The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien is a hard book to read about individual soldiers in Vietnam and they items they carried with them. The book is described on Amazon (available as paperback, Kindle and audio) as follows:

One of the first questions people ask about The Things They Carried is this: Is it a novel, or a collection of short stories? The title page refers to the book simply as “a work of fiction,” defying the conscientious reader’s need to categorize this masterpiece. It is both: a collection of interrelated short pieces which ultimately reads with the dramatic force and tension of a novel. Yet each one of the twenty-two short pieces is written with such care, emotional content, and prosaic precision that it could stand on its own.

You can read The Things They Carried online at Kentucky Skills Lesson Bank.

Consider some of the things you’ve kept from childhood, things you have on the shelf or in a box where you take them out and look at now and then. What have you packed up and taken with you every time you moved? What small item do you carry in your pocket. Write about your relationship to the item, the person who gave it to you and what memories it brings back to you when you hold it.