64. Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942 by Ian W. Toll (5 stars) The Pacific Crucible examines the naval war in the Pacific theater of WWII from Pearl Harbor to Midway, and traces its origins back to the naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan’s seminal book, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History. This is the first in a nonfiction trilogy about the Pacific theater of WWII. The second, The Conquering Tide, was published in 2015. I think it’s a fairly stellar book about […]
A Nazi is a Nazi is a Nazi
I absolutely hate reading books about war because they upset me so much. I usually end up angry and crying. Or angry and with a headache because I’m trying not to cry. Basically, it all just upsets the crap out of me and I don’t like it. The Nightingale, by Kristin Hannah, is no exception. I didn’t think it would be and although it was on my To-Read list, I probably wouldn’t have gotten around to reading it if it wasn’t selected by my book […]
NightinFail
Spoilers in this review. This book made me tired. I confess, I do not get what everyone sees in The Nightingale. I feel like because it is set in WWII/the Holocaust, and we know that terrible things happened, this book had ALL OF THE TERRIBLE THINGS and we just accept that EVERY TERRIBLE THING happened to the characters because, of course, it was a time of terrible things. But it was too much; it was simply not believable to me after a point. But I’m […]
“We clung to books and to our friends; they reminded us that we had another part to us.”
I have had this book on my to read list since CBR5 in 2013. This year I decided as part of my overall Cannonball goal of 78 books, that I was also going to work my way through my audiobook and owned book backlog. A little. With that goal in mind I set up a monthly goal list, with a book or two I already own, a book or two I have in audio form in Audible, and then I pick a couple more to […]
A WWII story you never hear about
Between Shades of Gray is a World War Two story that is not often told. It is the story of the Soviet Union’s occupation of Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia. The Soviets captured those who they saw as anti-Soviet, mainly the educated- doctors, lawyers, teachers, military servicemen, writers, business owners, musicians, artists, and librarians. These people were rounded up and murdered, sent to prison, or sold into slavery in Siberia. We follow the story of Lina, who is separated from her father, but is with her […]
Next time, more history less theory, please
Funny story: a number of years ago I read Blackout by Connie Willis, one of my favorite authors. I really love Connie Willis, even though there have been some disappointments (Remake is way too obvious and Promised Land. . .I don’t even want to talk about it). But when she’s on, I’m nuts for her writing. Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog, which are curiously tied together by a time-travel theme and some shared characters, are two of my favorite contemporary novels, in spite of them being very […]
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