Forgotten Hope Public Forum
Off-Topic => Off-Topic => Topic started by: NTH on 28-07-2009, 16:07:06
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Use this topic the review the latest or greatest book you've read. Can be fictional or non-fictional.
I will kick-off with the latest book I've read:
The Information Officer:
Url:http://www.amazon.co.uk/Information-Officer-Mark-Mills/dp/0007276885 (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Information-Officer-Mark-Mills/dp/0007276885)
Plot:
This book revolves around the bombing of Malta in 1942. The main character, Max Chadwick, is an Information Officer who's job is it to spin every news of the war on Malta into something positive to maintain morale.
When he finds out a British Officer is murdering you Maltese women he embarks on a private investigation.
My view:
What I liked about the book was that that the writer didn't focus on the serial killing aspect, but uses it as a means to write about life in Malta during the bombing.
It's filled with typical British stiff upper lip humour and made me laugh out loud a few times.
I can't say if al the WWII reference are historically correct, I didn't see Tigers rolling through the streets of Malta.
If you like to read about Malta during the bombing, enjoy British humor and bit of a whodunit at the end of the book, this one is a must read.
I give a 9/10.
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I'm cool. I don't read books. Books are fr geeks.
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I just packed up my books. It took me 10 boxes.
Last book I read was God's Problem by Bart Ehrman (http://www.amazon.com/Gods-Problem-Answer-Important-Question-Why/dp/0061173924/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1248805699&sr=8-1). The book is an examination of the problem of suffering in the Bible.
In summary, Ehrman is a great textual scholar but he has little understanding of Biblical interpretation or Christian theology. The book is rife with poorly based arguments and arguments from emotion.
3/10
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Vengeance aka the book behind http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0408306/ (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0408306/)
plot summary:
After the assassinations of eleven Isreali Olympic athletes during the 1972 Olympic games, a team of five
Isrealis were plucked from various services of their military to form a team of special agents. The agents' task will be to exact, you guessed it, vengeance on all those who were involved in the planning of the massacre, provided in a list which had to be memorized before leaving Isreal, and subsequently those who stand in the agents' way of carrying out those orders ; not the Fedayeen who carried out the massacre as they were all killed when the West German police attempted, with hindsight at the wrong time, to rescue the hostages as the Fedayeen were trying to escape at Munich's airport.
The book takes you through all of their hits which with the right information, the team, as I will now call them, find them quite easy to carry out. Their first hit had not much more sophistication, if we're to only focus on the actual killing and immediate getaway, than a gang shooting. After the initial getaway of their first killing, the team had hired, with foresight, a new set of cars to take the team to their safe houses. After that first hit, the team, I'm presuming, subconsciously wanted to have a lot more distance to their hits both physically and with their disguises to look a lot less and act less like a team of, essentially, hit men. Though most of it was taught before the team had left Isreal, people are still human and more had to be learnt(that's right not learned). Eventually, the team "moves on" to explosives and their second, though first with explosives of course, hit goes off without a hitch on the tiny Island of Cyprus except for incurring a little uneasiness, presumably, from the Island's Greek and Turkish residents who're usually at each other's throats.
Gleaming with success, the team, from their Frankfurt home base, hear about the arrival of another Arab terrorist in the Greek capital. Upon arrival in Athens, the team's demolitions expert seeks out some material from the team's usual source, which is to put it basically a well-educated, anarchistic, French family, for such illegal weaponry provides some very old and volatile hand grenades which, I don't know the name for such bombs or weaponry, suck out all the air in a sealed environment; in this case, it's to be a hotel room. The team experiences their first real hitch when the terrorist organzier, after six of these grenades had been implanted in the mattress and set to be primed when the terrorist organizer sits on the bed and presses down on a complex system of springs, primes the explosive but the bombs don't go off. The team is saved the embarrassment and possible cancelation of their mission due to failure when one of the team's older members impulsively goes to the terrorist organizer's room and throws one of the left-over grenades into the room and is able to walk away due to the small blast radius of the grenades. From here on out the team is sent, involuntarily, into a spiral of near failures and eventually the murders of some of their own team members. The team suspect the anarchistic French family to be the route cause of their losses as they are usually the only ones who know about the team's whereabouts most of the time and to the team's knowledge. In fact, it's after the death of their third member, I know slow learners, EH(:P), that the team has their last telephone conversation with the French family or with the son, Louis, with whom the team usually deals. It marks the end of their access with the family who provided the team's best information and supply of materials, but as is indicative of the family's views, the way to start anew with civilization is to do away with, in any form, of all governments and their various agencies which involves selling information about either side to all different sides, and the team's mission to their consternation.
