Favorite Books

[E7]

The Poet

Chasing the Dime

Two of Michael Connelly's non-serial books

[sarge]

Probably explains why I often find myself a square a peg here, but I just don't roll with fiction like you guys can. With a few exceptions, I get my storytelling fix from films rather than reading fiction. I will second and add as appropriate:

-Pogo
-Calvin and Hobbes
-Milne
-Suess
-Bloom County
-Charles Addams
-Kin Hubbard
-The Alexander Botts stories
-The Flying Yorkshireman
-The Rev. Awdry "Thomas" Stories
-Sherlock Holmes
-Flashman

To me SciFi is death, as is Shakespeare and most fiction has to fall into that category. One Sci Fi book that I read that made a truly frightening impression about accurately foretelling of the future was a Larwence Sanders book called, "The Tomorrow File". Literary crap as I would guess all Sanders to be, but dam is it scary in its prescience.

Non-fiction is my recreation, perhaps because I'm rabid about learning things for myself, since I rarely had the opportunity for instruction beyond high school, so went the (now closed) route of being self-taught then challenging courses to gain a degree. Not an easy way to do it perhaps, but I learned much more than material going that way. Just never had the resources for an extended collegiate experience. Anyway, non-fiction:

-Of course, good railway reference books and car reference books
-Alan Clark, as Healey mentioned. Clark and I think alike about cars.
-"Handbook of Chemistry and Physics", "Machinery's Handbook", and Marks are a sampling and were the most used go to references on my desk.
-"Set up Running" is a great book, as is Borntrager "Keeping the Railroads Running"
-No love for Beebe, but love reading Farrington, Hungerford and Staufer; Simmons Boardman Cycs are gold
-I'm happily drowning in British railway books, but that isn't of mutual interest here.

For history, I have a reading list to suggest:
-For the Rev War, Higgenbottoms "War of American Independence"
-The Barbary Wars, Zacks, "Pirate Coast"
-1812, Lord, "Dawns Early Light"
-Civil War, just read Catton and skip the rest of the tons of shit written since.
-1876, for a great feel of how Americans viewed themselves at the Centenial, there was a book called "One Hundred Years of American Independence", Mine is in pieces and they are hard to find, but a great four inch thick pre Political Correctness snapshot.
-Span Am, well the contemporary accounts are the most fun if not the most educational. Crap like "The Story of our Wonderful Victories". Brilliant!

Great war:
-Multi volume; Literary Digest's "History of the World War"
-Morrow, "Gentlemen of War", its about the cruiser Emden. Great read.
-McBride, "A Rifleman went to War" much better and spookier than "All Quiet" which I loathe.

WWII
-Anything Schirer, especially "Collapse of the Third Republic" and "Nightmare Years"
-Read Toland's "Rising Sun" for Japan as you would Schirer's "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" for Germany.
-For the years leading up, Henry Adams, Leonard Mosely, and Seton-Watson. The most fascinating part of the story happened before Poland.

-Craig, "Germany 1866-1945" is a perspective setter.

Navy stuff:
-Tin can is a great story, yes.
-Morison (the multivolume)
-Brassey's Naval Annual
-Jim Calvert's Silent Running for the best submarine story
-If you like Tin Can, you'll like Moses "At all Costs" about convoying to Malta

Overall:
-Liddell-Hart, a real crank and an absolute genius
-Chronology of the Second World War (Royal Institute) having that, or the West Point Military History references, Schrader's, or the CMH guides to reach for during a read.

Air stuff
-Jablonski, all of it, mythridden as it is. I grew up poring over "Flying Fortress"
-Holland, Deighton, Morrow, Closterman

Land stuff:
-Barnett "Desert Generals"
-Fleming "Sea Lion"
-I have a bias to airborne/para campaigns for some reason, but the Western Desert is also a place to go.

Bios and such; I love a good biography, but anything done recently is a cesspool approached with morbid curiousity if not outright dread, much like modern takes on military, geopolitical or railway history. Anyway:

-Anything William Manchester
-In my first trade I was introduce to Mahan, which was an easy read, and "On War" which took real effort.
-Mauldin and Ernie Pyle
-The Washing of the Spears (South Africa and the Empire, all you "Zulu" fans)
-Anything Churchill wrote other than that dreadful novella of his.
-Gilberts official bio of WSC
-Last Lion (Manchester again)
-Anything from the Battle of the Biographies, including: Montgomery, Patton, Eisenhower, Brooke; the list goes on and on, more than you'd guess and cetainly more than I'll list. I have a full bookcase of it, and these guys were vicious and delicious.
-Truman and Eisenhower's memoirs

Lastly, any periodical about forensic engineering, history of technology, worth a go.

[MurphOnMillerAve]

So very nice to see you here again, Sarge. Meeting you those couple times @ York TCA Meet, at my little booth, was a pleasure, adding as they did that important depth of face-to-face appreciation. I sure hope you are well, happy, and content.
Frank the Murph

[Seaboard Air Line Fan]

Jablonski, all of it, mythridden as it is. I grew up poring over "Flying Fortress"

The stories of the Bloody One Hundredth and Robert Rosenthal (pilot of Rosies Riveteers) will always stick in my mind.

