What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

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denismurf
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by denismurf »

I'm almost finished re-reading The Good Soldier Schveik, by Jaroslav Hasek. I now know a lot more about WW I and its effects in eastern Europe than I knew the first time around. This horrible event has little funny written about it. This is a glimmer, first published in Czech right after WW I and published as an English translation in 1973.

Basically it's about how the title character, an older Czech guy who gets drafted to fight in the Austro-Hungarian army, wanders around behind the lines screwing up everything he touches and thus avoiding the front line slaughterhouse, despite the fact that he has orders to join his regiment and claims to be trying real hard to do so.

Today I got a serious case of the giggles as Schveik contributes to the SNAFU surrounding an offensive that the inept Austrian generals and the clueless lower officers think they are carrying out against Serbia, or maybe Russia, or maybe Galicia. Nobody can figure that out.

It's similar to MASH in that gung-ho officers and politicians come across as idiots. I suggest you read this book for the laughs, not for any historical information or enlightenment.

Some familiarity with the history and demographics of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the early 20th century is helpful. Germans were at the top of the Empire's pecking order, followed by Hungarians, and, at the bottom, Czechs and other Slavs.
Valuethinker
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by Valuethinker »

denismurf wrote:I'm almost finished re-reading The Good Soldier Schveik, by Jaroslav Hasek. I now know a lot more about WW I and its effects in eastern Europe than I knew the first time around. This horrible event has little funny written about it. This is a glimmer, first published in Czech right after WW I and published as an English translation in 1973.

Basically it's about how the title character, an older Czech guy who gets drafted to fight in the Austro-Hungarian army, wanders around behind the lines screwing up everything he touches and thus avoiding the front line slaughterhouse, despite the fact that he has orders to join his regiment and claims to be trying real hard to do so.

Today I got a serious case of the giggles as Schveik contributes to the SNAFU surrounding an offensive that the inept Austrian generals and the clueless lower officers think they are carrying out against Serbia, or maybe Russia, or maybe Galicia. Nobody can figure that out.

It's similar to MASH in that gung-ho officers and politicians come across as idiots. I suggest you read this book for the laughs, not for any historical information or enlightenment.

Some familiarity with the history and demographics of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the early 20th century is helpful. Germans were at the top of the Empire's pecking order, followed by Hungarians, and, at the bottom, Czechs and other Slavs.
In fact the performance of the Austro Hungarian army in WW1 was so bad that the book is probably not an exaggeration-- was Hasek a veteran? The army had something like 16 languages in it.

They actually were defeated by the Serbians, decisively, on the first invasion (a country about 5% of their size). And yes, Galicia against the Russians was a total disaster. Max Hasting on the first 100 days of the war is very good on this (he says there's no point showing the armies on the maps, they moved to and fro so much).

The exception was the Tirolian and Isonzo fronts against the Italians, where primarily Austrian troops (mountain troops) distinguished themselves in what was some of WW1's hardest fighting. For a war Italy entered into against parliamentary and popular will (there was a secret deal in which the British and French promised Italy territorial gains from Austria Hungary) the Italians really took it on the nose.

In Tirol (which was partitioned between Italy and Austria post war) you can still see the memorials in all the churches in the villages. Long long lists of young men who died in WW1 and then fighting for the Nazis in WW2. By contrast, in Britain the WW1 memorial lists are very long, but the WW2 ones are much shorter, usually. However a lot more British civilians were killed in WW2.
denismurf
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by denismurf »

"In fact the performance of the Austro Hungarian army in WW1 was so bad that the book is probably not an exaggeration-- was Hasek a veteran? The army had something like 16 languages in it."

Yes, Hasek served in the Austro=Hungarian Army and was captured by the Russians, eventually ending up in the Czech Legion. There's nothing about that in this book. Too bad, since Hasek is such a good writer.

Again, though, this book has little value as a source of historical facts and should be read for the laughs.
jdb
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by jdb »

Just finished The Beauty And The Sorrow by Peter Englund, referred to in another thread on this site regarding WWI books. Swedish historian compiles memoirs and correspondence of twenty men and women throughout the countries affected, some of whom did not survive war, and tells their stories. Apropos Valuethinker comments about the Italian front in mountains, one of true stories is about young Italian American from New York who with several friends travels on ship to Italy to volunteer with Italian Army for glory of Italian fatherland. Becomes disillusioned as soon as joins troops when ridiculed for leaving safe home to fight in crazy war. When gets to front line trenches in mountains his regiment is told to start firing rifles as soon as got dark and continue firing until dawn, to keep enemy troops awake and stop any sneak attacks. Only effect was to keep Italian army awake and waste ammunition. Getting lots of good book recommendations on this site, thanks everyone.
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theunknowntech
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by theunknowntech »

denismurf wrote:I'm almost finished re-reading The Good Soldier Schveik, by Jaroslav Hasek. I now know a lot more about WW I and its effects in eastern Europe than I knew the first time around. This horrible event has little funny written about it. This is a glimmer, first published in Czech right after WW I and published as an English translation in 1973.

Basically it's about how the title character, an older Czech guy who gets drafted to fight in the Austro-Hungarian army, wanders around behind the lines screwing up everything he touches and thus avoiding the front line slaughterhouse, despite the fact that he has orders to join his regiment and claims to be trying real hard to do so.

Today I got a serious case of the giggles as Schveik contributes to the SNAFU surrounding an offensive that the inept Austrian generals and the clueless lower officers think they are carrying out against Serbia, or maybe Russia, or maybe Galicia. Nobody can figure that out.

