What are you reading right now?

[d@rk51d3]

The Last Patrol. Documents the final patrols and last moments of all US subs lost in the Pacific.

Seems that reefs were almost as big a killer of the sub as the IJN was.

[flintlock]

Currently really enjoying John Toland's The Rising Sun: the Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945.

Fascinating book!

[Kapitan]

Just finnished reading the man they couldnt kill a story about a submarineer who has more luck than red rum a very good book cost nothing as i found it in the rubbish at work, but a good read.

[XLjedi]

Originally Posted by yankee-V

Blind Man's Bluff is interesting. Account of peacetime "secret" stuff going on in the deep. I would be interested in your review or comments on this book, if you were so inclined.

Yeah OK... I did pick em both up last week and now I'm halfway thru 20k Leagues. I'll post back with a paragraph summary on Blind Man's Bluff in a week or two.


I never read Verne's book before and a few things standout...

1) If you're into animal conservation and such you probably won't appreciate what shows up on Nemo's menu.

2) "Nemo" means "Nothing" in Latin... He was basically tellin the professor you don't need to know my real name.

3) A "League" is equivalent to 3 nautical miles. I always had it in my head that "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" was referring to some great depth... It's the horizontal distance they travelled underwater, not the depth! :rotfl:

[Iron Budokan]

Right now I'm reading The Deerslayer by James Fenimore Cooper. Not too bad.

About to finish Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. (I often read more than one book at a time.)

Finished in the last two weeks:

The Secret History of the CIA by Joseph J. Trento. Sucked. Propagandistic garbage that dwelled too much on conspiracy theories and not enough on fact.

Loyal Comrades, Ruthless Killers: The Secret Services of the USSR 1917-1991 by Slava Katamidze. Not too bad, could have used more depth but the author attempted to be fair to all parties involved.

The Parsifal Mosaic by Robert Ludlum. Not bad, enjoyable time waster. Ludlum was always a much better writer than he allowed himself to be.

I also picked up a copy of the new Weird Tales Magazine. Don't waste your time with this once great magazine. They've shucked their past and now want to be hip and street-wise. Sucked to high heaven. Lovecraft and Howard are rolling over in their graves.

Also read H.P. Lovecraft's Magazine of Horror. I highly recommend this magazine for horror afficionados. Not bad at all.

[Iron Budokan]

Originally Posted by flintlock

Currently really enjoying John Toland's The Rising Sun: the Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945.

Fascinating book!

I read that, too, when I was in college. Fascinating read. Toland is a good historian, imo.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by yankee-V

Long ago I borrowed Roscoe's Sub Ops book & Blair's Silent Victory from the local library. My recollections of these is no doubt a conflation of the information from one book to the other. But I do remember my amazement at Silent Victory, blow by blow through the pacific. Good time to permanently add them to the shelf.

Anyway - GREAT books in this list!

Roscoe's books were written right after the war, and contain errors that had no time to be corrected, such as the U.S. submarine claim of sinking a Japanese carrier at Midway. Blair's work is much more recent, and has the benefit of newer information, especially the Japanese accounts of events.

@Yankee-V: I've never heard of the war patrol books, but I'll be looking at getting them now.
http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/Sear...ts=t&y=10&x=56

[Subnuts]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Roscoe's books were written right after the war, and contain errors that had no time to be corrected, such as the U.S. submarine claim of sinking a Japanese carrier at Midway. Blair's work is much more recent, and has the benefit of newer information, especially the Japanese accounts of events.

The Price Of Admiralty, written by the usually well-regarded, said that the Kaga was hit by three torpedoes from Nautilus, which all exploded and broke the carrier in half.

The bizarre thing is, the book was written in 1989, years after everyone already knew the true fate of the Kaga and that Nautilus's attack was a failure. I don't know how that little blunder got in there!

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Subnuts

The Price Of Admiralty, written by the usually well-regarded, said that the Kaga was hit by three torpedoes from Nautilus, which all exploded and broke the carrier in half.

The bizarre thing is, the book was written in 1989, years after everyone already knew the true fate of the Kaga and that Nautilus's attack was a failure. I don't know how that little blunder got in there!

Shouldn't John Keegan's name be in there somewhere?:rotfl:

I agree; it's funny how myths get perpetuated. When 'someone' misapplied the famous Edmund Burke quote on evil and responsibility to Hitler, I looked it up, and found a site which lists a great many variations on the quote, all showing how things get screwed up especially on the web, but also in supposedly 'researched' books.

[Hitman]

U-Boats in the Mediterranean 1941-44 by Lawrence Patterson. Recommend it heartly to anyone interested

[Bohemond]

Operation Drumbeat By Michael Gannon

[Iron Budokan]

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.

[Prof]

I've just finished reading through both volumes of Blair's 'Hitler's U-Boat War' (I read 'Silent Victory' about a year ago). The detail in these books is quite staggering, though I often found it dry and repetitive as a result. I did find his attitude towards the U-boat campaign rather patronising and insulting. Regardless of the results in terms of tonnage, the psychological effect of the u-boats and the resources they tied up were very significant. Of course, Blair simply uses these facts to ridicule the British Admiralty.
He doesn't seem to understand that he was writing this book with the benefit of 50 years of hindsight and that the situation on the ground for both the Axis and the Allies was very different.

Now I'm starting 'Shattered Sword'...50 pages in and it's good so far!

[SSBN629ERS]

Originally Posted by flintlock

Currently enjoying Antony Beevor's Stalingrad.

I enjoyed reading his "The Fall of Berlin, 1945"

Recently finished reading "Flyboys" by James Bradley. I highly recommend it.

[LukeFF]

Black Cross / Red Star Vol. 3 by Christer Bergstrom.