Category Archives: Library

Old Man’s War

Posted on March 3, 2007 | Comments Off on Old Man’s War

I’d read Instapundit’s remarks on John Scalzi’s sci-fi novel "Old Man’s War," and so decided to give it a try. Years since I read science fiction. The book lives up to its billing, although I wonder about the apparent put-down of the space elevator as impossible without advanced technology, which was unexplained, other than to say it was even beyond the already understood need for improvements in materials for the cables… Anyhow, that’s a quibble when the rest of the book is pretty enthralling, the ideas believable, and the love story at its heart quite compelling.

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Dear Soldier

Posted on March 2, 2007 | Comments Off on Dear Soldier

DearSoldier.jpg

"As one soldier put it, ‘Thanks for putting the passion back into my soul,’ says Amber Baldwin D’Amico, one of the [best-selling] book’s creators and a USAA member."

Via USAA Magazine.

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Posted in Library, The War, Troops

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Alexander Fullerton

Posted on February 16, 2007 | Comments Off on Alexander Fullerton

Can’t speak too highly of this British novelist, who has written fifty books in all. Five stars. Finishing Mr. Fullerton’s "The Gatecrashers" now, the last of his Nicholas Everard World War II saga. Going to miss the Everards and their various crews on their submarines, destroyers and cruisers.

The great thing about the saga is that it fills in my ignorance of the Royal Navy’s participation in World War II. They did a lot of convoy escorting through nightmarish U-boat packs and Junkers 88 and Stuka divebomber attacks. So much of the history of the war I had read was confined to what the Americans were up to. Other than the Battle of Britain, my knowledge of their contribution was very limited.

The saga, which you should try: "Storm Force to Narvik," "Last Lift From Crete," "All the Drowning Seas," "A Share of Honor," "The Torch Bearers" (probably the most harrowing), and "The Gatecrashers." I got onto them when I chanced on a review copy of "Patrol to the Golden Horn," a submarine tale of the Everards in World War I, the second of three on that war. I’ve always been a sucker for submarine stories. Probably because submarines scare me. Smashing good read, that one, as well as Mr. F.’s first book, "Surface."

Naturally, after ten books in all, I’ve picked up some 1940s Brit lingo, and affection for all. Makes me wonder, sometimes, why so many Brit civilians now are so unwilling to see their country fight the war on terrorism. Not their soldiers or sailors, of course. They haven’t changed.

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The mind is a terrible thing…

Posted on February 2, 2007 | Comments Off on The mind is a terrible thing…

…to waste, as they say, although I was thinking of another angle. How many gigabytes, etc., in there in that impossibly wet architecture? An idea I got here from Ligneus at Spiced Sass. I tried registering to leave a comment but the site won’t allow it, for some reason. Perhaps he has turned the function off. That would be nice, to turn the mind off. He calls his post Mental Bric A Brac. Reminds me of last night’s reading to Mr. Boy from the last third of "The Goblet of Fire." Dumbledore plucks his intrusive, older memories out of his temple on long, silvery threads with his wand and puts them in the Pensieve for storage–in 3-D, full-color with audio. Wish I could do that. One of the hard things about aging is that delightful current memories take a backseat to more problematical older ones which increasingly march forward as the years go by. Pity, really. Lots of clutter in there from growing up a military brat and moving about every two years, sometimes more often. Add in combat in a war, too many love relationships before, during and after, and it all gets very murky, stimulating odd night dreams and off-topic daydreams. As I say, the mind is a terrible thing…

Via Just Muttering by Myself 

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Posted in Library, Mr. Boy, Scribbles

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Nice review

Posted on February 1, 2007 | Comments Off on Nice review

More or less. Well, just four words, actually. But coming from Marc Leepson, arts editor of the Vietnam Veterans of America’s VVA Veteran magazine, they were aimed right at the target audience: Vietnam vets.

"…a first-rate collection…" he wrote in the January/February issue of my 16-story "Leaving the Alamo, Texas Stories After Vietnam," which is thumbnailed over on the sidebar, at the top, courtesy of Amazon.com. Hasn’t produced a sale yet, but after being ignored by POD-dy Mouth the print-on-demand world’s most famous reviewer, it was a lift, anyhow. Try it, you might like it. Professionally-edited and just a hair over $8. How can you miss?

UPDATE  Well, it was just over $8, then the print-on-demand house, Lulu, repriced it, so now it’s $10.78. Still a bargain, I think.

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Potter progress

Posted on January 19, 2007 | Comments Off on Potter progress

Mr. Boy and I are on the last chapter of Prisoner of Azkaban, and he’s already having a cow to move on to Goblets of Fire. As I recall, this series is supposed to be for 9- and 10-year-olds, but Mr. B. won’t be seven for another month and he’s very enthusiastic about it. He’s learning to read, of course, but hasn’t quite the confidence to tackle the Potter books yet. Says with a note of awe in his voice that Vivian, a girl in his class, is reading the first one on her own. I expect he’ll be inspired now to try it, too. He’s at the stage where he claims to hate girls, but I really think that’s just a pose. A lot of times, in commenting on school (reading, writing and math) he seems to save his admiration for them.

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Posted in Library, Mr. Boy

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“Flight to Mons”

Posted on January 13, 2007 | Comments Off on “Flight to Mons”

Just finished this really good 2003 book by British novelist Alexander Fullerton, about the small military airships of World War I. Enough technical detail to put you uncomfortably in the open-air cockpit of a hydrogen-filled blimp at 6,000 feet over the English channel and on into occupied France for a little espionage recovery detail. Brave men, flying with no parachutes (few available yet) in what amounted to a biplane’s fuselage, stripped of its wings, suspended beneath the highly-inflamable (even explosive) gas bag by a series of occasionally unreliable wires. With the primitive forecasting of the day, the weather could be their worst enemy. Have read several other books by Fullerton, mostly Royal Navy sea adventures, in subs ("Patrol to the Golden Horn") and destroyers ("Last Lift From Crete"). These machines exist only in photos today, and not many of those. But quite a lot of historical material is on the Web about  the little airships, which were improved from about 1913 until the 1930s when airplanes had advanced enough to make the blimps fairly impractical, due to their dangerous hydrogen gas. Think of the Hindenberg disaster, and others less well known.

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