The mission ends, I forget exactly how at the moment, in a melancholy sort of way as the team ties up their loose ends, paying various informants, soothing the deceaseds' families and generally accepting their failure for not having killed all of the terrorist organizers on their list. Only when the team has returned to Isreal do they realize that their mission was not in fact a failure but rather quite the opposite when he is greeted at the Tel Aviv airport to a congratulating, pair of younger agents, who pick the remaining team members up, and their counter-terrorist team organizer(one doesn't want to think of the adjective which would accompany a team to take a counter-terrorist team out and so on down the line :P). For a few days the two, including the central character Avner, are treated like royalty. However it's a brief lapse in luxury as Avner is soon brought down to earth by his superiors who want him to go out again on another similar mission, presumably to suck another ten years off his life spiritually as had been said by his wife when he had been returned to him even though the mission spanned a few years. Avner soon tries to escape to America where he'd had his wife live during the mission for the most part from the Mossad agents who invariably follow him and are quite easily spotted by Avner who with his level of expertise knew exactly how to find them. Avner reminds himself of what his father, who had been an agent, that "they'll squeeze you dry until they've gotten everything they want from you" and never has he wanted to listen and act upon what his father had wisely said. To his astonishment, after arriving in New York and checking his Swiss bank account in which his paychecks during his mission had been deposited, Avner found that there was a total of zero. After much desperation and fighting with the "Galicianers", a.k.a. the root of most Jewish stereotypes(more on that later), Avner decided to make his living in America and turn his back to Isreal.
My view: I enjoyed the book, to the point of reading it a few times, as it's quite gripping at least for a book and I enjoyed reading about the assassinations and the various details involved in such endeavors. I also took in the information on the various problems with the Jews, mostly against themselves giving me insight into the self-hating Jew apart from parts of my extended family(:P), and the Arabs. I can't say that I didn't agree with Avner's dim view of the Galicianers, though I forget what Western-European Jews are called, who because of their Eastern-European ancestries, were a lot more conservative and selfish with their spending and dividing of the wealth, often to the detrement of non-Galicianers who were just as much residents of Isreal as them and in Avner's case, had stuck their necks out more than them for Isreal. The most back-stabbing thing the Galicianers did in my opinion is that they made Avner sign a contract after he'd come back to defend his country and was sleep deprived and slightly edgy from recent combat during I forget which war which nullified all his earnings unless he kept working for them. I forgot most of the details but it's pretty low in my opinion. Rant over but overall I like the book.
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What is your take on Vengeance's factual accuracy?
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In my opinion, you'd have to know "Avner" or whatever his real name is better to make a much better assessment of his loyalties to family or Isreal as that would counteract against the way in which he was miffed by his so-called home. I don't know really, does he completely want to give away so many secrets of how they operate; mind you, the .22 Berettas that they bought throughout Europe seems to suggest a staple which would be used by either and both sides purchased the same types of explosives so I don't know how detrimental that would be to Isreal's operational secrecy. I couldn't know how or if Isreal has a quite different training regime than then, though I couldn't see it getting that much greater. The title could almost be a double-entendre with him finally getting financial vengeance with a story created using their checkbooks because the details are certainly in abundance. Also, Avner isn't much of a gloater, admitting to not fully understanding some of the technical equipment he had been trained with and general uncertainties throughout the book though who knows if this is a trick up his sleeve in which he shows a bit a patriotism, I feel I'm reading too much into this. But as the preface says, many people involved, when the book was released, denied it entirely, changing to mild scepticism in the public eye and then to saying their role was too small. So I'm much more of a believer in the story's accuracy with a slight tendency, due to decency on Avner's part towards the agents or the families of whom he worked with and maybe to Isreal, to lembelish where it's needed. This is all based on general knowledge and reading the book.
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Next book.
And Quiet Flows the Don by Mikhail Sholokhov.
Url: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_Quiet_Flows_the_Don
Plot:
Copied from the wikki.
The novel deals with the life of the Cossacks living in the Don River valley during the early 20th century, probably around 1912, just prior to World War I. The plot revolves around the Melekhov family of Tatarsk, who are descendants of a cossack who, to the horror of many, took a Turkish captive as a wife during the Crimean War. Accused of witchcraft by Melekhov's superstitious neighbours, she is killed. Their descendants, the son and grandsons, who are the protagonists of the story, are therefore often nicknamed "Turks". Nevertheless, they command a high amount of respect among people in Tatarsk. The second eldest son of the house, Grigori Panteleevich Melekhov, is a promising young soldier who falls in love with Aksinia, the wife of Stepan Astakhov, a family friend. There is no love between them and Stepan regularly beats her. Grigori and Aksinia's romance and elopement raises a feud between her husband and his family. The outcome of this romance is the focus of the plot as well as the impending World and Civil Wars which draw up the best young Cossack men for what will be two of Russia's bloodiest wars. The action moves to the Austro-Hungarian front, where Grigory ends up saving Stepan's life, but that doesn't end the feud. Grigory, at his father's insistence, has taken a wife, Natalya, but is unhappy, as he still loves Aksinia.
My view:
I have read this book many years ago. I can still remember being shocked by the raw and brutal way the lives of the Cossacks is described.
