Breakfast! The kitchen bench, Geilston Bay. August 2103. The Things They Carried , Tim O'Brien: a loose collection of vignettes centreing on a platoon of American soldiers in the Vietnam War. Some people really do hate this book, others love it. Count me with the latter. Harrowing. A . A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People From Being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick , Jonathan Swift: Political satire at its best. There is a reason that this is considered part of the canon. A .