It's similar to MASH in that gung-ho officers and politicians come across as idiots. I suggest you read this book for the laughs, not for any historical information or enlightenment.

Some familiarity with the history and demographics of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the early 20th century is helpful. Germans were at the top of the Empire's pecking order, followed by Hungarians, and, at the bottom, Czechs and other Slavs.
Schweik is a fabulous book. Black humor at its best, it doesn't get any better than that. Well, actually it does, if you consider Kafka funny (I do, as he intended, nobody could hold it in when he was doing readings.)

If you want a good cry, read the Max Hastings books on WWII, particularly "Retribution". I have one of his more recent books about the Eastern Front at the top of my book pile. It requires a certain determination, I'm almost afraid of it.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by a »

The Tempest, Act 4, Scene 1

The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

There are three pairs of (adjective) (building)
in succession. It is lovely, economical imagery for
the course of life.

Clouds are blank, yet can be shaped to any form.
Like the mind of a child. As children, the building
that represents the nexus of our endeavors is the
school building. Knowledge is commonly symbolized by
a tower.

Now a young adult, the person has enough of a blade
to be dangerous. The central act of
younger adult life is to decide on a goal and turn it into
reality. What usually decides this goal? How it looks to
others. Hence the adjective is gorgeous, meaning that
the goal is pursued for no other reason than that it
(via some external sight) inspires awe in others.

Finally, solemnity sets in - the age of action is over.
The person looks at the effects
of her actions on other people. The years of slaving did
little for other people or even harmed them. A temple
is the natural building, where one can contemplate in
silence and away from the pointless spinning of life,
and repent of the damage one has visited upon others.

The buildings decrease in height. The "fourth" building
is where we are ultimately going - all
the way back down to the earth.

There is something
evocative about the three words "great globe itself"
in that order.
They bring to mind a feeling of something majestic
and non-physical, which then condenses on the surface of
something hard and real and circular, and then into
a nucleus contained within the circle.

http://shakespeare.mit.edu/tempest/tempest.4.1.html
gkaplan
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by gkaplan »

I have been reading The Mask: a Vanessa Michael Munroe Novel by Taylor Stevens.

Vanessa Michael Munroe, chameleon and information hunter, has a reputation for getting things done: dangerous and not quite legal things, in some of the world’s deadliest places. Still healing from a brutal attack that left her near death, Munroe joins her lover, Miles Bradford, in Japan where he’s working as a security consultant protecting high-value technology from industrial espionage. In the domesticity of their routine, Munroe finds long sought after peace – until Bradford is arrested for murder. She will soon discover how far she’ll go to save him from twenty years in locked-up isolation; how many laws she’ll break when the truth seems worse than his lies; and whom to trust and whom she’ll kill. Why? Because she’s a strategist and hunter with a predator’s instincts, and the man she loves has just stabbed her in the back.

This is the fifth book in this series, not including a novella that tied up loosed ends from the third book and lead into the fourth. As in all her books, it took me some time before I got into it. I think this is because her voice, or rather that of Vanessa Michael, is so unique. It's time well spent, though, and I look forward to Stevens' next book and the further exploits and adventures of Vanessa Michael Munroe.
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black jack
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by black jack »

Just finished "Natural Born Heroes" by Christopher NacDougall.

Some may be familiar with MacDougall's previous book, "Born to Run," which inspired many (including me) to dispense with running shoes and experiment with barefoot running (being a tenderfoot, I opted for rubber soles with no padding - swim shoes, and after a year or so went back to shoes, albeit minimalist running shoes - Nike Free 3.0s).

I picked this book up with a slight feeling of guilt that it was a diversion from my WWII reading project, but found it was not. As MacDougall says, he wanted to write two different books - one about a physical training approach called Natural Movement, and the other about an amazing episode from WWII, the kidnapping of a German general by British and Cretan guerrillas on Crete (which was occupied by the Germans) - and ended up tying them together by deciding that the Brits and Cretans were heroes, and that the art of the hero was the art of natural movement. I'm not persuaded that he succeeded in turning those two books into a coherent volume, but MacDougall is a good writer, and this book is full of interesting characters and recounts a gripping event. And this book has put a half-dozen more books on my reading list, going in both directions (Crete and Natural Movement).

I'd never heard of the kidnapping of General Kreipe, nor of the occupation of Crete by the Germans, though apparently many considered the island a strategic key for the invasion of the Soviet Union: MacDougall, or military historians he relies upon (there is a chapter-by-chapter bibliography but no footnotes) and some German officers - and even Marshal Zhukov, according to a quote - considered the resistance in Crete to have played a key role in halting the German advance into Russia, by delaying the German invasion of Russia by several weeks, and thus causing them to miss part of the window for operations before the onset of winter. Part of the book details MacDougall's attempt - following along with a British therapist whose hobby is researching the kidnapping - to trace the route of the guerrillas as they spirited Kreipe across the island, past tens of thousands of German troops searching for them, to a submarine pickup.

As for Natural Movement, I'd read a tiny bit about it before, and know a tiny bit more now, and will look into it more. Under this notion MacDougall also touches on Parkour, fascia tissue, and Dr. Phil Maffetone's ideas about the value of a high-fat low-carbohydrate diet for endurance running (validated by the success of some of the people who followed this program, including Mark Allen of Ironman Triathlon fame).