Although this probably had to do with the fact that I hadn't read that many books in those days, it was the first non-western author I read and the book was written in a harsher time (1928).
And Quiet Flows the Don has it all for me political intrigue, epic wars being fought and an insight in the live of the Cossacks.
If you want to make yourself familiar with history of the Cossacks during WW1 and the Russian civil war you couldn't do wrong with reading this epic novel.
My next goal is to read War and Peace.
Score: 9/10.
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Re-read Panzer Commander by Hans von Luck (again!)
Perfect book for lazy summer-days.
The book is a memoir of Von Luck's life. His early life in Germany, joining the Army, the prewar era in Germany, the invasion of Poland, Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of France, The Desert War, The Normandy campaign and a lot more.
A very good book
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I'm amazed nobody's mentioned "The Godfather" by Mario Puzo yet.
It's the best book out there. Screw the bible (dang, where's my flame-retardant suit?), screw Lord of the Rings, screw Harry Potter.
I even never watched the movie - which I heard is very good - just so I don't ruin the memory of this amazing book. No matter how awesome the movie is, it can never compare to it.
Explaining the story would take far too long, as the book also features the background of every main character, plus some other key events which the movie doesn't.
Basically, "The Godfather" is all about Vito Corleone, a fictional mafia Don (read: leader) and his sons fighting a gang war against the 4 other mafia families in New York.
I give this epic story 3 thumbs up (just... don't ask) and a bright, satisfied smile.
Going to the next bookstore, buying this book for twenty bucks or so and enjoying the pure epic awesomeness of Mario Puzos novel really is "an offer you can't refuse".
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screw Lord of the Rings, screw Harry Potter.
Oi! You there!
The Godfather is awesome but that's just absurd :F
Last books I have read:
Surgeon's Stories (Zacharias Topelius 1851)
Story of two Finnish families from the Thirty-years war in 1631 to rise of Gustav III in 1772. War, adventure, history, science, religion, love - It's all in. One of the best books I have ever read. 10/10
The Voyage of the Beagle (Charles Darwin 1839) Travel memoir and a detailed scientific field journal covering biology, geology, and anthropology from HMS Beagle's journey around the world. Young geologist Darwin really knows how to tell about lands and people and his findings. 10/10
Peril at End House (Agatha Christie 1932) What could I say; moustache wax, little grey cells, murder. Poirot has spoken, the case is settled. 9/10
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I'm amazed nobody's mentioned "The Godfather" by Mario Puzo yet.
It's the best book out there. Screw the bible (dang, where's my flame-retardant suit?), screw Lord of the Rings, screw Harry Potter.
I even never watched the movie - which I heard is very good - just so I don't ruin the memory of this amazing book. No matter how awesome the movie is, it can never compare to it.
Explaining the story would take far too long, as the book also features the background of every main character, plus some other key events which the movie doesn't.
Basically, "The Godfather" is all about Vito Corleone, a fictional mafia Don (read: leader) and his sons fighting a gang war against the 4 other mafia families in New York.
I give this epic story 3 thumbs up (just... don't ask) and a bright, satisfied smile.
Going to the next bookstore, buying this book for twenty bucks or so and enjoying the pure epic awesomeness of Mario Puzos novel really is "an offer you can't refuse".
Wait, what.
This is the first time I've seen anybody like the book.
I read a few summers ago.
And I gotta say, in my book. The movie wins several times over, hands down.
The book feels so weak and as Coppola said: Sleazy.
See the movie, wonderful adoption.
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No, see the episodes 1 and 2.
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Alright, you got me convined. I usually don't trust anonymous people from the internet too much, but what bad can it do in that case? It's not like you're offering me an awesome investment for my hard(ly) earned money via e-mail. I'll go buy the movie tomorrow.
BTW, what do you guys think of Dan Brown novels? I've read all 4 of 'em. I like the way he writes (though that could just be the good translator) but I have to say I'm not entirely convinced by his storylines. He always tries to set up everything to be realistic, but in the end it all just turns out way too unreal for my taste. Any other opinions?
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Alright, you got me convined. I usually don't trust anonymous people from the internet too much, but what bad can it do in that case? It's not like you're offering me an awesome investment for my hard(ly) earned money via e-mail. I'll go buy the movie tomorrow.
BTW, what do you guys think of Dan Brown novels? I've read all 4 of 'em. I like the way he writes (though that could just be the good translator) but I have to say I'm not entirely convinced by his storylines. He always tries to set up everything to be realistic, but in the end it all just turns out way too unreal for my taste. Any other opinions?
His novels are page turners. I don't give 2 cents if it's unreal or not, he just writes very well.
I've read the Last Don from Mario Puzo, very good, love that stuff. And don't worry the Godfather movies are still good, considering their age.
Screw Lord of the Rings :o??! Don't be suprised if you find the head of an Orc in your bed. ;)
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That's just plain silly. I said "screw the Bible" and "screw Lord of the Rings" in the same sentence.
