I finally picked up the pace somewhat this month, with seven books read.
Fledgling — Sharon Lee & Steve Miller
Another free novel set in their Liaden universe, this is a classic coming of age science fiction novel, amusing but perhaps better read when you’re twelve.
1938 Hitler’s Gamble — Giles MacDonogh
A very useful overview of the political and military events that shaped the last year of peace before World War II, showing how opportunistic Hitler’s policies were.
Filthy English — Peter Silverton
An amusing overview of bad language of all kinds.
Vast — Linda Nagata
Hard science fiction of a subgenre that also includes Alastair Reynolds’ revelation Space and Paul McAuley’s Eternal Light: humantiy stumbles over the remains of a millions of years old war and is hunted to extinction by the left over killing machines of the war. I hadn’t read anything by Nagata yet, save for perhaps some short stories but on the strength of this she’s a writer I need to read more off.
The Battle for the Rhine 1944 — Robin Neillands
An overview of the campaign in western Europe from Normandy up until the Battle of the Bugle and very concerned with putting the record straight with regards to Montgomery’s part in the war.
The Eye with Which the Universe Beholds Itself — Ian Sales
Second chapbook in the Apollo Quartet, this is alternate history hard science fiction about a slightly more ambitious Apollo programme.
Child of the Grove — Tanya Huff
I like her military science fiction so I thought I’d check out her fantasy work as well. A decent but weirdly paced novel.
guthrie
November 3, 2013 at 4:29 pmBut putting which record straight regarding Montgomery’s part in the war? Would you mind elaborating?
As far as I can judge, there’s several records. The somewhat hagiographic proapganda/ media fawning, in 1944/5; the more sensible comments by people involved in the war, from the same period. Then there’s the american view, which is that he was horrible and bad and an idiot, although obviously the memoirs of the senior personnel are more muted; then there’s some more modern appreciations which try to be more balanced, or at least try the journalistic trick of taking the mean between the British propaganda and the American green ink and fall short in terms of useful criticism.
Or to put it another way – I’ve caught up on WW2 the last 3 years and now know rather a lot about it (The discussions some friends had 12 years ago in the pub about who was the better general, Rommel or some other Germans, makes sense now), and feel that Montgomery had a couple of personality flaws, made a number of mistakes, but was ultimately a better general than almost all the others out there at the time, and certainly better than Eisenhower and Patton and probably Bradley. Of course there were structural issues within the allies setups which hampered sensible resolution of some difficulties too which ended up making them all look bad at one time or another. And since it was a war, things had to get done with what they had at hand, rather than waiting until everything was perfect.
I found ‘Vast’ to be okay, although I bounced off it the first time, due to the difficulties of getting into a story with such minimal characters and not a lot happening early on. I’d agree about reading more of hers, but I read at Charlie’s or Scalzi’s or somewhere that she’d only had those two or three books published in the 90’s, but nobody bought any more from her so she kind of idled for a while, but is now publishing again via self published ebook.
James Davis Nicoll
November 4, 2013 at 12:22 amSix books, as I recall:
The Bohr Maker, Tech-Heaven, Deception Well, Vast (first four in same universe), Limit of Vision and Memory. After that, nothing I know of at novel length until recently
Martin Wisse
November 4, 2013 at 1:42 amBut putting which record straight regarding Montgomery’s part in the war? Would you mind elaborating?
Sure. Neillands is a Monty cheerleader, not entirely blind to his faults (arrogance, a tendency to nag his superiors) but convinced that he was the best of the western commanders at that time.
His main thesis in the book is to explain that Monty’s criticism of the war post-Normandy was largely right, in that there was no overall strategy other than keep pushing the Germans everywhere. Secondary is to spread out the blame for Arnhem a bit more generally and onto the Americans for not doing things properly.
He’s not a fan of Patton, Bradley or Eisenhouwer.
guthrie
November 4, 2013 at 12:12 pmAh, thanks, that makes sense. It also roughly agrees with a certain rather under-rated fellow, Alan Brooke, who was chairman of the Chiefs of Staff committee through much of the war. He also rated the Americans as bad at strategy and could see the advance through Europe wasn’t as well done as it could have been, but from his position there wasn’t much to do, after all he had to work through Eisenhower, who was a quick learner, but at that time still had the wrong ideas.
James, ahh, 6 books, I’ll see if I can find them. (The internet makes 2nd hand book buying so easy and lazy, then before you know what’s happened you have spent lots of money on postage and not so much on books)