And there is this, from a conversation with a Cretan who was one of the Resistance fighters:
Would you do it again? Now that you're ninety-one years old, looking back--the Germans were murdering entire villages. Was it wise to put your family at risk?..
"It's a good question," Yiorgos said, and then gave an answer which stayed with me for a long time and, the more I thought about it, kept extending further and further--from the four of us around the table to the ends of that tiny village, all the way across this embattled island and back to my own home and family. "When you live in a place like this--small, by itself--you're brought up to give help, not wait for it," Yiorgos began. When your neighbor needs something, he needs you. The person he knows. Not the army. Not the police. You. And if you're not there, someday you'll have to look him in the face and explain why..."The Germans didn't know us, and they believed they could not lose," Yiorgos continued. "They believed they'd never have to look anyone in the face and explain. They'd never have to pay for what they did. And I believe that is why we defeated them." Because we have to answer to one another, and they did not.
We cannot absolutely prove [that they are wrong who say] that we have seen our best days. But so said all who came before us, and with just as much apparent reason. | -T. B. Macaulay (1800-1859)
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bertilak
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by bertilak »

black jack wrote:... about an amazing episode from WWII, the kidnapping of a German general by British and Cretan guerrillas on Crete (which was occupied by the Germans) ...
You might also enjoy Ill Met by Moonlight by W. Stanley Moss, a British agent. Moss was involved in the kidnapping and gives his first-hand account in this book, first published in 1950. Highly recommended.

Two other first-hand accounts I have read about the Cretan wartime experience are:
Hide and Seek: The Story of a Wartime Agent by Xan Fielding, also a British Agent. First published in 1954. Also relates his short (close call) experiences as an agent in France after he left Crete.
The Cretan Runner: His Story of the German Occupation by George Pschoundakis, a young Cretan shepherd at the time. First published in 1955.
Both also recommended.
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seeshells
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by seeshells »

'Backstage Wall Street' An insiders guide to knowing who to trust, who to run from, as well as maximize your investments by Joshua Brown
jdb
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by jdb »

bertilak wrote:
black jack wrote:... about an amazing episode from WWII, the kidnapping of a German general by British and Cretan guerrillas on Crete (which was occupied by the Germans) ...
You might also enjoy Ill Met by Moonlight by W. Stanley Moss, a British agent.
+1. A true story far better than fiction. The British Commando leading the kidnapping of the German General was Major Patrick Leigh Fermor, author of two of my all time favorite travelogues, A Time of Gifts and Between The Woods and The Water. My abiding recollection of the kidnapping story was Major Fermor and General Kreipe resting on top of mountain in Crete, when General Kreipe recited first verse of poem by Horace which dealt with same mountain. In Latin. Major Fermor then finished the poem in Latin. The General just looked at him. Major Fermor said in his autobiography that they had drank from the same fountain of knowledge. Definitely worth reading.
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black jack
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by black jack »

bertilak wrote:
black jack wrote:... about an amazing episode from WWII, the kidnapping of a German general by British and Cretan guerrillas on Crete (which was occupied by the Germans) ...
You might also enjoy Ill Met by Moonlight by W. Stanley Moss, a British agent. Moss was involved in the kidnapping and gives his first-hand account in this book, first published in 1950. Highly recommended.

Two other first-hand accounts I have read about the Cretan wartime experience are:
Hide and Seek: The Story of a Wartime Agent by Xan Fielding, also a British Agent. First published in 1954. Also relates his short (close call) experiences as an agent in France after he left Crete.
The Cretan Runner: His Story of the German Occupation by George Pschoundakis, a young Cretan shepherd at the time. First published in 1955.
Both also recommended.
Thanks for the recommendation; in fact, those are among the books I intend to read after having learned of them through Natural Born Heroes.
We cannot absolutely prove [that they are wrong who say] that we have seen our best days. But so said all who came before us, and with just as much apparent reason. | -T. B. Macaulay (1800-1859)
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black jack
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by black jack »

jdb wrote:
bertilak wrote:
black jack wrote:... about an amazing episode from WWII, the kidnapping of a German general by British and Cretan guerrillas on Crete (which was occupied by the Germans) ...
You might also enjoy Ill Met by Moonlight by W. Stanley Moss, a British agent.
+1. A true story far better than fiction. The British Commando leading the kidnapping of the German General was Major Patrick Leigh Fermor, author of two of my all time favorite travelogues, A Time of Gifts and Between The Woods and The Water. My abiding recollection of the kidnapping story was Major Fermor and General Kreipe resting on top of mountain in Crete, when General Kreipe recited first verse of poem by Horace which dealt with same mountain. In Latin. Major Fermor then finished the poem in Latin. The General just looked at him. Major Fermor said in his autobiography that they had drank from the same fountain of knowledge. Definitely worth reading.
Thanks for the recommendation; I have both of these books on my Kindle to read, having learned about Leigh Fermor through Natural Born Heroes.

MacDougall quotes (more or less) Leigh Fermor saying it was luck that Kreipe quoted the opening lines of the one Horace ode that he knew by heart; perhaps it was the best-known one. :happy

MacDougall also quotes Xan Fielding saying it was an amazing thing about Leigh Fermor's character: they had both backpacked through Europe (separately), but Fielding had usually slept rough, while Leigh Fermor seemed to always end up being invited to stay in great houses.

For those who already knew about these people and this tale, MacDougall's bibliography includes two recent books:
Abducting a General: The Kreipe Operation and SOE in Crete, by Patrick Leigh Fermor (2014 - published posthumously, as Fermor died in 2011.
Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure, by Artemis Cooper (2012).)

