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Post by berkley on Jun 16, 2021 22:17:11 GMT -5
My father was a Marine. He served in WWII and they called him back in for Korea. He was based at an air base in Japan but his squad's job was to go to wherever one of their squadron's planes was stuck and do what was needed to get the plane back in the air and back to the base in Japan. The only time he ever faced enemy fire was at an air base in Korea when they were attacked just before taking off. wow, how old was he when he had to go to Korea, out of curiosity ? And did he feel differently about the two wars he served in or were they pretty much the same to him? Apologies if these questions are too personal. I know a lot of people who served during wartime don't like to talk about it at all. |
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Post by Rob Allen on Jun 17, 2021 10:57:38 GMT -5
My father was a Marine. He served in WWII and they called him back in for Korea. He was based at an air base in Japan but his squad's job was to go to wherever one of their squadron's planes was stuck and do what was needed to get the plane back in the air and back to the base in Japan. The only time he ever faced enemy fire was at an air base in Korea when they were attacked just before taking off. wow, how old was he when he had to go to Korea, out of curiosity ? And did he feel differently about the two wars he served in or were they pretty much the same to him? Apologies if these questions are too personal. I know a lot of people who served during wartime don't like to talk about it at all.His Reserve unit was activated a few weeks before his 25th birthday. He never said it directly, but I got the feeling that Korea was just an obligation, something he had to do because he was already in the Marines. WWII was different; he was 16 when Pearl Harbor happened. He tried to sign up immediately but they made him wait until his 17th birthday. He spent most of the war stationed stateside; never came within a hundred miles of any actual combat. But he still didn't talk much about it. I didn't hear about that incident at the Korean air base until I was in my forties, and he said he'd never told my mother about it. |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jun 19, 2021 9:17:52 GMT -5
The Crossing
by Michael Connelly
I got this from the library discard pile.. I was super excited to see two nice shiniy Harry Bosch Hardcovers, sitting there for free!
This was also on that was high on my list, Bosch working for the defense? What the heck? How would that even make sense? But it does, and it's a great analysis of who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. Harry works the case with his usual procedure, but from the outside, and the differences and similarities are very interesting indeed.
The philosophical bits are quite interesting.... can you be catching a bad guy if you're working to free someone that's been arrested for a brutal murder? Can you be sure YOUR bad guy is the right one? The questions Harry asks himself throughout the book are the real gem of this story.
Not that it isn't an excellent murder mystery in its own right, but the twist is definitely what makes it a must read for any Bosch fan. Also, a rare happy ending! I feel like this could be the last Bosch book, and I could be satisfied.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jun 21, 2021 14:27:01 GMT -5
 A Quiet Flame by Philip KerrWe pick up with Bernie Gunther as he arrives in Argentina with a new identity, having been framed as a Nazi war criminal. Bernie finds himself working for the Argentine secret police ostensibly interviewing other German refugees for issuance of Argentine passports, but really looking in to a missing persons case that ties back to a heinous murder in 1930s Berlin on which Gunther was the lead investigator...at least until the Nazi's took over and killed the investigation. And while Bernie may have had a change of name and a change of location, he's still Bernie Gunther. His mouth and his need to get to the truth are sure to get him in as much trouble with the Peron regime as it did with the Nazis. While I was generally pretty familiar with the broad strokes of Operation Paperclip and the ratlines that filtered Nazis out of western Europe (largely to South America) Kerr fills in some blank spots. And really history of any South American countries is a bit of a blind spot for me, beyond the very broadest of strokes. Kerr also uses significant work from Argentine author Uki Goni to look at the treatment of Jews in Argentina before, during and after World War II. Sure this is in the context of fiction, but it's compelling fiction. Another high quality Bernie Gunther case. |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jun 23, 2021 20:08:35 GMT -5
Black Powder War
by Naomi Novik
One thing I've realized while re-reading these... a whole lot of the book is spent travelling. Too much, really. It's good that there is realism in the time it takes to get places at the beginning of the 19th century, but we've already got dragons, maybe a little LESS realism would be in order there.
Instead we get 1/2 the book being a vast array of everything the author can think of to try to challenge the character and make it interesting. At time it feels a bit much. I think the 7 book series could have been 4 (or even three big ones) without some of that filler
Once we get to the good stuff though, it's really good. Novik does a good job imagining how Napoleon would use dragons... and changes the battles accordingly, instead of just laying them over the top. Lien is truly an imposing adversary for Temeraire, and the new additions to the cast are all good.
