What are you reading now? (Chapter 2)

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macdoc
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Re: What are you reading now? (Chapter 2)

Post by macdoc » Wed Nov 30, 2022 1:56 pm

O'Brian is considered the grand master - "The greatest historical novelist of all time" according to the Times.
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21 books in the series.
There is even a statue
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Jack Aubrey & Stephen Maturin
The two very different characters bonded by a love of music.

If you want blood thirsty The Revenant is based on a true story.
I tend to read true stories or based on historical events ....for instance O'Brian is a real scholar and his battles are based on actual engagements even if the narrative and names are changed.

The David Birkenhead series by Phil Geusz was another I enjoyed
https://www.goodreads.com/series/92806- ... ead-series
Tho not up to O'Brian.

If you want a long diet of mayhem...truly fictional- totally epic and memorable.
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I will be very impressed if you read the cycle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malazan_B ... the_Fallen
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Re: What are you reading now? (Chapter 2)

Post by Svartalf » Wed Nov 30, 2022 2:17 pm

@Macdoc, you start with Master and Commander? because I assume that this series is better read in order?
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Re: What are you reading now? (Chapter 2)

Post by rasetsu » Wed Nov 30, 2022 4:55 pm

I decided to start with Master & Commander. I'll start with reading it and dip into the audiobook as time and interest permit.

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Re: What are you reading now? (Chapter 2)

Post by macdoc » Wed Nov 30, 2022 7:03 pm

Yes read in order as the story is sequential over a couple decades
Enjoy - have a dictionary handy :coffee:
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Re: What are you reading now? (Chapter 2)

Post by Tero » Thu Dec 08, 2022 2:06 pm

modern world.jpg
modern world.jpg (53.53 KiB) Viewed 5141 times
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Said Peter...what you're requesting just isn't my bag
Said Daemon, who's sorry too, but y'see we didn't have no choice
And our hands they are many and we'd be of one voice
We've come all the way from Wigan to get up and state
Our case for survival before it's too late

Turn stone to bread, said Daemon Duncetan
Turn stone to bread right away...

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Re: What are you reading now? (Chapter 2)

Post by macdoc » Thu Dec 08, 2022 9:08 pm

#17
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Re: What are you reading now? (Chapter 2)

Post by Sean Hayden » Fri Dec 09, 2022 6:01 pm

55328274-BE65-4B83-AFCF-06A4C48C9B82.jpeg
—//—

An introductory botany text. If I could go back in time, that’s what I’d study.

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Re: What are you reading now? (Chapter 2)

Post by rasetsu » Fri Dec 09, 2022 8:06 pm

I went through all my physical video media and dead tree books last night. There was some interesting stuff in there. But I've got too high a virtual stack atm. Most of the paper books I've kept have to do with religion, including a 5-volume set on the history of western philosophy of religion. Maybe in the New Year I'll pick one thing and start reading.

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Re: What are you reading now? (Chapter 2)

Post by JimC » Fri Dec 09, 2022 9:03 pm

I'm re-reading an 80's SF series by Alexis A. Gilliland, which starts with "The Revolution from Rosinante", involving well imagined space habitats. At the same time, on Kindle, I'm working my way through the Spellmonger fantasy books by Terry Mancour - a good example of the genre...
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Re: What are you reading now? (Chapter 2)

Post by Tero » Sat Dec 10, 2022 3:18 pm

My review. I won't read this completely till spring, as I have two other history classes to give. But this will be part of something for fall.
This is the only title in the Oxford series that addresses colonialism. Pages 62-103 cover this topic. Too much of history in school covers North America and the Caribbean and stops there. This covers the rest of the world.

Other books in the series cover the post-colonial history.

Luckily we don't get too many right wingers reviewing these Oxford introductions. They would label it all as "woke" history. This is what actually happened. As far as the Americas go, the book on slavery adds a bit to this same topic. The book American Slavery by Heather Andrea Williams covers the Caribbean as well as the continent (US).
https://www.amazon.com/Empire-Short-Int ... 2232&psc=1
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Said Peter...what you're requesting just isn't my bag
Said Daemon, who's sorry too, but y'see we didn't have no choice
And our hands they are many and we'd be of one voice
We've come all the way from Wigan to get up and state
Our case for survival before it's too late

Turn stone to bread, said Daemon Duncetan
Turn stone to bread right away...

