# Good reads...



## TheCaptain (Mar 24, 2017)

Currently reading "The Monuments Men". Great story (just getting started). Super glad it was made into a movie, otherwise I never would have learned this sub-history of WWII.

As I'm getting older, I find myself developing a greater appreciation for the unsung heroes who seldom get their moment in the spotlight (hopefully not political to mention Chiune Sugihara...)

Any other good books/stories in the same vein you folks can point me toward? Anyone want to have a non-political discussion?


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## valgard (Mar 24, 2017)

There is a book I enjoyed a lot more than ten years ago so my memory of the writing quality is a bit foggy but the story was powerful enough to remember. It was a soviet book by Yury Dold-Mijáilik and the equivalent title in english (from the title in Spanish so I don't know how accurate) would be "Alone with the enemy". I haven't seen an English version iso it might not be around but that should be worth looking at. the setting is Germany towards the end of WWII and the main character is a soviet spy. 

A short read that I found interesting but further back in history is Joseph Fouché: Portrait of a Politician. It's been a while since I picked any good book, especially any history related. I am all over the place but tend to gravitate more towards fantasy (Tolkien and Poul Anderson type of books).

My all time favourite books are "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy and "The name of the rose" by Umberto Eco.


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## Don Nguyen (Mar 24, 2017)

I'm really big into fiction nowadays (I know that's not in the same vein that you asked for...).

My favorite that I've been _absolutely obsessed_ with is an online novel called Worm. The _best_ story I have read about powers ever with the world building, characters, depth and details. It's dark, and it's so, so good.


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## Castalia (Mar 24, 2017)

More WWII related interesting stories: Double Cross by Ben Macintyre


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## DamageInc (Mar 25, 2017)

Just finished Dispatches by Herr yesterday, which was an interesting read. I had no idea how much of Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket was directly taken from that book. Need to decide on a new one now, been heavily eyeing Willy F's Absalom, Absalom! and Bely's Petersburg. Might just flip a coin.

It's a shame summer is coming. I always get to use my reading corner more when it's cold outside.


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## LifeByA1000Cuts (Mar 25, 2017)

>> "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy

The one I'll always love AND hate - what could it have been when you would have taken out all the bloody moral bias...

...

Normally don't care about crime stories, neither about Patricia Highsmith, but ... Tremor of Forgery, that book is fricking brilliant!

...

Vonnegut is always worth giving a read...


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## DamageInc (Mar 25, 2017)

LifeByA1000Cuts said:


> Vonnegut is always worth giving a read...




I've read two Vonnegut novels and I couldn't stand him. Which ones are to your liking?


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## Chuckles (Mar 25, 2017)

Baroque Cycle by Neil Stephenson is a phenomenal work that is historical in nature but has enough fiction to keep it moving and it is brilliantly written. Highly recommend.


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## ecchef (Mar 25, 2017)

About to begin Mishima's 'The Sailor....The Sea'. Translated, of course.


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## Castalia (Mar 25, 2017)

Mishima is dark intense stuff. I am more of a Kawabata fan. If we are sticking with the original theme of untold stories of heroes (or antiheroes) related to WWII, I could recommend Mishima's The Temple of the Golden Pavilion. There is a good deal of 'mono no aware' throughout.


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## Castalia (Mar 25, 2017)

Another unusual WWII related story: Rawicz' The Long Walk


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## DamageInc (Mar 25, 2017)

The Painted Bird by Kosinski as well.


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## SirNose (May 8, 2017)

If you want WWII, dark, intense and also intensely funny try Gravity's Rainbow by Pynchon. It also broke the Pulitzer the year it came out.


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## tsuriru (May 8, 2017)

HMS Ulysses by Alistair MacLean Is pretty dark and takes place in WWII.


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## DamageInc (May 8, 2017)

SirNose said:


> If you want WWII, dark, intense and also intensely funny try Gravity's Rainbow by Pynchon. It also broke the Pulitzer the year it came out.



It's really not for everyone though.


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## LifeByA1000Cuts (May 8, 2017)

You said you don't like Vonnegut's style, I was actually thinking "wonder how he'll take Pynchon" ...