There's much more of interest in this miscellany of a book: the archeology and history of Crete (site of the Minoan civilization, of the Minotaur, and birthplace of Zeus); about the recruitment of scholars - archeologists, classicists - into the special British unit that then sent these men to aid the Resistance on Crete; on the Mediterranean diet (which comes from Crete, naturally :happy ); on Fairbairn and Sykes (of the Fairbairn-Sykes commando knife), their activities in Shanghai back when Shanghai was still Shanghai (the place that gave us the verb "shanghaied") and then as trainers to the British SOE; and much more that I can't recall at this moment.
We cannot absolutely prove [that they are wrong who say] that we have seen our best days. But so said all who came before us, and with just as much apparent reason. | -T. B. Macaulay (1800-1859)
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ruralavalon
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by ruralavalon »

Magna Carta, with commentary by David Carpenter. Very interesting to read on the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta, issued June 1215. I was surprised to learn that the original issue of the charter did not end the warfare between the king and barons, but only led to a few months pause in the combat. I did not know that there were then several new versions of the charter issued over the next 40 years or so, each with substantial changes. The commentator discussed at length the preliminaries to the original charter as well as the effect and lack of effect of each version the charter on not only the king and barons, but also on the knights, other freemen, women, towns and cities, Jews and unfree peasants.
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gkaplan
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by gkaplan »

I just finished reading The Precipice by Paul Doiron.

When two young female hikers disappear in the Hundred Mile Wilderness, the most remote stretch along the entire two-thousand mile Appalachian Trail, Maine game warden Mike Bowditch joins the search to find them. The police interview everyone they can find who came in contact with the college students and learn that the women were lovers who had been keeping their relationship secret from their Evangelical parents in Georgia. When two corpses are discovered, the bones picked clean by coyotes, rumors spread that the women were stalked and killed by the increasingly aggressive canines. Faced with a statewide panic, Maine's governor places an emergency bounty on every dead coyote, and wildlife officials are tasked with collecting the carcasses. Despite some misgivings, Bowditch does his grisly job. But he finds his complacency challenged by his new girlfriend, the brilliant but volatile biologist Stacey Stevens, who insists coyotes merely scavenged the bodies after the women were murdered. When Stacey herself disappears on the outskirts of the Hundred Mile Wilderness, Bowditch realizes that locating her means he must also discover the truth behind what happened to the two hikers. Were the young women really killed by coyotes or, as Stacey insisted, were they murdered by the most dangerous animal in the North Woods?

The publisher provided the preceding description, with some editing on my part. This is the sixth book in the Mike Bowditch series. I highly recommend this series. All the books have been great reads.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by Sapho »

I am currently reading "Season of the witch" by David Talbot. Its about the history of San Francisco between the 60's and early 80's. :happy
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by a »

Yuval Noah Harari
Sapiens: A brief history of humankind

This book is good in that it altered my viewpoint of
human history in the way of the correct posed questions.
For example, he
proposes that capitalism is at heart an assumption
that production can increase over time (the pie
enlarges over time) which was a novel idea. However,
this idea could not even be conceived until the use of
money had become universal. Well, whether or not you
agree with whether the invention of money is necessary
to increase production, his point that banks (since
they lend at a multiple of their reserves) essentially
multiply money and are thus the enabler of capitalism..

Then the question is: why did it take 10,000
years from the invention of money (just guessing at the
actual figure from memory) for true capitalism to
arise?

--

(8/19/2015) I don't know if the benefit of history
is so that we
do not repeat mistakes, but reading history does seem
to be a good compendium of facts. I think I finally
understand the symbolism of the zero gravity toilet
in the 2nd musical sequence in 2001: a space odyssey.

In Sapiens, Y.N.Harari talks about laws being the first
codification of society or justice. The Code of Hammurabi
was important because it actually laid out rules - collected
on orderly stone(?) tablets - for listing how much a
certain crime was worth in money before the "debt"
could be repaid. (or at least just listing clear
rules for a sense of equal justice for the first time)

Well, that 2nd musical sequence being I think a symbolic
visual representation of the course of human history, the
zero gravity toilet being the last* scene, with its long list
of rules that do evoke the image of Hammurabi's Code,
seems to be Kubrick saying that Laws, and Society are the
final triumphant invention that led us to today's
great civilization.

*near last

This parallels the scene in The Godfather where Clemenza
is taking a traitor to be executed. Clemenza relieves himself
in the grass while his henchman carries out the execution
(three shots in the back of the head)

Both scenes signify the expelling of human waste as
a symbol for the expelling of the waste elements of society.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by gkaplan »

I just finished Clutch of Constables by Ngaio Marsh.

Clutch of Constables is the twenty-fifth novel to feature Roderick Alleyn and was first published in 1968. The plot concerns art forgery and takes place on a cruise on a fictional river in the Norfolk Broads, a network of mostly navigable rivers and lakes in the English counties of Norfolk and Suffolk. The "Constable" referred to in the title is John Constable, whose works are mentioned by several characters. Constable lived from 1776 to 1837 and was an English romantic painter, known mostly for his landscape paintings of the area surrounding his home.

