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Feb. 17th, 2010 07:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
prysmicdorkSince I seem to be babbling all over the internets tonight, I may as well go ahead and do my book update post.
Books :
Ghost Wars : The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Ladin, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 by Steve Coll
Super fascinating read, very well written and a great account of how we ended up so tangled up in Afghanistan (and Pakistan). Warning that it will make you repeatedly want to yell "OMG what the hell are you doing!" at all manner of CIA agents and government officials depicted here in.
I meant for February and March to be Afghanistan reading months, but that's been somewhat waylaid...
HBO is airing a second WWII mini series starting in mid-March, called The Pacific and so in preparation for that I ordered Band of Brothers from the library...and it came a bit early? So now February and March are apparently WWII months and also apparently Damian Lewis months as I've also started watching Life (BoB and Life have together mostly cleared out my Soames Forsythe impression of him, which was creepy and freaky, but compelling).
Band of Brothers : E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest by Stephen E. Ambrose
Well written, and a good combination of telling the soldiers' stories, as well as the accounts of the actions they were involved in. There are occasional weirdnesses to the text that would occasionally throw me out, and I don't know if they are the result of Stephen Ambrose coming from an earlier generation of military writers than those that I am used to reading (he was born in '35, I think), or if they are a stylistic choice to better convey the attitudes and thought processes of the soldiers' themselves, but I did find them occasionally jarring (for example, the German's are occasionally referred to as 'Jerries' outside of a direct quote, and Cpt. Sobel is described with the epithet 'hook nosed' which felt rather like a racial slur given that Sobel was Jewish).
I am planning to read Mjr. Winter's book next, but not sure if I will read any of the other guys books (maybe Malarkey as he is a fellow Oregonian?).
Books :
Ghost Wars : The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Ladin, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 by Steve Coll
Super fascinating read, very well written and a great account of how we ended up so tangled up in Afghanistan (and Pakistan). Warning that it will make you repeatedly want to yell "OMG what the hell are you doing!" at all manner of CIA agents and government officials depicted here in.
I meant for February and March to be Afghanistan reading months, but that's been somewhat waylaid...
HBO is airing a second WWII mini series starting in mid-March, called The Pacific and so in preparation for that I ordered Band of Brothers from the library...and it came a bit early? So now February and March are apparently WWII months and also apparently Damian Lewis months as I've also started watching Life (BoB and Life have together mostly cleared out my Soames Forsythe impression of him, which was creepy and freaky, but compelling).
Band of Brothers : E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest by Stephen E. Ambrose
Well written, and a good combination of telling the soldiers' stories, as well as the accounts of the actions they were involved in. There are occasional weirdnesses to the text that would occasionally throw me out, and I don't know if they are the result of Stephen Ambrose coming from an earlier generation of military writers than those that I am used to reading (he was born in '35, I think), or if they are a stylistic choice to better convey the attitudes and thought processes of the soldiers' themselves, but I did find them occasionally jarring (for example, the German's are occasionally referred to as 'Jerries' outside of a direct quote, and Cpt. Sobel is described with the epithet 'hook nosed' which felt rather like a racial slur given that Sobel was Jewish).
I am planning to read Mjr. Winter's book next, but not sure if I will read any of the other guys books (maybe Malarkey as he is a fellow Oregonian?).