Nobody has answered to the Bible comment yet, but NTH already wants to send me the head of a dead... humanoid. Thorondor even only quoted the screw [enter overhyped book here] part...
But well... I'll just quote Irv Kupcinet (Chicago Sun-Times columnist 1943-2003):
What can you say about a society that says that God is dead and Elvis is alive?
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Well. LOTR and Harry Potters are good books. The Bible is not. And way too many take it too seriously.
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Well. LOTR and Harry Potters are good books. The Bible is not. And way too many take it too seriously.
Yeah but as far as fanboys go, the Bible is tops.
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That's just plain silly. I said "screw the Bible" and "screw Lord of the Rings" in the same sentence.
Nobody has answered to the Bible comment yet, but NTH already wants to send me the head of a dead... humanoid. Thorondor even only quoted the screw [enter overhyped book here] part...
But well... I'll just quote Irv Kupcinet (Chicago Sun-Times columnist 1943-2003):
What can you say about a society that says that God is dead and Elvis is alive?
I'd say we've moved on ;D
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Why don't you like the LOTR books, Wraith?
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I'm not saying I don't like them, they are just incredibly overhyped. Same goes for Harry Potter.
When the movies came out you could buy all of the books right at the entrance of the bookstore for ridiculously high prices, even though they were almost 50 years old.
Actually, LOTR is a good, well-written story. I just don't think it's better than The Godfather.
Talking about overhyped books, do you have that Twilight hype in the US, too?
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I'm not saying I don't like them, they are just incredibly overhyped. Same goes for Harry Potter.
When the movies came out you could buy all of the books right at the entrance of the bookstore for ridiculously high prices, even though they were almost 50 years old.
Actually, LOTR is a good, well-written story. I just don't think it's better than The Godfather.
Funny story, I never saw the Godfather or read any of the books.
Talking about overhyped books, do you have that Twilight hype in the US, too?
That's probably where the hype came from.
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Yuck... Twilight...
I never understood how girls could be that fond of a pale, rotting, undead abomination with the abilities of an oversized mosquito.
Couldn't that be considered necrophilia??
But let's not shift too far away from the topic.
I'm going to Jamaica for two weeks and I'm still looking for a good book to enjoy on the beach. Has anybody got a suggestion for me? I'd prefer a good thriller.
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what is reading?
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Talking about overhyped books, do you have that Twilight hype in the US, too?
Oh, you have no idea.
I would like to apologize for what we have unleashed upon the world.
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(http://api.ning.com/files/uG541KF0chzcl3WvH9SHbb8hRDVnBA7-0l0D81pqHNJGR5unAKkQo4mGIf0kwlD7WmYxVvaGwQKAJSy1m-rgpZSIPwcruKyT/headtrip.jpg)
Yep, that's pretty much the entire plot.
No, seriously, I opened it up to a random page and had to stop after one paragraph because the syntax was so wretched. They had several sentences without verbs! In one paragraph! An entire paragraph without verbs devoted to bitching about school being boring!
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Twilight - the movie is just like Schindler's list... You know you're watching a crime against humanity, but it's sort of entertaining.
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+rep
I need to quote that somewhere too.
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Haha, I got so much crap when we were talking about the Twilight movie in the FH2 IRC channel
Haven't read the book but I think the movie is watchable. Boring romantic high school dramas are so dull. But, throw in some vampires and you got a decent parody.
I loved the scene when Bella sits on the vampires back and he starts running. Looked so wrong and so bad.
Any how, I'm about to finish that book about the two Russo-Chechen wars, don't know the English title. Colors of War maybe. Arkadji Babtjenko I think the authors name is, haven't got the book here.
About to finish it and it has so far been a very good and interesting read. A modern "All quiet on the western front"
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Haha, I got so much crap when we were talking about the Twilight movie in the FH2 IRC channel
Here we go again...
;)
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Yuck... Twilight...
I never understood how girls could be that fond of a pale, rotting, undead abomination with the abilities of an oversized mosquito.
Couldn't that be considered necrophilia??
But let's not shift too far away from the topic.
I'm going to Jamaica for two weeks and I'm still looking for a good book to enjoy on the beach. Has anybody got a suggestion for me? I'd prefer a good thriller.
You could read :
Mo Hayder : The Devil of Nanking (Tokyo) linkhttp://www.mohayder.net/reviews.html (http://www.mohayder.net/reviews.html)
Let me know what you think of it.
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Mo Hayder... That guy gets a lot of good reviews, I should really remember his name.
I'll see if I can find any of his books. Thanks for the advice, much appreciated.
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Mo Hayder... That guy gets a lot of good reviews, I should really remember his name.
I'll see if I can find any of his books. Thanks for the advice, much appreciated.
He is a she ;)
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I thought I would just ask about two books here instead of making a new thread about it
I'm looking at buying "Killing Rommel" by Steven Pressfield. Good read? LRDG action and his previous books look pretty decent.