This is another great Ngaio Marsh read. It seems like it would make a great movie too; however, to the best of my knowledge, no Ngaio Marsh novels have been made into a movie or even a miniseries. This is somewhat of a surprise to me, since Ms. Marsh has a theater background, and many of her novels have a theater setting or have a theater feel to them.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by abuss368 »

I finally finished "King of Capital"- a story of The Blackstone Group. Good book.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by heartwood »

I'm a third of the way into The Cartel by Don Winslow. I've read most of his prior novels and enjoyed them. The current book is about the Mexican drug wars, so far from the Mexican perspective. It's unrelentingly brutal in its depictions, perhaps more so than I want to pursue. It's well written, but so dark.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by LadyGeek »

LadyGeek wrote:Dead Shift, by Richard Phillips. This is Book 3 (of 3) of the Rho Agenda Inception series. After that, I'll read the Rho Agenda series.
I thought this looked familiar - I've already read the Rho Agenda series. :oops:

However, I liked it so much, I'm reading the series again.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by Valuethinker »

black jack wrote:
I'd never heard of the kidnapping of General Kreipe, nor of the occupation of Crete by the Germans, though apparently many considered the island a strategic key for the invasion of the Soviet Union: MacDougall, or military historians he relies upon (there is a chapter-by-chapter bibliography but no footnotes) and some German officers - and even Marshal Zhukov, according to a quote - considered the resistance in Crete to have played a key role in halting the German advance into Russia, by delaying the German invasion of Russia by several weeks, and thus causing them to miss part of the window for operations before the onset of winter. Part of the book details MacDougall's attempt - following along with a British therapist whose hobby is researching the kidnapping - to trace the route of the guerrillas as they spirited Kreipe across the island, past tens of thousands of German troops searching for them, to a submarine pickup.
Very interesting review.

I'd question the point about Operation Barbarossa though (the invasion of USSR on 22nd June 1941, arguably the key turning point of the war, along with Pearl Harbor, because the 2 events brought onto the Allied side the 2 most powerful industrial and military nations on the planet, thus giving the Allies, eventually, an overwhelming numerical and materiel advantage).

The invasion of Greece *may* have delayed Barbarossa by about one month. Annoyed by Hitler's surprise attack on the west, without informing him, Mussolini invaded Greece from Albania, against his military advisers' best judgement. The Italians got slaughtered by the Greeks and were near collapse. That led the British to offer aid to Greece. The threat of allied bombers within reach of the key oilfields in Rumania at Ploesti, stirred Hitler to action (he was always, down to 1945, focused on economic strategic threats: hence the drive into the Caucus Mts. and Russia's oil supply in 1942, and the counterattack in Hungary in January 1945). So a Balkans adventure was authorised.

However an additional factor was very heavy spring rains. The Germans had to wait until the Belarus and Ukrainian soil had dried up enough for their Panzers to advance (later on, the Germans would fit much wider, Soviet style tracks, to allow movement in soft ground).

The Germans easily overran the Greeks in Thessaloniki and, by advancing through Yugoslavia (which had turned pro Allied in a coup) turned the British line and forced a hurried evacuation (to Crete) of British and New Zealand forces.

Crete? Hitler's military advisers, particularly Admiral Raeder, head of the Kriegsmarine, argued for Malta. Von der Hydte's parachute division was ready. But Hitler wanted Crete, to allow German bombers to threaten British shipping in the Suez Canal and Red Sea (again, an example of Hitler's "intuitive" strategic reasoning-- the main difference from Churchill was that the Imperial War Cabinet could, and did, overrule Churchill and his crazy ideas, whereas OKW did what Hitler said).

So the attack on Crete, defended bitterly by the New Zealanders and their Greek allies. Without air superiority, once the Germans had taken one of the key airfields (despite ULTRA, General Freyberg had not ordered the runways destroyed-- a classic case of the confusion of higher command which dogged the British in early WW2), the north coast of the island and the incomparable anchorage at Souda Bay fell-- to this day, I am told, a New Zealander in a some of those tavernas will not be allowed to pay-- the graves bare silent witness to their sacrifices-- of all the western allies, New Zealand incurred the highest percentage casualties as a per cent of population. Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honour trilogy has a memorable account of the retreat to the south coast of Crete under German air attack, and a memorable description of the British reaction to Churchill.

But by that time the Panzers had already taken Athens, and Corinth, and were headed north, to the most titanic and pivotal struggle in human history, "the Stalin front".

The Royal Navy suffered heavy casualties trying to get the troops off. Critical,irreplaceable destroyers and cruisers were lost. Ships we needed in the Med and the Battle of the Atlantic, which could not be replaced. Lord Mountbatten's own destroyer, HMS Kelly, went down off Crete. "Fifty fathoms five".

The movie In Which we Serve, by Noel Coward, is the story of the Kelly told with the conceit of the sailors clining to the wreckage being strafed by German fighters. As each wave of fighters roll in, the movie cuts to flashbacks. If you want a "wartime spirit" movie about Britain, this is one of the best*. The scene where the air raid hits the sailor's home town is one I can still remember 40 years after I first saw it. This is a propaganda movie, but it is propaganda written with all the subtlety that masters of the cinema could master. And of course my father lived in a port town during the Blitz (a German parachute mine shattered the centre of the town) and so I can see his shadow in there (he was strafed on the beach one day, at his funeral his little sister, my aunt, spoke of him saving her by pushing her under the water).

What Crete did do, by inflicting such heavy losses on Von Der Hydte's men, was sour Hitler on future paratroop operations. It saved Malta. My source is primarily Antony Beevor's history of the Battle of Crete. Plus Stephen Roskill's history of the Royal Navy in WW2 (Kindle had a sale on the full 4 volumes).

I don't think it (Crete) delayed the Russian invasion meaningfully-- or at least I have never read a plausible argument to that effect.

The resistance came later, and was basically a sideshow. Aside from some attacks on the railways, the British were basically playing in the SOE in Greece, and fell afoul of communist v. rightist Greek politics, which exploded into a nasty civil war in 1944 when the Germans pulled out.

