I’m currently reading Echo in Ramadi, the Firsthand Story of US Marines in Iraq’s Deadliest City.
Just started it, but about 5 chapters in and it’s really cool. The author, Scott A. Huesing, is a Major from Echo Company who was there so this is truly a firsthand account.
It’s riveting so far.
I’ve been surviving on cheap mystery and fantasy novels, which is why I haven’t been posting in this thread recently.
Attrition, Liam Philpott. After the initial maneuverist attempts of the early war, reality closed in on (most) of those involved in WWI, and the contest of who could create, outfit, and maintain the largest, best forces for the longest began. This process was not wasteful, it was deeply conservative, not just in terms of outlook, but also in practice. If two equal sides constantly exchange casualties, and those exchanges have consistent but small inequalities in their ratios, and if those inequalities have knock-on effects which accelerate the process…
Thus WWI was won, in a slow grind for both sides. On one side, a crawling victory which only gave way to massive gains in the very end stages. On the other, a death by inches, simply on the wrong side of imbalances and exchanges, which no amount of willpower could rectify. The best example we have (because we need it shown to us repeatedly, and we deny it) that the phalanx wins out over the hero.
I finished Echo in Ramadi, and after racing through another G.M. Ford Leo Waterman mystery, I started The Emperors: How Europe’s Greatest Rulers Were Destroyed by World War I by Gareth Russell
This is a book totally devoted to the political implications of World War I on the European emperors. So it’s not a history of the war, really. It’s a history of them and their downfall.
It’s interesting, covering the Russian Tsar, the German Kaiser, and the Austrian-Hungarian emperor.
So far, I’m enjoying it.
Didn’t realize I was the last person to post in here.
The Emperors book was really interesting. I highly recommend it!
Now I’m reading Precious Dragon, the 3rd book in a series by Liz Williams about Inspector Chen. It’s a series that takes place in Singapore Three sometime in the future, but it’s a future with magic as Singapore Three sits as a way station between the Chinese Heaven and the Chinese Hell. Demons, Celestial Beings, ghosts and other odd creatures fill this world.
It’s a really interesting series. I’ve read the first two and the last two and somehow missed this one, so I’ve gone back to it.
Williams has an interesting writing style and the characters are wonderfully done. Chen is the unofficial liaison to Hell and he has a demon cop as a partner. He’s also married to a demon, which makes things difficult too.
I really like the series. It’s well worth checking out.
Started rereading the Charlie Parker series, by John Connolly. It’s up to about 15 or 16 books now and I’d forgotten how good they were. Haven’t read the last three or four yet, but will get there at some point.
Parker is a private detective; books are a good mix of occult mixed with serial killer mixed with Parker’s screwy psyche. Quick reads but you can also tell Connolly has done his research. Those of you familiar with Maine will especially get a kick out of his wealth of knowledge of the state.
The Last Days of New Paris, China Mieville. Occupied Paris becomes a great deal stranger when Surrealism begins to manifest itself on the streets, a whole area of the city is walled off, and the Resistance, Germans, devils, and assorted weirdness comes together in a perception-bending mixture.
Beyond Weird, Phillip Ball, about the competing interpretations of quantum mechanics. For when that gets too thinky, re-reading Neither Here Nor There, by Bill Bryson. Contemporary travelogue when it first came out, now a look back two decades, when Europe was a different place.
Sword of Justice, Christian Cameron. The ongoing adventures of Sir William Gold, minor lord and major mercenary, in 14th century Europe, amidst wars between popes and emperors, kings and princes and counts, Greek and French and Italian, Christian and Muslim. A lot of detail, and superb description of arms, armour, martial arts and war, all set in a beautifully realised world.
A Lesson in Violence, Jordan Harper. Somewhere near James Ellroy and early Boston Teran in style, and Pizolatto in overwrought intensity, Harper’s novel about a convict and his daughter on the run from a neo-Nazi gang’s death sentence would be better if every line wasn’t trying so hard to be meaningful. Perhaps I’m just jaded, but the tale of an innocent who might just (morally) rescue someone, who is going to die redeeming themselves by saving the innocent and isn’t that the real lesson etc is just not going to do it for me, and no amount of taut phrases and clipped prose is going to get me there. I like it, but it needs to stop cutting the writing with real moral dilemma.
I just downloaded a sample of Declare to my Kindle and there is paragraph spacing! What kind of horrific formatting is that? What a disappointment. Now I hesitate to buy the full version; I think I’ll have to shelve that idea and look for it at the library some day.
Ignition! John D Clark, now available properly rather than as, er, informal pdfs. Outstanding memoirs of a chemist who worked in a rocket fuels lab from WWII to the 1970s, in the days when no compound was off limits, men were real men although not necessarily intact men, and the lab going boom! was one of those things that happened.
Nervous States, Will Davies. It’s feels versus reals in the battle of the 21st century. Not just individual humans but now whole nations are having little hissy fits as the bodies politic realise norms can be overriden, and logic and reason as saviours are already out the door. Fascinating stuff, as rationalism offers as many vulnerabilities as it does strengths.
Has anyone read Steven Erikson’s Malazan Book of the Fallen series? I’m looking for recommendations. Or warnings.
I tried it and didn’t get on with it, but I was in a bad mood at the time. They’re very popular so you should have some joy with them.
Black Earth, Snyder. After the superb Bloodlands, which sums up the extreme violence that characterised Europe trapped between Hitler and Stalin, he doubles down on the feelgood factor and really digs in to the Holocaust, and the man behind it who sought to use and leverage states to the extent that they did exactly what he wanted, and that conventional ethics were artificial, entirely useless, and to be discarded. The same, in the end, for institutions once they had served their purpose in exterminating Jews and other undesirables, as creators and sustainers of artificial systems, leaving the races of man to the pure struggle of existence.
There will always be other answers, including that the Holocaust was a hoax, because they are easier to believe than this abyss that men created.
I’ve tried to read the first book in the series about 7 times now. Each time I start at the beginning and get a little farther, but there’s something there that just doesn’t do it for me. I think the major issue I have is that I feel like I should know a lot about the world that isn’t told in the books. Things happen, places are talked about about, and I have no idea what the hell is going on or why. It’s almost like being dropped in The Two Towers without reading Fellowship. Who are these people? What are the rules? How does magic work? Huh?
That said, he’s a very good writer and some of the descriptions just pull you in and make you want to keep going. I just hit a wall at some point and go read a different book that I don’t have to work so hard to figure out. Someday I’ll finish it and, maybe, the rest of the series won’t be so tough to grok.
Holy shit.
That was approximately my reaction, yes.
With the exception of having tried multiple times, I could have written your post, Dave.
It’s exactly how I felt after trying it the first time. I got about 100-150 pages in and I just couldn’t continue.
These do not sound like ringing endorsements…
Tom Clancy it is.