Also looking at this book "Rommel's Desert War: The Life and Death of The Afrika Korps" input?
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Not related to your question Rawhide, but another excellent book I've just read.
The Given Day by Dennis Lehane:
http://www.harpercollins.com/books/9780688163181/The_Given_Day/index.aspx (http://www.harpercollins.com/books/9780688163181/The_Given_Day/index.aspx)
The Given Day is a marvellous novel set in Boston at the end of WWI. It revolves around the lives of a family of police officers living in Boston and the life of a black man on the run from a crime committed in self defence.
The book sucks you in the life in Boston at the beginning of a new century. The US is dealing with immigrants, Anarchist, Bolsheviks and Union movements (guess nothing changed much in the last 100 years ;))
It's just oozes the whole atmosphere and you don't have to try hard to feel like you are really there.
You also get to meet historical figures like:
Babe Ruth; Eugene O'Neill; leftist activist Jack Reed; NAACP founder W. E. B. DuBois; Mitchell Palmer, Woodrow Wilson's ruthless Red-chasing attorney general; cunning Massachusetts governor Calvin Coolidge; and an ambitious young Department of Justice lawyer named John Hoover.
The book works it's way to a big climax: The Boston police strike http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Police_Strike (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Police_Strike) and all it's intended and unintended consequences.
I realized that I did not know the first thing about the US in that age. I assumed the distrust and hate for the lefties and communise stemmed from after WWII.
It seems that the Anarchists and Bolshevik's were on a terror campaign in the US with bombs, uprising and assassination.
If you have interest in reading about the US and Boston in particular during the end of WWI this book is a must have. And if you don't, still get it it is a great read.
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The Accidental Guerrilla, by Dr. David Kilcullen, Lt. Col., ret.
David Kilcullen is the counterinsurgency adviser to General David Petraus, and has been influential in designing recent, post 2006 counterinsurgency strategy. In this book he uses his considerable experience in the field to explain a theory on the reason for the existence of all these wars today, the Accidental Guerrilla syndrome. Al Qaeda's and other takfiri organizations' strategy lies in exhausting the west through a series of protracted wars. Their tactics consist of Infection, when international terrorists move into an area to mobilize local discontent and lawlessness, contagion, when they use that area as a launch pad for other locales, intervention, when foreign and western forces intervene to clumsily attempt to drive al qaeda out, and rejection, when the local population responds negatively to the clumsy regular military and sides with the less foreign and more dangerous of the two, al Qaeda.
A Hugely informative book that is also hugely dense at times (~1000 citations, iirc). A must read for anybody who is interested in the current situation and the war on terror, but rather uninteresting for anybody else. 9/10
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What the hell, this thread has been dead for 120 days or more!
Nobody on this forums reads books during the summer?
Anyhow, during my visit in Australia I got a book from a backpacker
The book is called "Winter - A Berlin family 1899 - 1945"
I really liked it, a nice story of the Winter family, starting in the year 1899 when Harald Winter's two sons are born. It follows the family through the first half of the century and besides what happens to the family and friends it also follows Germany's history and how it affects them.
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I am reading books, just not ones worth mentioning right now.
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What the hell, this thread has been dead for 120 days or more!
Nobody on this forums reads books during the summer?
Oh, let's see... I have read few Star Wars books during the summer.
- The Paradise Snare
- The Hutt Gambit
- Rebel Dawn
- Allegiance
- Tatooine Ghost
- Heir to the Empire
- Dark Force Rising
- The Last Command
- Jedi Search
- Dark Apprentice
- Champions of the Force
- Specter of the Past
- Vision of the Future
- Survivor's Quest
- Outbound Flight
And for more science and less fiction:
- A Brief History of Time
Not going to review all of them, but they are well worth reading. Oh, and yesterday I bought The Hunt for Red October.
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Looking for a good book about the life of a soldier during World War II, German perspective.
Got Koschorreks work but need something else
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" Forgotten Soldier - Guy Sajer " - quite good. About a very young and scared soldier. doesnt describe many
heroic actions, but alot of good descriptions of panicky retreats from the
eastern front.
" Soldat - reflections of a german
soldier- Siegfried Kanppe " Havent read it yet, but it seems awesome, about a guy who faught in all
the major german theatres, from Paris to Hitlers bunker.
" Ernst Jünger - Storm of Steel " is from ww1, but its awesome. I read it atm and its written in a great way,
describes the battles in a pure neutral and informative way, aswell as the
life in the trenches.
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Well check them out, thanks Job!
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Looking for a good book about the life of a soldier during World War II, German perspective.
Got Koschorreks work but need something else
I´ve been reading a lot books from/about German Soldiers in WW2 in the last few months. But I think most of them are only available in German.