I seem to remember being annoyed at the last of dragon interactions in the next book, which was set up so nicely in this one, but we'll see.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jun 24, 2021 10:46:48 GMT -5
 Cold Cotton by Joe R. LansdaleReader's block had hit again. And once again Joe R. Lansdale came to the rescue. This time it was with a Hap & Leonard novella. This time around the boys (and Bret) are hired as bodyguards to a therapist who is receiving threats. Honestly there's not a lot that can be said about this one without spoilers as it's largely a plot driven work. And that's probably to its detriment because the meat of Hap & Leonard has always been the interaction of the two protagonists. And this one had a dearth of that interaction and a major lack of Leonard. But it's still a decent read and nobody seems to be able to get me out of a reading funk like Lansdale. |
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Post by berkley on Jun 24, 2021 13:03:10 GMT -5
A Quiet Flame by Philip KerrWe pick up with Bernie Gunther as he arrives in Argentina with a new identity, having been framed as a Nazi war criminal. Bernie finds himself working for the Argentine secret police ostensibly interviewing other German refugees for issuance of Argentine passports, but really looking in to a missing persons case that ties back to a heinous murder in 1930s Berlin on which Gunther was the lead investigator...at least until the Nazi's took over and killed the investigation. And while Bernie may have had a change of name and a change of location, he's still Bernie Gunther. His mouth and his need to get to the truth are sure to get him in as much trouble with the Peron regime as it did with the Nazis. While I was generally pretty familiar with the broad strokes of Operation Paperclip and the ratlines that filtered Nazis out of western Europe (largely to South America) Kerr fills in some blank spots. And really history of any South American countries is a bit of a blind spot for me, beyond the very broadest of strokes. Kerr also uses significant work from Argentine author Uki Goni to look at the treatment of Jews in Argentina before, during and after World War II. Sure this is in the context of fiction, but it's compelling fiction. Another high quality Bernie Gunther case.
Another series I have on my list but haven't started yet. I didn't know it carried on past the first three books - the post-war Argentine setting is a cool idea.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jun 24, 2021 13:22:52 GMT -5
A Quiet Flame by Philip Kerr
Another series I have on my list but haven't started yet. I didn't know it carried on past the first three books - the post-war Argentine setting is a cool idea.
There was a 15 year gap between the third and fourth books. It was a cool setting. It appears that book five is set in Havana in 1954. |
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 10,176 
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Post by Confessor on Jun 25, 2021 12:29:44 GMT -5
SMiLE: The Story of Brian Wilson's Lost Masterpiece by Domenic Priore.  Domenic Priore is one of my favourite writers on '60s pop culture – and I say that in spite of his major shortcoming, which is that he is far too partisan about the subjects he writes about. The Beach Boys' famous "lost" album SMiLE – which was finally completed and released by Brian Wilson in 2004, with an exhaustive box set featuring vintage 1966 and 1967 outtakes following in 2011 – is a case in point. Anyone who has read Priore's previous book on the subject, the telephone directory-sized Look! Listen! Vibrate! SMILE! will know that he is firmly a believer and worshipper in the "Church of SMiLE". That's OK, up to a point, because I'm a long-time member of the "Church of SMiLE" too, ever since I found my first bootleg CD of SMiLE era recordings on Camden Market in 1993. So, while this book does lay out the history of the creation of – what was in early 1967 – the world's most eagerly awaited album and provides plenty of interesting background details, you know that Priore is simply not up to the task of evaluating the music that Wilson created in anything approaching an objective manner. Priore also pushes his pet theory that SMiLE was, in fact, finished by Wilson in early 1967 – a theory that I not only disagree with, but one that is demonstrably false when you look at the Capitol recording session sheets and the "missing" song parts that finally appeared on 2004's Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE album. But perhaps my biggest problem with this book is that, being an "official" or "authorised" account of the creation of the album – with forwards by both Wilson and his lyricist Van Dyke Parks – it avoids mentioning many of the more harrowing aspects of the album's creation, including the collapse of the recording sessions and Wilson's descent into mental illness. In fact, the book doesn't even mention that Brian had any mental health problems at the time, which is extraordinary, given how well other books and documentaries have examined this aspect of his life. I mean, sure, it briefly mentions that Brian was wrestling with drug problems at the time, but it firmly places the blame for Wilson shelving SMiLE and his subsequent retreat from public life on the obstruction and uncooperativeness of his fellow Beach Boy Mike Love and the lawsuit that was raging between the band and Capitol Records at the time. While those were definitely contributing factors, Wilson's rapidly disintegrating mental state was the root cause of the album being shelved and remaining unfinished for decades. So, all in all, this is a good book if you want an overview of this particular period in Beach Boys history, but it leaves out far too much and avoids too much controversy to be anything approaching definitive. That said, it is undoubtedly the most complete book about SMiLE, so I would still recommend it to anyone interested in the subject.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jun 27, 2021 23:14:22 GMT -5
Masters of Time
by A.E van Vogt
Well, definitely didn't expect a female lead in a sci-fi book written in the mid 40s! Granted, she's trying to commit suicide in the beginning of the book, but still.
