Welcome to Litsy!

Went to the library to early vote and was pleased to find this baby in the new nonfiction section. So appropriate to find on voting day. 🗳

This is a long and emotionally heavy book, & I would have taken split it up more if I had more time to keep it. I liked that the essays are from a variety of people—parents, injured, siblings, & survivors who were there but not directly in the shootings. Made me realize just how many people are affected by trauma in our country. Between this & the traumas I tend to work with, I feel like we are raising generations of PTSD kids. 👇

I completed #booked2019 earlier this month. Here‘s what I read—

#bookaboutaddiction: The Year of Less
#politicalintrigue: American Kingpin
#publicdomain: P&P
#publishedin2019: If I Don‘t Make It, I Love You
#pocparanormal: The Unquiet Grave
#soldierstory: Eagle & Crane

Ready for #booked2020!

This book is so dense and so gut wrenching that I couldn‘t read it straight through. At almost 500 pages, every page was difficult to read. There were a lot of lesser known shootings, and I was especially riveted by those pre-Columbine, during a time school shooter hadn‘t yet entered our vernacular. #publishedin2019 #booked2019

Getting ready to start this today. I‘m using this for the book that scares me for the #scaryscavengerhunt. With three kids in college and three in public schools, there‘s not much that scares me more than school shootings.

#scarathlon #teamslaughter @Clwojick

Finally, some fall weather. It‘s very welcome after a week of sweltering 90 degree heat.

I‘m slowly making my way through this one. It‘s certainly not an easy or quick read. Just made it to Columbine. 😞

“Gun violence prevention advocates don‘t want to take away guns. We just don‘t want your guns to take away our lives or the lives of our children.”

^ THIS.

There is no “right” way to survive, you just do what you can and keep moving and fighting. This is the theme of this book on school shooting survivors. Incredibly important. I wish the editors had been a bit more careful as several things slipped through but it was still an immensely moving and heartbreaking read.

This book compiled oral histories of school shooting victims, starting with Santa Fe and working backwards to 1966 and the mass shooting that took place at the University of Texas. The most shocking thing about reading this was realizing how many school shootings have happened that I either don‘t remember or didn‘t even know about. Many of the survivors, regardless of which event, talked about how as soon as they mentioned their connection 👇👇👇

Going to try to start this tonight...😭

Brian has the girls at dance, so after a quick run to Starbucks and the library, I‘m taking a moment to start a new book before a meeting.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ An incredibly tough, but necessary read. As a school shooting survivor - a loose term because, although present, I was not in immediate danger - this book was oddly therapeutic. My school is in here. My brave classmates wrote essays.

PS. The title and cover are tasteless and insensitive. Do better for the survivors! According to a friend who was a contributor, the editors wanted a different cover, but the publisher gave them no choice.

The moment I‘ve been both waiting for and dreading: my school. I was a sophomore when this happened. This difficult book has consumed me for the last 3 days. There are 4 essays from my former classmates. I know them all. One was my neighbor and is a lifelong friend. Our parents still live across the cul de sac from each other. One is the shooter‘s sister. I have mixed feelings, but want to hear her story. She drove him to school that day.