* there's a group of movies:

- Fires Were Started - used non professional actors for a fire fighting squad in London during the Blitz
- Went the Day Well? (Jack Higgins later reimagined this as The Eagle Has Landed) - a German parachute unit, disguised as allied soldiers, takes control of an English village. The contrast between the well-loved stock characters of an English village, and the bucolic scene, and the desperate effort to escape and warn the British forces, is still striking. Watch what the village nosey parker does, and think about watching that in a wartime cinema. Or in 1941 *young women* taking up rifles and shooting German infiltrators. It's a film that has been called 'subversive propaganda' and it shows it

- Target for Tonight- an early night mission over Germany and the fate of a bomber crew shot down

If war movies now are frequently hackneyed and cliched (Saving Private Ryan comes to mind) then it's because someone had to create those precedents, and those films do that.

Then there are the documentaries:

- London Can Take It (later: Britain can take it) -made for the American audience, to convince the American public that Britain's will was intact
- The Lion Has Wings - the Royal Air Force in the early days
- Listening to Britain

In that last one, the singer Myra Hess is singing at the National Gallery. The paintings had been hidden in a nearby Tube shaft. But it gave lunchtime concerts. And there sitting in the audience is Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. The murmur in the audience when I saw that movie, 60 years later, was noticeable.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by Puakinekine »

As you all ( English really needs a better plural 2nd person pronoun) are back onto World War II UK experience, I thought I would recommend Kate Atkinson's Life After Life, and A God in Ruins. Atkinson was especially able to capture the idea that the English were as much defeated (emotionally, perhaps more so) as the Germans were after the two world wars. I listened to the audio versions, so am not as sure about how they read in print. I apologize if someone already has mentioned these.

I have started William Finnegan's Barbarian Days: A Surfers Life, and his description of life in Honolulu in the 60's rings true, something extremely rare in anyone writing about Hawaii. That part of the book was published in the New Yorker in June. I highly recommend reading the New Yorker essay as an introduction to some excellent writing, if you don't want to take a chance on buying the book.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/ ... d-finnegan
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by galectin »

Going Postal

by the late Terry Prachett
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by Wolf »

Hello - first official post!

I'm excited to be here.

Currently reading Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson.
There are 86,400 seconds in a day. They don't carry over. They don't earn interest. Take every moment and make something positive of it.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by gkaplan »

Valuethinker wrote:....
Then there are the documentaries:

- London Can Take It (later: Britain can take it) -made for the American audience, to convince the American public that Britain's will was intact
- The Lion Has Wings - the Royal Air Force in the early days
- Listening to Britain

In that last one, the singer Myra Hess is singing at the National Gallery. The paintings had been hidden in a nearby Tube shaft. But it gave lunchtime concerts. And there sitting in the audience is Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. The murmur in the audience when I saw that movie, 60 years later, was noticeable.
VT, Are you sure this was Myra Hess? Myra Hess was a pianist.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by theunknowntech »

nisiprius wrote:Currently reading Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety, by Eric Schlosser. I think it was Valuethinker who suggested it to me. Excellent.

I sort of lived through those years but wasn't following the historical texture and changes in policy, etc. Along the way it inspired me to rent and view the 1955 James Stewart movie, "Strategic Air Command" which was... interesting. Big-deal wide-screen Technicolor, not-quite-docudrama, not-quite-propaganda. Lots of shots of what I believe to have been real B-36's and B-47's. Stewart was sorta-kinda before my time but this movie made me realize he was quite a good actor--not the kind of actor who turns into another person, but the kind of actor who retains his identity but convinces you that everything is really happening.
Jimmy Stewart was actually there as a bomber pilot during the raids over Germany. I'm not sure that it was acting. There are contemporary stories about how he seemed "kind of nervous" there. Who can blame him.

I totally agree with the recommendation of 'Command and Control'. That was a different time, in the early days. One of my great heroes, Johnny von Neumann, a totally brilliant guy, was a fervent advocate of a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the Soviet Union. I found it difficult to come to terms with that for a long time, I had to follow up on it. But he WAS a Hungarian. The great heroes of the early+ Cold War were the people who stopped that sort of thinking, and saved us all. Again, look at 'Command and Control', it's a fabulous read.

Speaking about what it felt like on the ground, 'The Fire' (Jorg Friedrich) will shake your confidence about what it all really meant.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by a »

Welcome to the board, Wolf. :)
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by ruralavalon »

Wolf wrote:Hello - first official post!

I'm excited to be here.

Currently reading Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson.
Welcome to the forum :) .

I read that too, it's a very good book in my opinion.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by pezblanco »

ruralavalon wrote:
Wolf wrote:Hello - first official post!

I'm excited to be here.

Currently reading Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson.
Welcome to the forum :) .

I read that too, it's a very good book in my opinion.
Everything I've read by Erik Larson has been very worthwhile. Dead Wake was great.

Because I liked it so much, I read an older one of his books: Thunderstruck. It is about the intertwined lives
and times of Marconi and the start of Wireless Telegraphy and the notorious wife murderer Crippen. Highly recommended.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by Wolf »

pezblanco wrote:
ruralavalon wrote:
Wolf wrote:Hello - first official post!

I'm excited to be here.

Currently reading Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson.
Welcome to the forum :) .

I read that too, it's a very good book in my opinion.
Everything I've read by Erik Larson has been very worthwhile. Dead Wake was great.

Because I liked it so much, I read an older one of his books: Thunderstruck. It is about the intertwined lives
and times of Marconi and the start of Wireless Telegraphy and the notorious wife murderer Crippen. Highly recommended.
Thanks for the kind words, ruralavalon, pezblanco, a!

