What Book Are You Reading at the moment?

[Hotschi]

Thank you, warspite1, this is a impressive as well as a extremely useful list of titles.

[berto]

Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East, by Michael B. Oren, Presidio Press, 2003.

[Rodwonder]

At the moment- The Early Morning of War, Bull Run 1861 by Edward G. Longacre... Also I would like to thank Warspite1 for the suggestion of Hitler's U-Boat War. My two volumes just came in the mail. Thanks!

[Hotschi]

Finished Edward Young's One of our Submarines, good book about Young's Service in various RN submarines, most notably in HMS Storm.

Now on to the next Royal Navy submarine book, this time not written by the skipper himself but by a 3rd person, Ian Trenowden, The Hunting Submarine: The Fighting Life of HMS Tally-Ho. This one, a T-Class submarine, saw service in the Far East, commanded by Leslie Bennington throughout its wartime commission. Tally-Ho was the most successful British submarine in the Macassar Strait, accounting for 20 percent of all RN submarine sinkings in this area.

[warspite1]

ORIGINAL: Hotschi

Finished Edward Young's One of our Submarines, good book about Young's Service in various RN submarines, most notably in HMS Storm.

Now on to the next Royal Navy submarine book, this time not written by the skipper himself but by a 3rd person, Ian Trenowden, The Hunting Submarine: The Fighting Life of HMS Tally-Ho. This one, a T-Class submarine, saw service in the Far East, commanded by Leslie Bennington throughout its wartime commission. Tally-Ho was the most successful British submarine in the Macassar Strait, accounting for 20 percent of all RN submarine sinkings in this area.

warspite1

If you are into submarines at the moment then you could do worse than;

GAMP VC (Brian Izzard - Haynes)

This is the story of Commander Anthony Miers VC and is a really good read.

Recommended.

[Hotschi]

Thanks again, have put it on my list - and yes, currently I am into everything available about Royal Navy submarines. For me, a very interesting topic. You can get so much about German boats and the Atlantic Battle, but on the other hand, books about submarine operations of Allied navies are very hard to find (except the USN of course).

[Hotschi]

Just found something interesting too, but not exclusively RN; Jean Hood, Submarine: An Anthology of First-hand Accounts of the War Under the Sea, 1939-45 ... Now THAT is something!

[rhondabrwn]

I am thrilled! Today I got notification from Amazon that one of my most favorite "out of print" series is now available as a Kindle e-book. I read them three decades ago by checking them out of the library rather than purchasing them. I've never gotten the story out of my mind and wanted to do a re-read, but it wasn't available So this is great news AND it's free to read with my Amazon Unlimited subscription!

The author is Julian May and the series of four books is called "The Saga of Pliocene Exile". The first book is "The Many Colored Land" and the remaining three novels are also available plus a "companion" book. Here is a brief description of the first novel.

"In the year 2034, Theo Quderian, a French physicist, made an amusing but impractical discovery: the means to use a one-way, fixed-focus time warp that opened into a place in the Rhone River valley during the idyllic Pliocene Epoch, six million years ago. But, as time went on, a certain usefulness developed. The misfits and mavericks of the future—many of them brilliant people—began to seek this exit door to a mysterious past. In 2110, a particularly strange and interesting group was preparing to make the journey—a starship captain, a girl athlete, a paleontologist, a woman priest, and others who had reason to flee the technological perfection of twenty-second-century life.

Thus begins this dazzling fantasy novel that invites comparisons with the work of J.R.R. Tolkien, Arthur C. Clarke, and Ursula Le Quin. It opens up a whole world of wonder, not in far-flung galaxies but in our own distant past on Earth—a world that will captivate not only science-fiction and fantasy fans but also those who enjoy literate thrillers.
The group that passes through the time-portal finds an unforeseen strangeness on the other side. Far from being uninhabited, Pliocene Europe is the home of two warring races from another planet. There is the knightly race of the Tanu—handsome, arrogant, and possessing vast powers of psychokinesis and telepathy. And there is the outcast race of Firvulag—dwarfish, malev-o olent, and gifted with their own supernormal skills. Taken captive by the Tanu and transported through the primordial European landscape, the humans manage to break free, join in an uneasy alliance with the forest-dwelling Firvulag, and, finally, launch an attack against the Tanu city of light on the banks of a river that, eons later, would be called the Rhine.