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## DamageInc (May 8, 2017)

I've read all of Pynchon's work. I love it. My signature is a near quote from Gravity's Rainbow and my avatar is from the terribly funny Italian cover of Mason & Dixon. I hope he has enough energy to pull off one more doorstopper.

Vonnegut might be one of the most annoying voices in literature that I've read. To me, he always comes off as very pretentious and condescending, with very little merit to back it up. Slaughterhouse-5 to me was so tedious and self-aggrandizing in the way that he kept trying to make relatively simple concepts seem like these "mind-blowing" ideas. Cat's Cradle was no better.

I know many people love his books, but the two I've read has made me really dislike him.


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## SirNose (May 9, 2017)

Anybody read Infinite Jest?


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## zoze (May 9, 2017)

From a more european perspective: 
Curzio Malaparte: "Kaputt", Jonathan Littell: "The kindly ones" might be worth to have a look at.
If you're not only interested in WW2, then there is Ernst Jünger "Storm of steel" or E.M. Remarque: "All Quiet on the Western Front" for WW1.
Or even Johann Grimmelshausen "The Adventurous Simplicissimus" for the Thirty years' war.


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## DamageInc (May 9, 2017)

SirNose said:


> Anybody read Infinite Jest?



Yeah, last year.


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## Badgertooth (May 9, 2017)

zoze said:


> Jonathan Littell: "The kindly ones"


On my list.

Art Speigelman - 'Maus' is both devastating and essential

I recently enjoyed Anthony Burgess - 'Earthly Powers' WWII is tangential but essential to the fabric of the story. It's an erudite and dazzling 6 decade journey into the guts of the 20th century and some of the bigger questions of the human condition.


J.G. Ballard - 'Empire of the Sun'. 

And if you're feeling a speculative whimsy, Philip K. Dick - 'The Man in the High Castle'


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## Badgertooth (May 9, 2017)

Off piste - 'A Brief History of Seven Killings' is my current read and it's unspeakably good.


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## Lucretia (May 9, 2017)

DamageInc said:


> Vonnegut might be one of the most annoying voices in literature that I've read. To me, he always comes off as very pretentious and condescending, with very little merit to back it up. Slaughterhouse-5 to me was so tedious and self-aggrandizing in the way that he kept trying to make relatively simple concepts seem like these "mind-blowing" ideas. Cat's Cradle was no better.
> 
> I know many people love his books, but the two I've read has made me really dislike him.



Were you aware that "Slaughterhouse-5" is semi-autobiographical? You might find this transcript from a letter he wrote to his family interesting--and put a little perspective on his work.


FROM: 

Pfc. K. Vonnegut, Jr., 
12102964 U. S. Army.

TO: 

Kurt Vonnegut,
Williams Creek, 
Indianapolis, Indiana. 

Dear people: 

I'm told that you were probably never informed that I was anything other than "missing in action." Chances are that you also failed to receive any of the letters I wrote from Germany. That leaves me a lot of explaining to do -- in precis: 

I've been a prisoner of war since December 19th, 1944, when our division was cut to ribbons by Hitler's last desperate thrust through Luxemburg and Belgium. Seven Fanatical Panzer Divisions hit us and cut us off from the rest of Hodges' First Army. The other American Divisions on our flanks managed to pull out: We were obliged to stay and fight. Bayonets aren't much good against tanks: Our ammunition, food and medical supplies gave out and our casualties out-numbered those who could still fight - so we gave up. The 106th got a Presidential Citation and some British Decoration from Montgomery for it, I'm told, but I'll be damned if it was worth it. I was one of the few who weren't wounded. For that much thank God. 

