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March 27, 2022
Sunday Morning Book Thread - 03-27-2022 ["Perfessor" Squirrel](ht: Skip) Good morning, Horde! Welcome to the prestigious, internationally acclaimed, stately, and illustrious Sunday Morning Book Thread! The place where all readers are welcome, regardless of whatever guilty pleasure we feel like reading. Here is where we can discuss, argue, bicker, quibble, consider, debate, confabulate, converse, and jaw about our latest fancy in reading material, even if it's nothing more than the license plate on the back of the vehicle featured in today's library pic. As always, pants are required, unless you are wearing these pants...for when you absolutely, positively need to check your makeup. NOTE ON COMMENTS: As a general rule on specialty threads (Book, Pet, Gun, Food, Gardening, etc.), please keep comments mostly relevant to the specialty of that thread. Comments that are simply about the events of the day don't really belong here. At the very least, a good rule of thumb is to obey the "100 comment" rule, where all comments should by relevant to the specialty subject until after 100 comments or so. Thank you. Now on to the sticky, Frenchy goodness of the Sunday Morning Book Thread! PIC NOTE Skip sent me this week's library picture. This is the brain child of a retired school teacher in Italy who decided he wanted to bring the joy of books to children in remote villages. He spends his days driving around the local communities, sharing out the books from his mobile library. You can see how happy he is to be sharing his love of reading with children. Truly a man who has found his calling. QUESTIONS FROM THE HORDE FOR THE HORDE So I received a few questions this week in my email that I'd like to share with you all. Sometimes crowdsourcing an answer is a great way to really dive into a subject. And there is no greater source of collective wisdom than the Moron Horde. I also want to try something a little different. Instead of answering the questions in the comments, I've created a survey form where you can answer the questions. This has a couple of advantages. For one, the responses to the questions are all collected in one place and I don't have to sort through the comments trying to find them. Second, I can easily compile the responses into a more user-friendly format that I can share with everyone next week. Third, you have more freedom to respond as you see fit. You are not limited to the same character or carriage return limit that Pixy enforces in the comment box (reduces spam). So here are the questions, which are also embedded in the survey form:
Here is the survey: SURVEY LINK Feel free to fill it out more than once, if you are so inclined. Or post your responses in the comments (though I'd prefer the survey). I'll share the results out next week! (ht: Castlemoyle Books) BOOKS BY MORONS We have two great books for you today, written by long time lurkers and morons in good standing. First, Gary Rafferty (Vn Redleg) has written a powerful, poignant memoir about his time spent in Vietnam: Nothing Left to Drag Home: The Siege of Lao Bao, During Operation Dewey Canyou II; Written by an Artilleryman Who Survived It. He was an artilleryman during the Laos invasion. Gary was kind enough to send me a copy to read. I am very, very glad I read it. It's raw, honest, and extremely emotional. Everyone who has ever been in a combat zone will immediately recognize the horror and madness Gary and his team went through. Anyone who has never been in a combat zone (like me) will still be profoundly affected by the events. War fundamentally breaks down our humanity until we become unrecognizable to ourselves. And when you come back, it's near impossible to fully reclaim your humanity again. A part of you is always left behind on the battlefield.
We need more memoirs like Gary's to remind us that war, ultimately, is madness and chaos personified. War is one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse for a reason. You can obtain both an electronic and physical copy via Amazon. Our second entry comes from another long time lurker, Shane Gries: Battle Drills, an entry in JF Holmes' Fallen Empire universe.
I admit I'm not at all familiar with this series, but it does sound like it has adventure and action enough for my taste. Like many military science fiction adventure series, it's written by military veterans who are able to bring their own experiences to the written page. I may have to give it a whirl. (*sigh* One of the downsides to this Sunday Morning Book Thread thingy is that my TBR pile is going to grow exponentially!) Battle Drills can be found on Amazon. MORON RECOMMENDATIONS I hope everyone has a great week of reading. Painting bedrooms, driving everywhere for kid activities, Lent stuff, and life are not leaving any noticeable room these days. But I'm slowly working my way through Bruce Catton's This Hallowed Ground, and the maps he provides are indispensable since I'm too lazy to go get one and keep it handy while I read. Comment: I'm a huge fan of maps. Even a poorly drawn map can add so much context to a story. This Hallowed Ground is a history of the Civil War. Maps are tremendously useful in charting the battlefields and seeing who is charging where. Heck, if I'm reading a book that takes place in the real world, I'll fire up Google Maps just to get a sense of the location in which the action is taking place. Don't underestimate how much value a good map can add to a story, real or imagined! Here is a book I just finished about a week ago - Vincent McCaffrey's The Dark Heart of Night. Comment: Editing is one of the most essential aspects of writing anything of quality, even if it's just an announcement that will be going out to hundreds of faculty members. For a story, that's even more important! You can have an excellent story, but if the editing is flawed, then the whole work suffers somewhat. This applies to movies and television as well as written stories. Started (reading) a new book this week: The Alexiad by Anna Comnena. She was a Byzantine princess and the book is a bio of her father, Emperor Alexius. (If this sounds kind of Dune-ish, yes, I think she was the model for Princess Irulan.) Comment: Ah, history! Lots of great stories there. When most of Europe was related to each other by blood, that led to some awkward situations. Arranged marriages between noble blood were the norm to cement alliances and keep the major fighting to a somewhat manageable level. Didn't always work if you were on the outs with your father-in-law, though. The Alexiad (cool name) takes place during the middle of the 12th century, approximately during the Second Crusade. That's about all I have for this week. Thank you for all of your kind words regarding my Sunday Morning Book Thread. I hope I am able to continue doing this for the foreseeable future. I do have some plans for this space to help grow it and increase our active participation. Stay tuned! If you have any suggestions for improvement, reading recommendations, or writing projects that you'd like to see on the Sunday Morning Book Thread, you can send them to perfessor dot squirrel at-sign gmail dot com. Your feedback is always appreciated! You can also take a virtual tour of my library at libib.com/u/perfessorsquirrel. PREVIOUS SUNDAY MORNING BOOK THREAD - 03-20-22 (hat tip: vmom stabby stabby stabamillion) (NOTE: Do NOT comment on old threads!) | Recent Comments
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"I'll tell you one thing, Bennett Cerf wouldn't put ..."
Skip : "Irongrampa- that is on Andersonville prison in the ..." Notsothoreau: "Have you read The Beauty and The Sorrow? It's exc ..." OrangeEnt: "I'll tell you one thing, Bennett Cerf wouldn't put ..." vmom stabby stabby stabby stabby stabamillion: "Sgt. Mom, that sounds super interesting. I wish I ..." [/i][/s][/b][/u]Oddbob: "[i]His WWI and WWII accounts sometimes get bogged ..." Castle Guy: "I didn't manage to finish reading anything this we ..." IRONGRAMPA: "My favorite book for years was Andersonville by Mc ..." yara: "As multiple people have said: when you're quoted o ..." vmom stabby stabby stabby stabby stabamillion: "Eris, this one is a bit blander than her more rece ..." Thomas Paine: "The fourth book in the chronicles of Amber series ..." Notsothoreau: "I'm reading Elon by Walter Isaacson. I think this ..." Recent Entries
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