This book does nothing to change my hatred of time travel... while it's a pretty fun concept (future superpeople recruiting foot soliders from the past).. that's where the interesting bits stop.
Vogt makes it completely unclear why there's a big war in the future or even what they're fighting for, and neither are very nice.. one group devolves it's soldiers into mindless slaves, the other uses robots, but the people are monitored constantly and there are 'tentacles' that enforce their will.
Then there's a couple bits where it's not even clear which people are which.... but on the plus side... Norma, the female lead, uses tools! And gets super powers! Of course, there's still a male hero, and of course they get married in the end, so it's not THAT enlightened, but it gets an extra star at least for letting Norma be the one that figures out how to get the powers, even if she can't really use them.
Overall, far from Vogt's best (maybe his worst that I've read) but a few interesting tidbits in there, and it's pretty short, so not really a big time investment.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jun 30, 2021 7:56:06 GMT -5
Case of the Poisoned Eclairs
EV Cunningham (Howard Fast)
My wife grabbed this in a pile of used books at my favorite comic book store... I think the cover and title grabbed her attention, having no idea it was a series or anything, and she liked it enough for me to read it.
It definitely evokes Columbo a bit.. working class detective investigating the jet set, but the detective himself is very different. He's a second generation Japanese American and a Zen Buddhist, though I suspect the author knows little about either past the typical stereotypes. The book is massive a product of the time it was written... much of the humor is racial in nature, and Masao uses that as a weapon to make people underestimate him, just as Columbo uses his blue collar, messy persona to disguise his intelligence.
The mystery itself is very good, but be warned there's alot of language and more than a few stereotypes in here that would never be published or said today... the gay hairdresser is particularly bad, as is Masao saying 'Ah so' every now and then, and thinking to himself he should try not to.
I'm not sure the series can get away with having two many murders in Beverly Hills and keep making them seem like shocking events, so I wonder how it works as a series, but this particular book was quite good and well worth reading.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jun 30, 2021 10:06:05 GMT -5
 Heart Seizure by Bill FitzhughI really enjoyed Fitzhugh's first book Pest Control. On the other hand, I didn't finish his next one, Organ Grinders. So I wasn't sure where I was going to come down on this one. It ends up that it was pretty much dead in the middle. Spence Tailer is a lawyer who takes cases that help people but don't bring in much money. His older brother is a self-absorbed yuppy banker with the typical soccer-mom wife. And their mother, Rose, has a failing heart and a fairly rare blood-type and has been waiting for a transplant. When one shows up they get ready for the surgery...until government agents try to abscond with the heart because the President needs the transplant following a heart attack. Spence "kidnaps" the heart and, in the process, involves his brother, kidnaps a LAPD officer (who comes out), doesn't quite kidnap one of the heart transplant doctors, and begins a road trip with their Mom to find someone to transplant the heart that was hers by rights of the transplant list. Also involved is a second team of government agents working for a U.S. Senator who is running against the President in the election, attempting to keep the President from getting the heart...or just keep anyone from getting it. If that all sounds like an opportunity for political satire, well it is. And Fitzhugh does a decent job with that, the sleaziness and underhandedness of American politicians and even throws in some shots at the media, particularly talk radio. The problem is that the book is at least 1/3 too long. There are decent sized swathes of the book that just drag. And that is not what you want from a humor book. And while the political satire was probably more on point in 2003, after the shenanigans of the last six years or so, the plot seems kind of like a day that ends in "y." Overall, Fitzhugh is a pretty funny guy. And the book is probably worth a read. It's not as good as Pest Control. But I happily finished it. |
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Post by Prince Hal on Jun 30, 2021 19:39:22 GMT -5
Another series I have on my list but haven't started yet. I didn't know it carried on past the first three books - the post-war Argentine setting is a cool idea.
There was a 15 year gap between the third and fourth books. It was a cool setting. It appears that book five is set in Havana in 1954. Slam, should /must the Kerr books be read in order? |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jun 30, 2021 21:24:56 GMT -5
There was a 15 year gap between the third and fourth books. It was a cool setting. It appears that book five is set in Havana in 1954. Slam, should /must the Kerr books be read in order? They probably don’t absolutely have to be. But they’ll read better and make more sense of they are. |
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Post by Prince Hal on Jun 30, 2021 23:38:12 GMT -5
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