Myth and legend, wit and violence, speculative science and breathtaking imagination mingle in this romantic fantasy, which is the first volume in a series about the exile world.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Many-Colored- ... B00633YOUU

Highly... highly recommended!

Did I say I was thrilled?

[TulliusDetritus]

More or less back to business [:(]

I am reading The Peloponnesian War by Donald Kagan. A little bit disappointed. This guy has to be some serious scholar (Yale) but still I have read THREE times Thucydides' original book. Kagan is at times er, how shall I say it... boring zzZZZZZzzzz

In the end, what are the sources, and I mean BIG sources, not some pages here and there (Diodorus etc)? Thucydides himself. So Kagan is basically saying (er, repeating) what er Thucydides said [:D] But the Greek's book has a lot of rythm, is never boring (hell, I re-read 3 times; an after this experience with Mr Kagan, I am planning to re-read a fourth time, just to remember how good the real thing is!).

Looks like Kagan's book is a resume. He's written a Peloponnesian War thing in 4 volumes.

One thing I know: I will stay away from them four volumes! [:D]

[TulliusDetritus]

Oh, and before that, Secret of the Hitites by C. W. Ceram

[Ironclad]

ORIGINAL: TulliusDetritus

More or less back to business [:(]

I am reading The Peloponnesian War by Donald Kagan. A little bit disappointed. This guy has to be some serious scholar (Yale) but still I have read THREE times Thucydides' original book. Kagan is at times er, how shall I say it... boring zzZZZZZzzzz

In the end, what are the sources, and I mean BIG sources, not some pages here and there (Diodorus etc)? Thucydides himself. So Kagan is basically saying (er, repeating) what er Thucydides said [:D] But the Greek's book has a lot of rythm, is never boring (hell, I re-read 3 times; an after this experience with Mr Kagan, I am planning to re-read a fourth time, just to remember how good the real thing is!).

Looks like Kagan's book is a resume. He's written a Peloponnesian War thing in 4 volumes.

One thing I know: I will stay away from them four volumes! [:D]

I enjoyed Kagan's lecture series from Yale which is on You Tube.

[Ranger33]

The Call of Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft

I'm been working my way through a compilation of pretty much all of his works and have of course been looking forward to this one. Pretty good so far!

[parusski]

And now for something completely different:

Frost at Christmas, R. D. Wingfield

Loved the tv program and decided to read all the Frost books.

[warspite1]

Enjoying Clay Blair's U-boat war so much I've ordered Silent Victory.

Hopefully this will prove as good and will be as detailed as the U-boat books on how the Japanese sought (spectacularly badly) to counter the enemy.

[Hotschi]

Silent Victory is a very good book, although at times a bit "dry". Nonetheless, it's IMHO the best book about the USN submarine campaign in the Pacific.

Finished Ian Trenowden's The Hunting Submarine: The Fighting Life of HMS Tally-Ho - the appendix lists all submarine sinkings in the Macassar Strait by the RN submarines. Good book!

On to the next "Royal Navy submarine book", again written by the officer commanding himself; Unbroken: The Story of an Submarine by Alastair Mars. A U-Class submarine, serving in the Mediterranean.

[Aurelian]

Tennozan: The Battle of Okinawa and the Atomic Bomb

[parusski]

ORIGINAL: warspite1

Enjoying Clay Blair's U-boat war so much I've ordered Silent Victory.

Hopefully this will prove as good and will be as detailed as the U-boat books on how the Japanese sought (spectacularly badly) to counter the enemy.

I read Clay Blair's U-Boat books a few years ago and loved them.

[Ironclad]

Trevor Royle: Civil War - The Wars of the Three Kingdoms 1638-1660

[TulliusDetritus]

And back to some more political economy. I will never have enough [:D]

I have just started The Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future by Joseph Stiglitz (awarded Nobel Prize in economics in 2001)

[Hotschi]

Finished Unbroken: The Story of an Submarine by Alastair Mars. Good book, although it reads like a novel at times, with plenty of dialogues. Mars went on to command HM submarine Thule in the Far East, but he only mentions that fact and nothing about it's patrols there.

Now on to a book about RN submarines just the way I was looking for, Sea Wolves: The exraordinary Story of Britain's WW2 Submarines by Tim Clayton.