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Re: What are you reading now? (Chapter 2)

Post by macdoc » Sun Jan 08, 2023 7:00 am

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Sensational, purient and gruesome but fascinating.
Audrey Hepburn had suffered badly during the war. Despite his earlier Fascist leanings, her interned father had never been a traitor to Britain. Her mother’s family were no friends of the Germans, either. The van Heemstras had Jewish blood, several generations back, and had been obliged to accommodate the Kaiser in their castle at Doorn when he sought asylum after the Great War. They had later had to sell the castle to him against their wishes.
Audrey had seen enough of the Germans during the war to last her forever. The same age as Anne Frank in Amsterdam, she had watched Jews being rounded up, many of them refugees from Germany, and transported to the holding camp at Westerbork for onward transition to Auschwitz. She had been a helpless witness as her own neighbors were herded into trucks and taken away:

I’d go to the station with my mother to take a train and I’d see cattle trucks filled with Jews … families with little children, with babies, herded into meat wagons—trains of big wooden vans with just a little slat open at the top and all those faces peering out. On the platform, soldiers herding more Jewish families with their poor little bundles and small children. They would separate them, saying “The men go there and the women go there.” Then they would take the babies and put them in another van. We did not yet know that they were going to their death. We’d been told they were going to be taken to special camps.9
Audrey’s own uncle had been executed by the Germans, shot in reprisal for a sabotage attack by the Resistance. She herself had lived in fear of being kidnapped and taken to a military brothel, as so many other girls had been. She had indeed been picked up once by the Wehrmacht, who were looking for women to work in their kitchens, but had escaped immediately, running away and remaining hidden indoors for the next few weeks.
She had also worked for the Resistance, tripping past German sentries with messages concealed in her shoe. During Operation Market Garden, the Allies’ attempt to force a passage across the Rhine at Arnhem, she had made contact with a British paratrooper stranded in the woods and put him in touch with Resistance members in the town. With so many friendly troops around, the Dutch had assumed that liberation was at hand, only to be bitterly disappointed when the Allies withdrew and the Germans evicted them from their homes in retaliation. Audrey and her mother had gone to her grandfather’s large house at Velp, three miles from Arnhem, but others had had nowhere to go at such short notice. Audrey had watched them with horror:

I still feel sick when I remember the scenes. It was human misery at its starkest: masses of refugees on the move, some carrying their dead babies, born on the roadside, hundreds collapsing of hunger … 90,000 people looking for a place to live. We took in forty for a while, but there was literally nothing to eat, so they had to move on.10
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Re: What are you reading now? (Chapter 2)

Post by macdoc » Fri Jan 13, 2023 2:23 am

Well I have to say that book kicked off another pair.
This one with a very odd history
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Painted_Bird
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plus just starting this...there are some parallels
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Pouring rain and great to have books to read and a nice new sound system in the background plus Spotify is a treat.
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Re: What are you reading now? (Chapter 2)

Post by Tero » Mon Jan 16, 2023 12:22 pm

Bit of an odd age of exploration book. A reprint. The original sells for 45 dollars of those few copies still floating around.
https://www.amazon.com/Great-Age-Discov ... 6868&psc=1
https://esapolitics.blogspot.com
http://esabirdsne.blogspot.com/
Said Peter...what you're requesting just isn't my bag
Said Daemon, who's sorry too, but y'see we didn't have no choice
And our hands they are many and we'd be of one voice
We've come all the way from Wigan to get up and state
Our case for survival before it's too late

Turn stone to bread, said Daemon Duncetan
Turn stone to bread right away...

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Re: What are you reading now? (Chapter 2)

Post by macdoc » Sun Jan 22, 2023 6:34 pm

I'm on a WWII kick.

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Re: What are you reading now? (Chapter 2)

Post by macdoc » Mon Jan 30, 2023 6:55 am

Back to back motorcycle adventures. Since I'm not getting much of my own for the moment.
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Image :coffee:
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