I'm really enjoying it so far. I've read The Devil in the White City and In the Garden of Beasts by Larson as well. In the Garden of Beasts is a bit slow but a good read. I cannot recommend The Devil in the White City highly enough. It's about the architect of the 1893 Chicago Worlds Fair and his struggles to organize and build the fair, juxtaposed with one of the worst serial killers in US history (lesser known due to Jack The Ripper being the news story at the time). This killer, Dr. H. H. Holmes, preyed on women attending the fair. It's being made into a movie with Scorsese and DiCaprio at the helm.

I'll definitely check out Thunderstruck. Sounds very interesting.
There are 86,400 seconds in a day. They don't carry over. They don't earn interest. Take every moment and make something positive of it.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by Bungo »

Byzantium: The Early Centuries by John Julius Norwich. This is the first of a three-volume series spanning the 1100+ year history of the Byzantine Empire (300-1453). At only about 350-400 pages per volume, that means that on average, the author covers about one year per page! Even with the relatively narrow focus adopted by Norwich, which is very much emperor-centric, the pace is pretty brisk, and it's challenging to keep track of who is who: there were 88 emperors, many with similar or even identical names, and enough intermarriage to make the family trees quite complicated.

Fortunately, Norwich provides both family trees and timelines, as well as a decent set of maps. Also, the current year is displayed at the top of each page. Nonetheless, this is a fairly challenging read due to the sheer information density. (Incidentally, he somehow managed to condense the already-brisk three volumes into a single-volume version, A Short History of Byzantium; I can't imagine how.)

It's also an incredibly interesting read, due in no small part to Norwich's lively writing style. The subject itself is fascinating: many of the emperors were very colorful characters, and Norwich includes enough detail that there's something astonishing happening on nearly every page. His sharp sense of humor and deft turns of phrase make the prose itself very pleasant to read. He is not shy about stating his opinions and judgments. This is not dry history by any means. Highly recommended!
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by bertilak »

Bungo wrote:Byzantium: The Early Centuries by John Julius Norwich. ...

It's also an incredibly interesting read, due in no small part to Norwich's lively writing style. The subject itself is fascinating: many of the emperors were very colorful characters, and Norwich includes enough detail that there's something astonishing happening on nearly every page. His sharp sense of humor and deft turns of phrase make the prose itself very pleasant to read. He is not shy about stating his opinions and judgments. This is not dry history by any means. Highly recommended!
Thanks for the review. I have had that three volume set on my shelf for quite some time. It looks both interesting AND intimidating. I have every intention of reading it but have been putting it off until I feel I am ready to devote some serious time to it. (It's just too easy to work through my Agatha Christie Poirot collection instead.) The above description may help me get there sooner!

I already finished The Fall of Constantinople 1453 by Steven Runciman. Engrossing! Being only one reasonable sized volume it is not so intimidating.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by Bungo »

bertilak wrote: Thanks for the review. I have had that three volume set on my shelf for quite some time. It looks both interesting AND intimidating. I have every intention of reading it but have been putting it off until I feel I am ready to devote some serious time to it. (It's just too easy to work through my Agatha Christie Poirot collection instead.) The above description may help me get there sooner!
Yes, I've had the set on my shelf for some years as well. Now that I'm reading the first volume, I can say that it's much more interesting and much less intimidating than I expected. It's extremely readable and accessible, and doesn't require much in the way of background; if you are passingly familiar with the Roman Empire and the geography of the region, and have a vague recollection of the various barbarian tribes and the existence of the Persian Empire to the east, that should be enough (based on my reading of the first 150 pages, anyway). It takes a bit of effort to come up to speed with all the old place names (regions, cities, etc.), but the maps are pretty good, and these days most of us probably have Wikipedia at arm's reach anyway. So, in summary: I too was a bit daunted about starting this set, but it turns out that there is no reason to be!
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by Valuethinker »

gkaplan wrote:
Valuethinker wrote:....
Then there are the documentaries:

- London Can Take It (later: Britain can take it) -made for the American audience, to convince the American public that Britain's will was intact
- The Lion Has Wings - the Royal Air Force in the early days
- Listening to Britain

In that last one, the singer Myra Hess is singing at the National Gallery. The paintings had been hidden in a nearby Tube shaft. But it gave lunchtime concerts. And there sitting in the audience is Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. The murmur in the audience when I saw that movie, 60 years later, was noticeable.
VT, Are you sure this was Myra Hess? Myra Hess was a pianist.
You are right, and I've made that mistake here before. Note to self: check before writing that. Funny how memory plays tricks ;-).
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by Riprap »

The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success by William N. Thorndike, Jr.

Spoiler: One of the CEOs is Warren Buffett
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by Fallible »

ruralavalon wrote:
Wolf wrote:Hello - first official post!

I'm excited to be here.

Currently reading Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson.
Welcome to the forum :) .

I read that too, it's a very good book in my opinion.
Also read and liked it, but was surprised that much of what was new and memorable for me was the sub and its captain. I googled for more on it and found this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/10/books ... eries.html
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by Valuethinker »

pezblanco wrote:
ruralavalon wrote:
Wolf wrote:Hello - first official post!

I'm excited to be here.

Currently reading Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson.
Welcome to the forum :) .

I read that too, it's a very good book in my opinion.
Everything I've read by Erik Larson has been very worthwhile. Dead Wake was great.

Because I liked it so much, I read an older one of his books: Thunderstruck. It is about the intertwined lives
and times of Marconi and the start of Wireless Telegraphy and the notorious wife murderer Crippen. Highly recommended.
One of my ancestors is reputed to have had an affair with Marconi, when he was building his tower in the west of England. Bit of a ladies' man, I gather.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by market timer »

Rabbit, Run, by John Updike.