Hans Jürgen Hartmann "Zwischen nichts und Niemandsland"
The author served as a PAK crew in russia, first on the southern front, then in the middle. He thinks about the human aspects as well when they stay in captured villages behind the front, living with the people there in there houses. Also he describes in great details the situations when they were for weeks in trench systems and bunkers. He mentions the fear of being "taken by the Russians" while being on a lonely post at night a lot. One scenery was very intense when they had large battle during a Russian offensive for 48 hours. They lost and recaptured a large trench line system a few times during the night and kept still during the day with the enemy being in the trenches just a hand grenade throw away. Later they got support by some stugs that cleaned the trenches, crowded with hundreds of Russian soldiers, by shooting at 20 meters directly into the masses that did not move and retreat or attack. But even more impressive is how he is able to make you realise the horror from constant waiting and fears, the weather, hunger, lack of sleep and over all the lice and the stench of the dead. First he just wanted to keep out of trouble and stay alive until he got promoted and now had to think for all his men and make them follow orders, even if it ment most likely death. I have highest respect for this man.
Willy Peter Reese "Mir selber seltsam fremd"
A very sad book. He was not the average soldier. He was a very intelligent and well-read young man. He got drafted and wrote this book while he was at the eastern front and when he was on recovering holiday after being injured. He describes the war with the words and thoughts of a poet and still it is the horrors of the eastern front. He was a lonely guy in the army. He even describes how he woke up in a foxhole and everyone had moved and left him behind because he was without friends.
The book ends with "I was soldier in danger and pain. Wanderer, Adventurer in Space. But I loved the life." just before he went back to the eastern front. He died in July 1944 near Witebsk.
Herbert Brunnegger "Saat in den Sturm"
He was 15 years old when he volunteered for the SS in 1938. He was the youngest Soldier of the third Reich.
He joined the Waffen SS Division "Totenkopf" and became a KZ Guard during training. He was with the first troops who entered the Sudetenland, later they went to Poland and then to France. In 1941 they went to Russia were he was in the Demjansk Pocket, then Charkov, and later Operation Zitadelle. After his fourth injury he came to Italy and the back to the east to Brandenburg in 1945. Mostly he served as a driver, delivering ammunition and orders to the Front and brining the dead and wounded back.
Hans Heinz Rehfeldt "Mit dem Eliteverband des Heeres 'Großdeutschland' tief in den Weiten Russlands 41-43"
"Mit dem Panzerkorps 'Großdeutschland' in Russland, Ungarn, Litauen und im Kampf um Ostpreußen 43-45"
This books is like a movie somehow. He describes in great detail what he did, what happened and the battles they had. But it does not contain self reflection, scepsis about the orders or the meaning of his doing.
He fought in a Elite Division in a grenade launcher crew and he was certainly a good soldier but not a fanatic. To many thoughts just get you killed and they were in action nearly without interruptions from one part of the front to another were the situation was bad and help was needed.
Albrecht Wacker "Im Auge des Jägers - Der Wehrmachts-Scharfschütze Josef Allerberger"
Albrecht Wacker wrote this book based on talks with Allerberger and it´s a tough book, the death around him is described in disturbing detail. Be it his comrades, getting shot by enemy sharpshooters or killed by shrapnel or tanks during an enemy assault or the enemy he just killed. The book even has pictures of the dead he describes.
He served in the 3. Gebirgsjäger Division on the eastern front from July 1943, always on retreat.
He used a Russian Tokarev Rifle with scope first, later K98 and G43 with Scope. He also tells about a SS Sharpshooter company he met in April 1945 armed with G43 ZF and a few had a STG44 ZF.
His duty was patrolling near the front line trenches and stopping enemy scout troops and such. He was also able to stop several attacks, sometimes about 100 people in four waves, mostly alone with his G43 with FZ.
He mentions the explosive ammunition a lot. The Russians issued it to their snipers from the beginning while Germans used it only for Plane Mg Adjusting because of limited supplies. Only later in the war he could use this ammunition with German Rifles.
The effects of this kind of ammunition is horrible as he explains in a lot of occasions.
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Whoa, thanks Mayhem!
Will check if I can find any of them in English
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I thought I would just ask about two books here instead of making a new thread about it
I'm looking at buying "Killing Rommel" by Steven Pressfield. Good read? LRDG action and his previous books look pretty decent.
I enjoyed it and it is well written. It was no Gates of Fire mind you, but a good read.
I just finished Alan Furst's latest novel (published in June), called Spies of the Balkans. Most of his popular novels take place on the outskirts of World War II -- no spies stealing the plans for D-Day or trying to kill Hitler. Most of this book took place in Greece and obviously the Balkans. A good but brief read, but far from his best.
I would recommend The Polish Officer and Night Soldiers -- they are immersive, excellent reads.
I also would love to get some European perspective on his ability to write about Europe - are his depictions accurate? He is an American who has spent a great deal of time in Europe (France), but one never knows...
