What are you currently reading ?

[Ithoriel]

Interesting to learn that a TV series is in the offing.  It must be about 45 years since I read it and I wonder how will it will stand up to modern media handling; at least it will have a plot unlike so much these days.

I fear you may not have seen many TV remakes

The names remain the same but the plot has been changed to protect the innocent hard of thinking.

[Baron Von Kranky]

Lincoln's Lieutenants, The High Command of the Army if the Potomac by Stephen W. Sears. Very good, but very long.

[Raider4]

There's also another Dune movie coming - they've split the first book into two films this time.

But I can't face re-reading that at the moment.

[fsn]

At the start of 2020, I said it was the year of Napoleonics.

So, it should come as no surprise that I'm reading "Winged Victory" by V M Yeates ... all about airmen in WWI. It's a book that I first read many, many years ago, Perhaps I've lost patience, perhaps I read too many other books, perhaps I feel the cold breath of time's end on my neck, but I do find myself wishing he'd get on with it.

It's full of interesting snippets about flying in 1918. Formation take off being novel, the flying characteristics of a Camel, the acceptance of crashes as an occupational hazard.

Yeates was a Camel pilot. The book smacks of autobiography, and tells the story of front line pilots.

All this brought about because I found some tiny WWI aircraft that I had forgotten. 38 British aircraft assemble and painted in 5 days. Germans taking a bit longer.    

[FierceKitty]

Foundation by Isaac Asimov.

Re-reading this after ~45 years - due to seeing a trailer for a TV show on one of the subscription channels (so I'm unlikely to ever see it).

Stands up quite well to me, for something written in the forties. There's an obvious fascination with atomic power (the new upcoming thing back then). The really odd thing - which is mentioned in the foreword - is that there's next to no actual action. It's nearly all meetings, with the characters talking about what has happened in the past, or what they plan to do in the future. Practically everything happens off-screen. There is only one female character in the whole thing, and she's a very, very minor character indeed. Completely male dominated.

It's also mercifully short at about 230 pages, compared to the multi-hundred page books more common nowadays.

Foundation and Empire up next.

Two objections.

One The whole science of psychohistory relies on numerical inertia; that sheer massive averages will produce overwhelmingly normative results when so many planets contribute their input from so many inhabitants. This works as long as the galactic empire holds together. As it fragments, the mutual stabilising effect fails; decisions and discoveries by brilliant individuals and plain freak chance will start to influence increasingly isolated societies in unpredictable ways.

Two More seriously, Asimov couldn't write decent dialogue if a gronfongler disinto-ray were pointed at his goolies as a motivator.

[mmcv]

There's also another Dune movie coming - they've split the first book into two films this time.

But I can't face re-reading that at the moment.

The new movie looks promising. I "re-read" Dune on audiobook earlier this year and enjoyed it. Think the last time I read it was in my early teens.

[Steve J]

The Battle of Killicrankie: The First Jacobite Campaign 1689-1691 by J.D. Oates. A good read so far with plenty of detail for the wargamer. Still in the early stages of the campaign so haven't got to the nitty gritty stuff yet.

[kipt]

Finished "Honour Be Damned" by Tom Connery.  A Markham of the Marines Novel, as it says on the cover.  This is the only one I have (given by a friend).  It's in the tradition of Sharpe and Fox.  Lieutenant Markham is a Marine officer and on an escapade in the south of France after Toulon.  Loyal sergeant as in Sharpe.

An OK book but it didn't hold my attention as other Napoleonic novels of the type.

[Ithoriel]

The new movie looks promising. I "re-read" Dune on audiobook earlier this year and enjoyed it. Think the last time I read it was in my early teens.

"It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.
It is by the juice of Sapho that thoughts acquire speed, the lips acquire stains, stains become a warning.
It is by will alone I set my mind in motion."

The first thing I think of in relation to Dune and it's not even in the books!