Amazon blurb: Rabbit, Run is the book that established John Updike as one of the major American novelists of his—or any other—generation. Its hero is Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, a onetime high-school basketball star who on an impulse deserts his wife and son. He is twenty-six years old, a man-child caught in a struggle between instinct and thought, self and society, sexual gratification and family duty—even, in a sense, human hard-heartedness and divine Grace. Though his flight from home traces a zigzag of evasion, he holds to the faith that he is on the right path, an invisible line toward his own salvation as straight as a ruler’s edge.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by heartwood »

market timer wrote:Rabbit, Run, by John Updike.

Amazon blurb: Rabbit, Run is the book that established John Updike as one of the major American novelists of his—or any other—generation. Its hero is Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, a onetime high-school basketball star who on an impulse deserts his wife and son. He is twenty-six years old, a man-child caught in a struggle between instinct and thought, self and society, sexual gratification and family duty—even, in a sense, human hard-heartedness and divine Grace. Though his flight from home traces a zigzag of evasion, he holds to the faith that he is on the right path, an invisible line toward his own salvation as straight as a ruler’s edge.
I started the Rabbit series last year. I read Rabbit, Run. Then started Rabbit Redux. I've tried other works by Updike: The Witches of Eastwick and Couples. I enjoy his writing style and phrasing. The actual stories don't interest me.

As noted above I recently read Don Winslow's The Cartel. I finished it but did not enjoy it. Good style and syntax by a talented writer. The story, based upon the Mexican drug wars, is extremely brutal, as I understand the wars themselves were and are. That said, the book would have benefited by a good editor to remove pages and pages of background flavor.

I'm now reading The English Spy by Daniel Silva. I've read all of his Gabriel Allon novels. The first several chapters of this one are quite good. So far he seems to be moving away from his method in the last several books of presenting the same plot, the same characters, in a slightly different setting. So far this one is focused more on the Heller character introduced in previous books than on Allon. We'll see. I'm guessing he's tired of Allon and looking to bring forward another protagonist in the same way Michael Connelly, Robert Crais, Robert Parker, John Sandford, et al have done after many outings.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by gkaplan »

I have been reading Shakespeare's As You Like It.

Rosalind is the daughter of banished Duke Senior and is being raised at the court of Duke Frederick, with her cousin Celia. She falls in love with a young man named Orlando, but she is banished by Duke Frederick, who threatens death if she comes near the court again. Celia goes with Rosalind. Disguised as the boy Ganymede, Rosalind enters the forest of Arden. Upon their arrival in the forest, Rosalind and Celia happen upon Orlando and his manservant, who are fleeing the wrath of Orlando's eldest brother. What follows is an elaborate scheme devised by the cross-dressing Rosalind to find out the verity of Orlando's supposed passion for her and to further capture his heart, through the witty and mischievous façade of Ganymede.

This is a Pelican Shakespeare edition from Penguin Books. I much prefer the Folgers Shakespeare Library editions in previous plays I recently have been reading.

I found this one of the least interesting Shakespeare plays. The characters just didn't resonate with me, nor did the story.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by ZCULP »

Getting Things Done by Gary Allen, but just finished the 10X rule by Grant Cardone. Best book I've read in a long time
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by cfs »

Slowly reading

COLUMBUS, The Four Voyages, by Laurence Bergreen (2011), 423 pp.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by ruralavalon »

Daniel Boone's own story. A very short book,I assume ghostwritten, convers his life through 1784 and the expedition under General Clarke against the Shawnee at old Chillicothe.

The Advetures of Daniel Boone, by Francis Lister Hawks. Written in 1890 covers his entire life in greater detail though obviously not from any first hand source.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by ruralavalon »

cfs wrote:Slowly reading

COLUMBUS, The Four Voyages, by Laurence Bergreen (2011), 423 pp.
If interested in more about Columbus, try Admiral of the Ocean Sea, by Samuel Eliot Morrison.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by cfs »

ruralavalon wrote:
cfs wrote:Slowly reading

COLUMBUS, The Four Voyages, by Laurence Bergreen (2011), 423 pp.
If interested in more about Columbus, try Admiral of the Ocean Sea, by Samuel Eliot Morrison.
Thanks, I will check my local library for a copy.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by Groundhog »

Currently reading Stephen King's "'Salem's Lot". This is the 3rd Stephen King novel I've read. I started with "Under the Dome" then decided to go back to the beginning and read "Carrie" and plan to go forward from there.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by MP173 »

Finished two recently:

"Trapping" by Jim Spencer...a nice reference book on trapping (muskrats, raccoons, mink, fox, etc).

"Led Zeppelin on Led Zeppelin" by Hank Bordowitz...a collections of interviews of the members of band from 1960s thru 2012.

Ed
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by gkaplan »

I just finished Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee.

Twenty years after the trial of Tom Robinson, Jean Louise Finch – "Scout" – returns home to Maycomb to visit her father. There she struggles with personal and political issues, as her small Alabama town adjusts to the turbulent events beginning to transform the United States in the mid-1950s.

This is the somewhat controversial sequel (or prequel, depending on the way you look at it) to the author's To Kill a Mockingbird. Actually I think this is the prequel to a book Harper Lee intended to write but never got around to doing.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by Steven in NC »

Domestic Manners of the Americans by Frances Trollope - published 1882

About half way thru it. I am in this early American, non-fictional stage right now.
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