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Looking around on amazon I found these two to be available in english:
http://www.amazon.com/Stranger-Myself-Inhumanity-Russia-1941-1944/dp/B000INB00S/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1 (http://www.amazon.com/Stranger-Myself-Inhumanity-Russia-1941-1944/dp/B000INB00S/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1)
http://www.amazon.com/Sniper-Eastern-Front-Memoirs-Allerberger/dp/B002G59OKO/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1283683651&sr=1-1 (http://www.amazon.com/Sniper-Eastern-Front-Memoirs-Allerberger/dp/B002G59OKO/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1283683651&sr=1-1)
I recommend reading both. While the sniper book is mostly detailed but unemotional facts, showing what people do in war, the book from Peter Reese is the opposite, showing what war can do to people. Also Peter Reese was a usual Infantry Man and as such it´s much more representative for what happened at the eastern front.
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Sorry for double post, but I like this thread :)
So i´ve been reading some more books about WW2 the last two weeks.
Guy Sawjer - The Forgotten Soldier
A damn impressive book.
Many authors try to state only facts that "happened" and account for every day. Not like sawyer. He tells what happened from his subjective viewpoint and states not only emotionless facts. Sometimes this can be annoying when you don´t have a clue what his is talking about (geschnauz ?!) and you just wish that he would be more precise. Best compared to Willy Peter Reese "Stranger to myself".
Compared to the other eastern front books i´ve read, this one might give you a bit of a chaotic impression about the German army in Russia. From this book it seems to be very unorganized mostly. Reasons might be that he was serving in army group center from late 1942 and lived through the Stalingrad retreat and later in east Prussia were chaos was all around and his german wasn´t the best as well.
It´s unbelievable what humans can survive.
Wilhelm Johnen - Duell unter den Sternen
Biography of a German Night-fighter pilot who fought with his ME110 against british and american bombers during their attacks on german cities. Pretty interesting technical details about the devices they used and the development of the Night-fighter weapon in Germany.
Scary to imagine starting, landing and flying in pitch black nights with only the instruments to use. Closing in on the shadows of enemy bombers, shooting only regularly when less than 50 meters distance.
Climbing to 5000 or 6000 meters, they could see the fires from Berlin and Kassel and Duisburg and Leipzig for hundreds of miles. He said that in late 1944 Berlin was burning for several weeks. With the sky over Germany a constant deep red glow it must have been hard to go out night after night without the slightest hope of any meaning of this actions. He saw a lot of cities die as he fought a hopeless cause; 30 planes against 800 bombers ..
Very sad as to read about the enemy bombers exploding midair or crashing down as burning wrecks. On one occasion he tells of a british rear gunner who jumped out of his MG turret as he saw the plane appear out of the dark and went right into his propeller.
Of course this book tells of the knights spirit they had. Calling sea rescue for downed enemy planes over the north sea or how he tried to shoot the wings or engines of bombers only because he did not want to kill the enemy crew.
My WW2 book collection .. can review more books if anyone wants
http://books.google.de/books?uid=17350761908364432639&as_coll=1001&source=gbs_lp_bookshelf_list (http://books.google.de/books?uid=17350761908364432639&as_coll=1001&source=gbs_lp_bookshelf_list)
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Seems like theyre making a movie about Guy Sajer, or its maybe finished already. Really looking forward to see that :)
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I´m currently reading Sajers book, and I really love it. He´s not a hero, but a young teen in the army, going through a living hell over and over again and somehow always surviving it.
I really love the way he describes the rear of the combat lines, a thing you don´t always read about. The scene at the beginning where his train is being attacked by partisans is really exciting, for example.
A movie about this book would be really nice as it shows the war from a very unusual perspective (a half-German Alsatian fighting at the Eastern Front).
"geschnauz" is another name for the StuG IIRC. ;)
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Whats a ... "book" ? ???
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Its hard to explain what a book is ... its kinda like a long dull movie, where you have to use physical energy to turn the pages, right ?
About Guy Sajer , i somehow really liked the part about the defence of Memel. It had such a great mood, scary, dangerous and apocalyptic, on a weird rocky shore covered with fog.
Also some retreat over a huge river where the germans was slaughtered, and their dock was "built" with soldiers as supporting pillars. Most of the time pinned down by russians at the hill above, and planes diving down shooting their rafts too pieces. And the few who managed to cross it was sent to the prison-companies if they had lost any equipment on their wild chaotic escape.
Or the crazy scene where Guy is escaping, beeing under direct fire, running from shellhole to shellhole for the impressing time of 9 HOURS. Thats insane. I wouldnt be able to simply run for 9 hours, even without beeing shot at.
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Whats a ... "book" ? ???
