What are we reading?

Started by Martok, March 05, 2012, 01:13:59 PM

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JasonPratt

Finished up Rusty Wilson's latest collection of Bigfoot short stories recently -- I was increasingly worried the guy had had to quit due to health (or death?!) but surprise, new book! They're up to par on quality, though longer and more incidentally detailed. Despite the dramatic title, a lot of his prior stories had hostile hunters in them -- it's just that all six in this new collection go that way, and he had to call it something I guess. ;)

Back to serious study elsewhere after the thematic break.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

Gusington

Just started Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands by Richard Sakwa.


слава Україна!

We can't live under the threat of a c*nt because he's threatening nuclear Armageddon.

-JudgeDredd

BanzaiCat


trailrunner

Quote from: Gusington on March 17, 2018, 03:27:31 PM
Oooh how's the Nomonhan book? I've had that on my list forever.

I'm about halfway through the book.  So far I'm enjoying it.  The author gives an account of the military aspects of the battle, as expected, but he also talks about how the battle affected the larger, complex geo-political negotiations leading up to the invasion of Poland.

Gusington

^Thanks, it's right in my wheelhouse.


слава Україна!

We can't live under the threat of a c*nt because he's threatening nuclear Armageddon.

-JudgeDredd

JasonPratt

At brunch today I finished Fremantle's Three Months in the Southern States. It deserves to be a classic of the genre, but I had never heard of it before last month! -- certainly my loss.

I'm unsure how much of the book has been fictionalized -- a few points here and there seem touched up a bit -- but, considering I have no way to independently vouch for its essential historicity, there seem to be numerous markers of a strong historical core to the work. A bit of research indicates that the work is regarded as a historical source reminiscence, popular in Britain and (surprisingly) the Union during the late war but which lost its (clearly romanticized) luster after the final defeat of the Confederacy. Fremantle went on to a high career as a British general, capped by governorship of Malta in 1894. His diplomatic crown was receiving a tour from Kaiser Wilhelm II.

Fremantle was present for the battle of Gettysburg, and passed close to action at Jackson, MS; Vicksburg (at a greater distance); and Shelbyville, TN. Along the way (including a naturally protracted trek across Texas from his legal circumvention of the Union blockade by entering from Mexico across the Rio Grande), Fremantle meets most of the great southern Generals still alive at the time, and also various politicians up to two or three of the high Confederate officials including Jefferson Davis.

The book is very much a work of its time, and the enlightened Fremantle, while detesting slavery in principle, can't help but show a constant ongoing racism and blithe disregard for the make-do attitudes of enslaved blacks -- it's easier to see such things in hindsight, but he also contravenes presuppositions of our time in what to expect about various situations.

Fremantle was somewhat surprised to discover a strong degree of admiration for all things British among the higher classes of the South (he himself being quite a believer in good breeding etc.). Especially he was surprised to discover that all Confederate officers above a certain grade, due to their class education, spoke English no differently than the English did -- with what we would call a British high-class accent! -- and indeed made it a point of pride to do so, in contrast to the ladies who, although they could speak that way if they wanted to, chose to affect 'southern' accents, apparently as guardians of southern culture (or, if I may suspect, because of the aesthetic attractiveness of southern accents in women.  :coolsmiley: )

This was tacitly exhibited in an incident told to the Lt.Col several times which he eventually heard from the mouth of the Louisianan General Polk (serving in Tennessee at the time): early one evening, while overseeing the arrival of a new brigade at the front, and settling them in, Polk observed a regiment lining up from the shelter of a treeline to take harassing pot-shots at the arrivals. All his couriers were off carrying messages, so he rode up to the regiment himself and demanded they stop shooting at their allies. The colonel replied that he was sure that they were the enemy, to which of course Polk retorted that he himself had only just come over from them and could assure that they weren't. Upon demanding to know the colonel's name, Polk discovered that this was an Indiana regiment! Polk successfully bluffed his way to settling down the Union regiment without letting them know who he really was, and coolly trotted off to make his escape -- whereupon he raised up the newly arrived Confederate brigade to launch a devastating night attack upon the regiment! Aside from the entertainment of the story, it shows that Polk, who could not have been from deeper 'South', spoke with no detectable 'southern' accent.

