"The Lords of Discipline" is one of the best novels dealing with male love and friendship that I have ever read. Mr. Conroy has created as realistic a portrait of young adult companionship and comradely as I have found, to date, in literature. This long novel has many themes and characters, but the text is really about its narrator, Will McLean, and his years at a military college, known as "the Institute."The strengths of the book are many, but here are a few that come quickly to mind. The voic...

Wow what a long and deep based book on character study. This was the first book by this author that I have read. I saw parts of the movie along time ago lol. I thought it was a very good book. I am glad I read it. The story moved at a good pace except every once in a while he did get a little flowery with his writing but it was not often or that bad. This whole book for the most part is character driven which is a talent . I Liked the main character and almost all of the secondary characters. Th...

I love Pat Conroy and I don't think I could ever do justice when reviewing any of his books. His writing is always so rich and draws me in with it's vivid imagery and he always somehow manages to convey so much emotion through his writing that I always feel really affected by it even months after reading it. This book was excellent, the characters were deep and complex and the plot line was really heavy but well constructed. He managed to address issues like perceptions of masculinity and social...

Instagram || Twitter || Facebook || Amazon || PinterestI understood for the first time why the punishment for Lot's wife was so severe. There were times when it was unforgivable to look back (88%) This is a dark and edgy book that explores the same themes of innate violence and tribal belonging as LORD OF THE FLIES. Set in a Southern military college, THE LORDS OF DISCIPLINE is about a young Irish Catholic boy named William McLean. Since he's the most liberal and cynical boy in the academy,

This book is set at The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina, which was fictionalized as the Carolina Military Institute. The story starts when our main protagonist, Will McLean, reports to school after summer furlough for his senior year. The flashback narrative gives insight to the hazing and Fourth Class System endured during Knob Year. The story intertwines the bond with his classmates, a love affair, basketball, and his dealings with The Ten. I felt Pat Conroy was a master of the English l...

The Lords of Discipline was extraordinarily accurate and well written. I was a Citadel cadet at the time in which Conroy set his novel. I never knew Conroy. He was one year behind me. By the time he arrived, I had stupidly begun another plebe year at West Point. So, I had two plebe years in a row. That made me in several ways as tough as nails and in other ways it evacuated my soul--for a while. At West Point I made even better friends than I had made at The Citadel. That was the joy of both pla...

I should have been a tough audience for this one this time. I read it eight years ago, and I don't typically reread. What's more, I'm even more dismissive of most fiction than I was then. This one was a five-star, jaw-dropping experience then in a way that is not typically repeatable, especially with more jaded places in my heart than I had then.Is the irrepressible exception, the affirmation of life as a man, maybe especially a southern man, with all of its pain in all its beauty. Whatever book...

I was introduced to this book at Pat Conroy by my high school algebra teacher. She was reading the book just after it came out and suggested that we all read it. I think I may have been the only one who did.I immediately fell in love with this work. Conroy's descriptions of Charleston are priceless. Some of my favorite quotes come from this book.I return to this work yearly to explore my old friends once more and with each reading I find a nuance that I had overlooked in the past.From the openin...

This was the first of Conroy’s novels I ever read. Since that time I have read all of them (there aren’t many, about a half dozen). Lords of Discipline is as forceful a novel as I have read. To describe the plot would not do it justice, but here is the gist. Will Maclean is a cadet at Carolina Military institute (a fictional school in Charleston, SC based largely on The Citadel where Conroy attended). He is asked to look out for the first black incoming freshman in school history and see him thr...

Pat Conroy has done it again! He drew me into The Lords of Discipline both visually and emotionally. I thought I was right there with Will McLean. "I wear the ring.I wear the ring and I return often to the city of Charleston, South Carolina, to study the history of my becoming a man. My approach to Charleston is always silent and distracted, but I come under full sail, with hissing silk and memories a wing above me in the shapes of the birds... But to me, Charleston is a dark city, a melancholy...

My favorite read of the year! Pat Conroy wrote beautifully. I’ve read a few of his books and have loved them all so far. This one is probably my favorite, or at least a close tie with Beach Music. This is the story of a cadet at the Carolina Military Institute in Charleston during the turbulent 1960s. It’s based on Conroy’s own experiences at The Citadel. I read that when Conroy first published this book, his alma mater shunned him for thirty years. While reading this, I couldn’t help but wonder...

As with all Conroy books there are many plot lines in the story. So many, that when they made the movie, they left out the main one! Nevertheless, a writer like Conroy can handle that many stories with his superb prose.As a graduate of West Point we always wondered why people went to the Citadel to be abused. I still wonder although it is an ingrained part of society in that part of the country.Conroy was never afraid to take on difficult topics and his frank look at the racism might even be und...

I already reviewed this book , but for some reason the review appeared under the book 'The Water is Wide' , a book I have never read , even started ? Here is that review of The Lords of Discipline , Book recommended to me by Charlie Donlea . To not give this book 5-stars and add it to my 'favorites' list would be denying my 60 year quest of finding and reading great literature . The author's range of vocabulary had me checking on word definitions in every chapter . His descriptive powers of brin...

Oh wow, just wow.....I know that I should be the president of the "I love Pat Conroy fan club", but this book was just in a word fantastic. I went through the gauntlet of emotions while reading this story. Mr Conroy remains in my mind the consummate story teller. He lays his emotions out in the open and fills his characters with such reality that you would know them if they walked into a room in which you were seated.This book about a young man's coming of age while enrolled in Southern military...

This would be the 3rd unforgettable book I've read by Mr. Conroy in the past year, and to date. I just love reading his work. There is no other way to put it. He just simply writes, in my humble opinion, the most beautiful sentences I have ever read. He has an unflinching capacity to be so brutally honest it often hurts. But it is the greatest pain one can recieve from a great novel. The amount of passion, pain, and pure adrenaline within the pages of this book will not let the reader put this o...

“The objects you valued defined you.” (Page 376, The Lords of Discipline by Pat Conroy). Friedrich Nietzsche said, “There are no beautiful surfaces without a terrible depth.” The Lords of Discipline by Pat Conroy is able to demonstrate this with meticulous detail. It focuses on Will McLean’s dark experiences in his last year at the Carolina Military Institute, a school where administration turns the other cheek to vicious hazing practices designed to produce “real men.” This is a story about lov...

Wow this is a rough Read. Interesting what was expected or accepted during the Vietnam War. There was no room for the week. These young men were put through rigorous and demeaning torture that was definitely the actions of ruthless young men that had a history of violence or abuse in their younger lives. The power hungry, older officers should have been charged with Conduct Unbecoming an Officer and a Gentleman. On the flip side there was a group of friends that were very loyal to each other...o...

I'm a bit scared that I won't be able to describe how much I love this book and that I’ll screw up this review. Every time I have the same problem with Conroy. Every time when I finish reading ''him'' I have this properly deep ache. I get spoiled and I find myself measuring almost everything I’ve read so far. I even get angry because I know it will take a long and thorough research to find book(s), author(s) that could replace this Pat Conroy feeling. And I never do find them, I never managed. T...

Wow. An incredibly in-depth novel about life for young men in a military school. Hilarious, tragic, and sobering, THE LORDS OF DISCIPLINE is one of the best books I've ever read.

One for my six-star shelf, another Conroy gem.