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What are you reading, Chapter 2
- Thread starter BioDriver
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The Buddha in Your Rearview Mirror by Woody Hochswender.
and
Lesson 9 of my Illustrator CS3 homework, "Applying Brush Effects".
And on the UPS truck as we speak:
FAQ Bass Guitar Care & Setup
John LeVan
Bass Fitness: An Exercise Handbook
Josquin des Pres
The Music Lesson: A Spiritual Search for
Growth Through Music
Read by Victor L. Wooten
Compact Disc
Essential Bass Technique: The Definitive
Technique Manual for Bass Guitar
Peter Murray
and
Lesson 9 of my Illustrator CS3 homework, "Applying Brush Effects".
And on the UPS truck as we speak:
FAQ Bass Guitar Care & Setup
John LeVan
Bass Fitness: An Exercise Handbook
Josquin des Pres
The Music Lesson: A Spiritual Search for
Growth Through Music
Read by Victor L. Wooten
Compact Disc
Essential Bass Technique: The Definitive
Technique Manual for Bass Guitar
Peter Murray
As many of those Time-Life reprints of postwar pilot memoirs as I can chase down in the various libraries to which I have access. Currently on The Big Show, as suggested above.
Looking forward to the one of a Finnish pilot fighting the Soviets.
Looking forward to the one of a Finnish pilot fighting the Soviets.
Excellent, I hope you enjoy The Big Show.
I have Berlin at War on hold at the library, I think I'm 22nd in line, so in the mean time I picked up the following:
Seized looks like it at least has an interesting subject! Jeeze, can you imagine?
I've been reading several of the pilot memoirs and they all have a sameness to them, irrespective of the nationality -- a recounting of their exploits in a sort of knightly vision. There is so much missing from virtually every one in human terms, as they were written by people so much on the team that they never seem to have entertained a doubt about anything in their lives. They're doers, but not writers nor deep thinkers.
The sole exception in all the hundreds of books I've read on this subject is the war memoir of Moritz Thomsen:
[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]
Thomsen was a unique character and is regarded as one of the English language's great obscure writers of the last century. He didn't write until he was in his fifties. He completed this manuscript a few days before he died in Guayaquil of cholera on top of old age and all the horrible things one picks up living in Ecuador (a country that very, very nearly killed me in less than three weeks at barely a third of Thomsen's age and nowhere near its fatal jungles).
His "two wars" are WWII and his awful conflicts with his awful father.
Where most air war memoirs are the same, Thomsen's is unique. The description of his arrival at his first assignment as a new bombardier is as surreal and horrific as anything in Heller's famous fiction. The aircrews in this book are not heroes so much as victims.
He was a truly a uniquely gifted writer. This book is far from his best writing, but it finally explains the background he never mentions in his previous books.
I've been reading several of the pilot memoirs and they all have a sameness to them, irrespective of the nationality -- a recounting of their exploits in a sort of knightly vision. There is so much missing from virtually every one in human terms, as they were written by people so much on the team that they never seem to have entertained a doubt about anything in their lives. They're doers, but not writers nor deep thinkers.
The sole exception in all the hundreds of books I've read on this subject is the war memoir of Moritz Thomsen:
[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]
Thomsen was a unique character and is regarded as one of the English language's great obscure writers of the last century. He didn't write until he was in his fifties. He completed this manuscript a few days before he died in Guayaquil of cholera on top of old age and all the horrible things one picks up living in Ecuador (a country that very, very nearly killed me in less than three weeks at barely a third of Thomsen's age and nowhere near its fatal jungles).
His "two wars" are WWII and his awful conflicts with his awful father.
Where most air war memoirs are the same, Thomsen's is unique. The description of his arrival at his first assignment as a new bombardier is as surreal and horrific as anything in Heller's famous fiction. The aircrews in this book are not heroes so much as victims.
He was a truly a uniquely gifted writer. This book is far from his best writing, but it finally explains the background he never mentions in his previous books.
