him. Sounded like a “cool” game… and then today at Best Buy I saw this:
I strangely want to play it now…
Bully is awesome. It’s really a cute little game and doesn’t glorify violence. It’d probably go along nicely with your nostalgia for high school.
you guys don’t have a ps2 do you? if so, i can lend you a copy of bully
also, another book with a similar topic is “we need to talk about kevin” which was pretty amazing. again, i can lend it to you if you want