Well, the supermen marched us, without food, water or sleep to Limberg, a distance of about sixty miles, I think, where we were loaded and locked up, sixty men to each small, unventilated, unheated box car. There were no sanitary accommodations -- the floors were covered with fresh cow dung. There wasn't room for all of us to lie down. Half slept while the other half stood. We spent several days, including Christmas, on that Limberg siding. On Christmas eve the Royal Air Force bombed and strafed our unmarked train. They killed about one-hundred-and-fifty of us. We got a little water Christmas Day and moved slowly across Germany to a large P.O.W. Camp in Muhlburg, South of Berlin. We were released from the box cars on New Year's Day. The Germans herded us through scalding delousing showers. Many men died from shock in the showers after ten days of starvation, thirst and exposure. But I didn't.

Under the Geneva Convention, Officers and Non-commissioned Officers are not obliged to work when taken prisoner. I am, as you know, a Private. One-hundred-and-fifty such minor beings were shipped to a Dresden work camp on January 10th. I was their leader by virtue of the little German I spoke. It was our misfortune to have sadistic and fanatical guards. We were refused medical attention and clothing: We were given long hours at extremely hard labor. Our food ration was two-hundred-and-fifty grams of black bread and one pint of unseasoned potato soup each day. After desperately trying to improve our situation for two months and having been met with bland smiles I told the guards just what I was going to do to them when the Russians came. They beat me up a little. I was fired as group leader. Beatings were very small time: -- one boy starved to death and the SS Troops shot two for stealing food. 

On about February 14th the Americans came over, followed by the R.A.F. their combined labors killed 250,000 people in twenty-four hours and destroyed all of Dresden -- possibly the world's most beautiful city. But not me. 

After that we were put to work carrying corpses from Air-Raid shelters; women, children, old men; dead from concussion, fire or suffocation. Civilians cursed us and threw rocks as we carried bodies to huge funeral pyres in the city. 

When General Patton took Leipzig we were evacuated on foot to ('the Saxony-Czechoslovakian border'?). There we remained until the war ended. Our guards deserted us. On that happy day the Russians were intent on mopping up isolated outlaw resistance in our sector. Their planes (P-39's) strafed and bombed us, killing fourteen, but not me. 

Eight of us stole a team and wagon. We traveled and looted our way through Sudetenland and Saxony for eight days, living like kings. The Russians are crazy about Americans. The Russians picked us up in Dresden. We rode from there to the American lines at Halle in Lend-Lease Ford trucks. We've since been flown to Le Havre. 

I'm writing from a Red Cross Club in the Le Havre P.O.W. Repatriation Camp. I'm being wonderfully well fed and entertained. The state-bound ships are jammed, naturally, so I'll have to be patient. I hope to be home in a month. Once home I'll be given twenty-one days recuperation at Atterbury, about $600 back pay and -- get this -- sixty (60) days furlough. 

I've too damned much to say, the rest will have to wait, I can't receive mail here so don't write. 

May 29, 1945 

Love, 

Kurt - Jr.


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## DamageInc (May 9, 2017)

Yes, I had already read that before reading any of his published work.

I knew he was a veteran and had been a POW. Which is why the Slaughterhouse-5 was such a huge letdown to me. I felt that his mediocre writing failed to encapsulate the gravitas of the horrors of the firebombing of Dresden, and I felt a smug undertone in every paragraph, an air of condescension.

So it goes. Poo-tee-weet. And but so. Me no like.

I know many people have a fondness for Vonnegut, so I might be treading on thin ice, but I just can't stand his voice as a writer. I'm usually not this outspokenly negative about novels or authors that I dislike, but something about him and his tone just rubs me the wrong way.


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## chinacats (May 9, 2017)

Personally, I'm more into lighter reading. The last three books I've read have all been by Bill Bryson.

A Walk in the Woods
A Short History of Nearly Everything
and most recently, The Lost Continent (Travels in Small Town America)


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## LifeByA1000Cuts (May 9, 2017)

@DamageInc we're all adults here, we say we like stuff or we don't like it, so no problem at all  Is it really the writer's voice or the voice of his characters that is smug or callous - I remember people were criticizing the movie adaptation of breakfast of champions for ... characters portrayed as shallow . Maybe the characters WERE shallow? ... NOT recommending Jailbird for you then, it has even more of that ... wonderfully callous way of aestheticizing gloom.


