Showing posts with label true crime. Show all posts
Showing posts with label true crime. Show all posts

Monday, February 26, 2018

Small Sacrifices

Small Sacrifices by Ann Rule
1988
Weight: 8 oz
Method of Disposal: Donating


I was working at Waldenbooks in early 2000 when a woman came in to the store proclaiming desperately that this book was her life and that I had to read it to understand her.  I had never met her before, but she pressed a copy of the book into my hands and then bought a copy for her attorney.  She was incredibly emotional and high-strung. 

I bought the book without paying much attention to it.  I was curious, but I was uncomfortable because I knew that Ann Rule was THE true crime author of the time.  I got home and saw the book was about a woman who tried to murder her children, successfully killing one.  I was a teenager.  I was not so sure I should have bought the book.  I hoped that the woman was just a little insane and mostly just a liar.  I put the book away and every time I picked it up I would just put it right back away.  I wondered who the woman thought she was.  The murderer, the child, the prosecution--couldn't be--she said she had an attorney.  Was she just attention-seeking?  I will never know. 

I finally read it this year.  We just moved into a new house, and we have less space even though we like this house better than the last.  We are purging a lot.  I am, of course, still trying to read and let go of all of these books.  There are still SO many.  I knew I wanted to let this one go because of my feelings about true crime and because of all the thoughts it brought up every time I came across it.


Saturday, September 28, 2013

True Crime

Poisoned Love (2005) by Caitlin Rother
The End of the Dream: The Golden Boy Who Never Grew Up and Other True Cases (1999)
Small Sacrifices: A True Story of Passion and Murder (1988)
Too Late to Say Goodbye: A True Story of Murder and Betrayal (2007)
By Ann Rule
Weight: 2 lbs
Method of Disposal: Donating


That question of true crime again.  It just does not seem right to get entertainment from other people's loss, and I have trouble finding a way to make it not entertainment.  I see the usefulness in learning, predicting, preventing--like in the case of domestic violence (Too Late to Say Goodbye), but is that why these are national bestsellers?  Or why there are so many crime shows on tv?  We are horrified and scared, but also enthralled by evil.  Is it because it lives within us?  Do we need something more evil than our evil so that we do not feel so bad?  Do we need to be heros who solve the crimes?  Do we need to see the clues so we can feel confident that it won't happen to us?  I don't know.  I am done getting sucked into these shows and books.  There are some things I will never understand and senseless murder is one of them.