Overall, although Fremantle's own exposure to Union soldiers was brief (as he was making his way to and through New York and back to Britain), he greatly admired the Confederate armies, down to the level of the individual soldier, regardless of their relative 'class', considerably moreso than his (much more limited) exposure to Union troops. (This is why I was surprised at the short-term popularity of his published diary in the Union during the back half of the war.) His observations on Gettysburg's aftermath are interesting, in that he traced the Union victory to enough common sense to hold a solid defensive position (once driven there), combined with more grit than anyone was expecting among his guests; and on the other side, he had to acknowledge that the defeat primarily came from the universal contempt of Union soldiery (in this theater of the war) by all degrees of Confederate soldiers. (Confederates had a higher opinion in the western theaters, where the troops they faced more usually came from what back then were the northwestern frontier states.) Indeed, while Lee had to retreat to resupply, the impression received by Fremantle was that Lee had no intention of leaving the state but simply to regroup and try again: by the Confederate estimate, they had given better than they got at Gettysburg, and had not sullied their reputation, since they had actively driven an army of greater numbers into a defensive position from which the Unionists dared not sally out even to take advantage of the Confederate withdrawal and reorganization at the end of July 3rd, and never approached within half a mile of Confederate cannons, while the Rebels had gallantly marched into their teeth, breaking through defenses, holding the famous "cemetery" for some time, and the artillery area secured by Pickett's charge (which only had to be withdrawn from when other parts of the Confederate line couldn't make it up far enough for mutual support of the breach to be established. But even in that failure they were trying!) Again in the matter of the Little Round Top, the Confederates had come within an ace of taking it, and while repulsed they fell back in good morale for having acted with gallant initiative. In this the attitude of the various Confederate generals certainly helped restore and reshape the morale after those two losses; but they also expected dangerous counterattacks from the Union lines on both days which never happened and which might have resulted in a far more crushing rout of the Confederacy.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

BanzaiCat

In anticipation of getting Raiders Of The Deep from Compass, and with a credit from Amazon for doing some four-week Kindle reading challenge, I bought Fips : Legendary U-Boat Commander 1915-1918.

Precious few books from the German perspective during the Great War, centered on submarines.

Gusington



слава Україна!

We can't live under the threat of a c*nt because he's threatening nuclear Armageddon.

-JudgeDredd

Sir Slash

One hundred fifty six pages is not enough for me. I like 'em BIG! Though it does look interesting.
"Take a look at that". Sgt. Wilkerson-- CMBN. His last words after spotting a German tank on the other side of a hedgerow.

mirth

Currently trying to finish JP's last post in this thread.
"45 minutes of pooping Tribbles being juggled by a drunken Horta would be better than Season 1 of TNG." - SirAndrewD

"you don't look at the mantelpiece when you're poking the fire" - Bawb

"Can't 'un' until you 'pre', son." - Gus

Gusington

Get the heavily abridged version.


слава Україна!

We can't live under the threat of a c*nt because he's threatening nuclear Armageddon.

-JudgeDredd

trailrunner

Quote from: Gusington on March 29, 2018, 12:55:39 PM
Get the heavily abridged version.

Or better yet - the haiku version.

Staggerwing

Get the braille version, when you're done reading no one will ever be able to identify your fingerprints at a crime scene again.
Vituð ér enn - eða hvat?  -Voluspa

Nothing really rocks and nothing really rolls and nothing's ever worth the cost...

"Don't you look at me that way..." -the Abyss
 
'When searching for a meaningful embrace, sometimes my self respect took second place' -Iggy Pop, Cry for Love

... this will go down on your permanent record... -the Violent Femmes, 'Kiss Off'-

"I'm not just anyone, I'm not just anyone-
I got my time machine, got my 'electronic dream!"
-Sonic Reducer, -Dead Boys

Gusington



слава Україна!

We can't live under the threat of a c*nt because he's threatening nuclear Armageddon.

-JudgeDredd

JasonPratt

Braille-fu!

...I think there's a Netflix series or something about that.  :nerd:
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!