Same here. I also have the two volume AIR WAR by Jablonski.

I got fascinated by the movie "Cockleshell Heroes" and finally found a book "The Cockleshell Canoes" by Quintin Rees. Covers just about if not all the various canoes the British used in WW2.

One book I pull out and re-read is "Team Yankee" by Harold Coyle (Major, U.S. Armor), the copy I have is in large print, 1987. Scary how close real life came to his book about the middle east, could still happen. It's fiction but kept my attention.

[chuck]

"The Art of Clear Thinking" by Rudolph Flesch and

"An Introduction to General Systems Thinking" by Gerald Weinberg

Latter is actually a text book but the math doesn't get heavy till the last couple of chapters, aka 75%-80% of the book is easily read/understood with basic examples and analogies.

"Yeager, and autobiography" by Chuck Yeager and Leo Janos

The chapters on the two accidents where he nearly bought the farm (X-1A and the NF-104A) are particularly gripping.

[E7]

Probably explains why I often find myself a square a peg here, but I just don't roll with fiction like you guys can. With a few exceptions, I get my storytelling fix from films rather than reading fiction. I will second and add as appropriate:

-Pogo
-Calvin and Hobbes

A fiction book can contain a large amount of factual material and a non-fiction book can be not so much. Take your first two items on your list...........cartoons, but a lot of truth there for sure!

[MurphOnMillerAve]

.... With a few exceptions, I get my storytelling fix from films rather than reading fiction....

I have to say, I thought about that for a bit, and I have to agree (which is a little embarrassing for an English teacher.) Though I enjoyed reading the novels that were required of me in college, I do enjoy films immensely and find myself, nowadays, avoiding reading a novel and preferring, instead, to watch a movie.

The best example I can give you is To Kill a Mockingbird. Much as I enjoyed reading it, when I subsequently saw the movie, the movie became the novel for me. That is, every scene and character on the screen forever became what I saw in my mind when I read the book. If you mention the story to me, now, I see Gregory Peck as Atticus and Robert Duval as Boo Radly, etc.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

I rarely read non-fiction anymore.

[MurphOnMillerAve]

I don't even look at my so-called "coffee table" books any more, even those about trains. The pictures I can get from the Internet are so varied and clear. In fact, I visited the bookcase in our study a couple days ago and remarked to myself that the Encyclopedia hadn't been touched in more than a decade. Interesting changes afoot.

I do, however, still give children books. They seem to like them. In fact, the ten year old boy I had been tutoring for two years always got very happy when I would have a book for us to explore together, and he was consistently happy, not nonchalant, when I would let him keep the book and take it home with him after we had utilized it fully. However, as part of each lesson in Language Arts, he would ask for our use of my cellphone, too, to investigate creatures and critters we had come across while he - at his own pace and will - would adventure through the pages of that month's issue of National Geographic, a subscription I had gotten for him. He very much enjoyed the variety of ways we would read and search for information. He enjoyed keeping his National Geographics.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

I don't even look at my so-called "coffee table" books any more, even those about trains. The pictures I can get from the Internet are so varied and clear. In fact, I visited the bookcase in our study a couple days ago and remarked to myself that the Encyclopedia hadn't been touched in more than a decade. Interesting changes afoot.

The Encyclopedia is a real antique now and probably so for decades now.

I do, however, still give children books. They seem to like them. In fact, the ten year old boy I had been tutoring for two years always got very happy when I would have a book for us to explore together, and he was consistently happy, not nonchalant, when I would let him keep the book and take it home with him after we had utilized it fully.

There is hope.

However, as part of each lesson in Language Arts, he would ask for our use of my cellphone, too, to investigate creatures and critters we had come across while he - at his own pace and will - would adventure through the pages of that month's issue of National Geographic, a subscription I had gotten for him. He very much enjoyed the variety of ways we would read and search for information.

Using his "Encyclopedia".....

[MurphOnMillerAve]

"Using his 'Encyclopedia' ." An excellent point, Rufus!

[E7]

.... With a few exceptions, I get my storytelling fix from films rather than reading fiction....

I have to say, I thought about that for a bit, and I have to agree (which is a little embarrassing for an English teacher.) Though I enjoyed reading the novels that were required of me in college, I do enjoy films immensely and find myself, nowadays, avoiding reading a novel and preferring, instead, to watch a movie.

The best example I can give you is To Kill a Mockingbird. Much as I enjoyed reading it, when I subsequently saw the movie, the movie became the novel for me. That is, every scene and character on the screen forever became what I saw in my mind when I read the book. If you mention the story to me, now, I see Gregory Peck as Atticus and Robert Duval as Boo Radly, etc.

i think the answer here is (at least for me) that I can enjoy ALL three types (fiction, nonfiction, & film) if they are done well. Unfortunately the stuff that is done poorly outweighs the latter by a large proportion, and the truly exceptional is rare.