You'd have to narrow that down a bit, but if you're talking about those "seventeen minutes to save the planet from nuclear destruction" things, I'm probably not your guy.
I'm finishing it now.
I got sidetracked into reading two others in the same series first, and they were very interesting and revealed new information that answers questions I've had for a long time.
I haven't been able to find a full list of the titles, which is unfortunate. Time-Life Books reprinted the best obscure and out of print pilot memoirs they could find and I think most of them are probably available in the various library systems to which I have access.
The Big Show is one of my favorites, as is To Fly and Fight, but I've been looking for some from the Axis point of view for some time now. Most likely I will have to buy them, though they tend to be expensive. The two on the top of my list are The First and the Last by Adolf Galland and My Logbook by Gunther Rall.
I'm about halfway throughSeized, and I'm learning quite a bit about shipping that I didn't know about before, despite my 20 years in the business. Specifically small freighter cargo handling in the Caribbean or the Gulf of Mexico. The author recovers boats that were illegally seized in countries such as Haiti, for example, basically outsmarting the authorities in order to accomplish his job.
Just finished the latest Jack Reacher novel from Lee Childs....awesome series and character but I fear getting a little long in the tooth.
Before that was the Stephen King latest short story grouping...pretty good!
Read Jim Butcher's Harry dresden short story called Side Jobs....well done if u r a Harry Dresden fan.
Read the book on Jack Bruce....a pretty chaotic life on that one.....stubborn character but a great bass player and singer.
Probably due for the #4 volume in the Dark TOwer series from King over the holidays.
Kindles are awesome appliances....I'm sure the apple versions are great, too. Real nice to dispense with the massive pile of books I used to have laying all over the place.
Before that was the Stephen King latest short story grouping...pretty good!
Read Jim Butcher's Harry dresden short story called Side Jobs....well done if u r a Harry Dresden fan.
Read the book on Jack Bruce....a pretty chaotic life on that one.....stubborn character but a great bass player and singer.
Probably due for the #4 volume in the Dark TOwer series from King over the holidays.
Kindles are awesome appliances....I'm sure the apple versions are great, too. Real nice to dispense with the massive pile of books I used to have laying all over the place.
Worth Dying For....the latest Jack Reacher novel from Lee Childs.
Jeffery Deaver's Edge was not bad.
Michael Connelly's latest is pretty good...both Mickey Haller and Harry Bosch in the same story.
John Sandford's Rough Country is the next in the "Virgil Flowers" series....a great departure and refresjhed story line over Lucas Davenport.
That'll hold ya for a few days....
I'm reading Buddhism for Dummies. I'm investigating Buddhism and thinking of becoming one, since Roman Catholicism just isn't working for me anymore.
Just finishing up The Holy by Daniel Quinn. Good writing style. The story seemed a little disjointed in the middle, but he is tying it up nicely.
If you can find I Flew For the Führer in that series, you might find it interesting. It had some new stuff in it for me that answered some long-standing mysteries.
Though the style is atrocious -- first-person present tense -- and it's long out of print, Hans Ulrich Rudel's memoir, Stuka Pilot, is amazing. The incredible scrapes (and the sheer number of them) he got through in Russia defy belief.
On the Road by Kerouac.
I figure that is a must-read, although here in Europe it is not as well know as it should be.
I figure that is a must-read, although here in Europe it is not as well know as it should be.
I've been reading like crazy recently.
Most recently:
The Stranger by Albert Camus
Brave New World & Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley
Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
Kingdom of Fear by Hunter S Thompson
(all were fantastic reads)
Now I'm revisiting my love for Charles Dickens, reading The Old Curiosity Shop. This is my 4th Dickens novel and I'm pretty sure he's my favorite author at the moment.
Most recently:
The Stranger by Albert Camus
Brave New World & Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley
Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
Kingdom of Fear by Hunter S Thompson
(all were fantastic reads)
Now I'm revisiting my love for Charles Dickens, reading The Old Curiosity Shop. This is my 4th Dickens novel and I'm pretty sure he's my favorite author at the moment.
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