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## DamageInc (May 9, 2017)

LifeByA1000Cuts said:


> @DamageInc we're all adults here, we say we like stuff or we don't like it, so no problem at all  Is it really the writer's voice or the voice of his characters that is smug or callous - I remember people were criticizing the movie adaptation of breakfast of champions for ... characters portrayed as shallow . Maybe the characters WERE shallow? ... NOT recommending Jailbird for you then, it has even more of that ... wonderfully callous way of aestheticizing gloom.



I have nothing against shallow characters. They are a staple in many of the books I enjoy from Pynchon and McCarthy and many others. Characters are characters and therefore any characteristic is just exactly that. The Sopranos is for my money the greatest television series of all time, but I know people who said the show was unwatchable because of all the unlikable characters. Not to say that I found Billy Pilgrim to be particularly intriguing.

That's way different than what I have against Vonnegut's work. I don't like the way he deals with events and the way he explains ideas and concepts to the reader. I was cringing at his explanation of what a scientist is/does in Cat's Cradle. It was like being talked down to. Same for his clumsy segments with the tralfamadorian philosophy in Slaughterhouse-5. His prose isn't noteworthy in any way either, so for me there was just very little joy for me to find in the two novels that I read.

My perfect example of success where Vonnegut fails (conveying thoughts and ideas) is in Calvino's Invisible Cities. In the exploration of the concept of endless imagination, Calvino never at any point comes across as pretentious or condescending, while maintaining a consistently excellent level of prose and atmosphere (granted, I was reading a translation, but a beautiful one at that).

Regarding anesthetizing gloom, I see no issue with it as long as it is done right (to my subjective taste). Blood Meridian, while a cliche example at this point, basically does nothing else but still manages via quality of imagery to have lasting impact.

Also, I'm not an adult, I'm an angry child with computer access.


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## SirNose (May 9, 2017)

Hahaha me too!


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## Keith Sinclair (May 12, 2017)

WW2 history junkie always had a fascination with Nazi Germany.
Rise & Fall of the Third Reich-William Shirer.
Inside the Third Reich - Albert Speer.
The Rising Sun - John Toland.
Zero Story of Japan's Air War - Masatake Okumiya
The Private Life of Chairman Mao - Li Zhisui 

Don't read much science fiction, but Phillip Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep inspired one of my favorite flicks Blade Runner.

Just finished Bridge to the Sun about an American girl who married a Japanese diplomat just prior to WW2

Won't bore you with the science stuff I like geology, early man, just bought a book at library sale for a buck Illustrated Catwatching by Desmond Morris


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## foody518 (May 13, 2017)

zoze said:


> From a more european perspective:
> Curzio Malaparte: "Kaputt", Jonathan Littell: "The kindly ones" might be worth to have a look at.
> If you're not only interested in WW2, then there is Ernst Jünger "Storm of steel" or E.M. Remarque: "All Quiet on the Western Front" for WW1.
> Or even Johann Grimmelshausen "The Adventurous Simplicissimus" for the Thirty years' war.



I do remember enjoying "All Quiet on the Western Front"


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## mhpr262 (May 13, 2017)

Anybody here into SciFi and Fantasy? 

Some of the stuff I can recommend: 

The "Temeraire" series by Naomi Novik - an alternate history series in which the Napoleonic wars were fought with dragons. It sounds wacky but is actually pretty good, with engaging characters, a great love of details, some very interesting plots (especially if you are bit interested in military history) and it also probes into some deeper philosophic stuff.

The legendaryy "Culture" series by Iain M. Banks - start with "Consider Phlebas".
The "Dread Empire's Fall" trilogy by Walter Jon Williams - military SciFi at it's finest. 
The"Vorkosigan" series by Lois McMaster Bujold, with one of the most memorable and amusing heroes in SciFi.
"Revelation Space" by Alastair Reynolds - modern space opera on the grandest of scales.


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## SirNose (May 15, 2017)

I haven't really got into that much sci-fi except for some old pulp magazine short stories but one big one I read and enjoyed was The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov. It's a bit lacking in style which can bug me with some authors but the content made up for it in this case.


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