It's where you put pictures in ;D
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Re-reading
We were soldiers once... an young
about landing zones Xray and the Ia Drang battle, vietnam
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Dutch film director Paul Verhoeven has discussed with Mouminoux the possibility of turning The Forgotten Soldier into a film
This has been a rumor for quite sometime (and the Financial crisis didn't help) but still would be great to see what Paul could do with such a book
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On wiki it say it will come a movie sometimes after 2011
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_War_II_films (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_War_II_films)
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On wiki it say it will come a movie sometimes after 2011
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_War_II_films (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_War_II_films)
I hope so, from what I've heard all the interested parties behind the production backed out during the Financial crisis
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/revive
Alright, so I finally finished The Forgotten Soldier and my oppinion I wrote about it here still stands. Great book, sure theres a great discussion going on wether it´s legit or not, but apart from that it´s a book telling an unbelievable story. These men went through hell and somehow made it back again. What the common soldier went through on the Eastern Front was pure terror and now I can fully understand why my grandfathers didn´t really want to talk about what they experienced.
Now that I finished said book I started reading a new one, again. It´s "War" by Sebastian Junger (http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0007337701/ref=s9_simh_gw_p14_d9_i3?pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=1JR6B0MJW21YGQTT5JA8&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=467128533&pf_rd_i=468294), an embedded journalist who stays embedded with an US Army plattoon and follows them into Korengal Valley, in Afghanistan. The book was also made into a movie, called "Restrepo" and both the book and the movie got a really good rating, so I´m really excited to read it.
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Recently finished
Will Fey - Panzerkampf im Bild. Panzerkommandanten berichten
(Tank Warfare in Pictures. Tank Commanders give account.)
http://www.amazon.de/Panzerkampf-im-Bild-Panzerkommandanten-berichten/dp/3895550345/ (http://www.amazon.de/Panzerkampf-im-Bild-Panzerkommandanten-berichten/dp/3895550345/)
Really worth the money if you want to get an insight into German Tank Warfare in WW2.
Large size with more than 400 pages. About half of this are pictures (some double sided) and the other half is him telling about the different operations the SS Panzer divisions were in, each with a few accounts from him or other tank commanders or crew who got deployed in this operations.
It starts in Russia 1943, from the fierce tank battles on the eastern front like charkov and kursk, to the tough battles in the Normandy landscape where tanks were often deployed alone. Storys from participants of the Ardennes offensive and the final battles in hungary and vienna are also there as well as his personal account from the Russian breakthrough on the Oder front at April 1945. Very impressing was the story from a tank commander who broke with the 9th army out of the pocket of Halbe and the several accounts from the last fights in Berlin and the last escapes.
Downside of the many different accounts is that it is not easy to figure out were Will Fey really participated during the end but instead it has many amazing reports from the guys inside their steel monsters and their actions, showing an unbelievable contempt of death.
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Just finished Orwell's Coming up for air
Although it looks like a shallow account of someone reliving his youth, it's actually quite a detailed and scary picture of an intellectual mind in the UK right before WWII. Some descriptions in this book (it was finished in '39) are true prophecies about the horrors that the war would bring to England less than a year later. Interestingly, some of the things that Orwell speaks about in this novel are still the same in the UK today!
If you like books like "Hommage to Catalonia" or "Burmese Days", I can only recommend this novel!
At the moment I'm fighting my way through Ernst Jünger's "On the marble cliffs". Imho too philosophical and not very pleasent for the reader, but the author must have been very brave to publish this in the 3rd Reich as it contains some very direct critic of Hitler and the Nazis.
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Dexter - Dexter is Delicious.
Another great book by Jedd Lindsay.
I greatly enjoy the work of Lindsay; and the books are better than the series in my opinion. It has that wicked black humor and human primal behaviour that I like so much while keeping you on laughs about certain situations.
This book its about cannibalism, and it surprised me how easily its to get into the book, from the first page out to the 256 one.
I recommend it; in fact I recommend that you read all Dexter books, they are very good and well done.
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Currently reading: SOG: The Secret Wars of America's Commandos in Vietnam
46 pages in and its good so far. Full review when I'm done
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Napoleon - a biography by Frank McLynn.
After going to Corsica and reading a book about Napoleon's campaign in Egypt I picked up this one (and another one about his fall) and started reading. Now into page 400something and man, what a life. I even got my interest back in Napoleon Total War as I now recognize marshalls and try to collect them all. They randomly spawn inbetween generals.
Anyways, very well done book by mister McLynn, sharp writer who slashes the myths around him. As with any person, he wasn't picture perfect and he did ruin himself in the end. Definitely a recommendation for those who want to know Napoleon.
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...and a hard rain fell
(http://ebooks-imgs.connect.com/product/400/000/000/000/000/099/225/400000000000000099225_s4.png)
Amazing book. Read it if your interested at all in the Vietnam war. Seriously, great book.
It gives a great perspective of a soldiers view of the war.
8.7/10
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(http://www.audiobooksonline.com/media/Blood_Risers_Airborne_Soldier_Vietnam_John_Leppelman_abridged_compact_discs.jpg)
Another 'Nam book. Good read "Lepp" gives a good account of the problems in vietnam from a grunts perspective while telling his own stories at the same time. 10/10