[Jerboa]

I'm currently reading, and thoroughly enjoying, 'Brazen Chariots' by Robert Crisp. It's a memoir of a tank commander in 3RTR during Operation Crusader (Nov.-Dec. 1941). Fascinating character. Great story. Honeys vs. Panzers in the desert. What's not to like.
Jerboa

[Steve J]

1914 wargames rules from Great Escape Games.

[hammurabi70]

I'm currently reading, and thoroughly enjoying, 'Brazen Chariots' by Robert Crisp. It's a memoir of a tank commander in 3RTR during Operation Crusader (Nov.-Dec. 1941). Fascinating character. Great story. Honeys vs. Panzers in the desert. What's not to like.
Jerboa

Great read but a view limited to that of an individual tank commander during Operation Crusader.

[Ben Waterhouse]

Just got the 5 volume Phipps "The Armies of the First French Republic and the Rise of the Marshals of Napoleon" from the N&M Press reprint. That'll keep me quiet for a couple of weeks...

[paulr]

Not, it would appear, entirely quiet

[Chad]

Ben

Enjoy the books. They are an excellent introduction to the Revolutionary period

[Steve J]

Landscape Turned Read: The Battle of Antietam by Stephen W Sears. Just getting going but I do like him as an author.

[kipt]

Finished "Napoleon And His Marshals" by A.G. MacDonald.  A good look at the different Marshals with a lot of the interaction and strife between them.  Good anecdotes of who they were and how they interacted.  I have 6 other books on the Marshals as well as several on specific men.  This has other information.

A few inaccuracies (printed in 1934) that later books corrected, but well written and easy to read.

[Adamwest]

Collision of empires, the war on the eastern front 1914,
Found it on my tablet and reread it. I really enjoyed it i thought the author did a good job of zooming between the large scale offensives down to the individual regimental actions. This combined with osprey the 'austro-hungarian army in 1914' has got me wanting to play some early great war, see if i can do better than Conrad!

[hammurabi70]

In some ways it is complimentary to Montgomery - best people read the book themselves and make their own minds up.

BLOOD, SWEAT & ARROGANCE - G Corrigan

A good point so I have read it.  I am not quite sure how to take it as large sections of it are taken up covering pre-war and early war periods; as these often suffer from neglect there is some value there.  Much of the material seems to be a narrative  on progress of the war but I am not sure if it is done as an attempt to highlight failings or just carrying on the story of the war. I guess it may depend on how much of the material the reader is familiar with; having more than 50 years of reading the only new material for me was Churchill's input on budgeting during the 1920s and the ten-year rule but then my memory recalls that Churchill was in the Treasury so presumably had an implied aim of keeping down expenditure.

I did find his generosity towards the behaviour of the Waffen SS and the German Army to be irritating and one might pick up on a few other points, such as:
* Wittman was not killed by a rocket firing Typhoon, which is what he suggests.
* It is suggested (curtesy of a Waffen SS officer) that there is no evidence of German usage of the intact Monte Cassino monastery; however, a BBC documentary includes the testimony of a veteran who generously credits the German High Command with issuing such orders and having such intent but who swears that he observed firing from the intact monastery.
* His desire to use the 3.7" AAA as a converted anti-tank weapon misses the point that it was designed to defend against aircraft and did a good job of keeping the Luftwaffe away from RAF bases, while the 88s converted to anti-tank roles failed to do the same for the Germans., whose airbases got badly bombed by the RAF.  The memoirs of a major who commissioned the development of the 6pdr anti tank gun in 1936 mentions that his successor in Whitehall cancelled the project as an economy measure, thereby delaying the introduction of the 6pdr by two years.  Investigating that claim and the issues around procurement would have been more helpful, as Wing Commander 'Dizzy' Allen did with his analysis on the Battle of Britain.

My personal take is that as a history of WWII [British Front] it is unbalanced and the criticisms too dilute in the narrative to make it worthwhile for a 470+ page book but each to their own.

[MSawyer]

I've been reading The Men Who Would Be Kings Rules from Osprey.