JBClark
09-20-05, 09:56 PM
I finally got around to reading this book (Shadow Divers) and must recommend it to you guys. :up:
Please forgive this long-winded discourse. "Shadow Divers" got me so fired up that I have to share my reaction. If you want to stop reading here, I won't be insulted, just read the book. It's very, very good.
Of my many quirks, one of the oldest and least harmful is my compulsion to read while taking a meal. Breakfast and lunch are not complete without a newspaper, and when dining alone I have to have a book to go along with my supper.
The other night, as dinner was coming together around 22:00 (the civilized time for the evening meal) I found myself without a current book. I had just finished Neal Stevenson's excellent series "The Baroque Cycle" - and I heartily recommend that as well. So there was dinner, but nothing to read.
Well, I wasn't worried. My apartment looks like an old bookstore with thousands and thousands of titles in shelves and piled up on every flat surface. My "Read this Next" pile is taller than I am. There was plenty to choose from.
Dinner was starting to cool so I needed to decide fast. I was wavering between Joseph Balkoski's "Beyond the Beachhead" (an account of the 29th Infantry Division's heroic but short lived efforts in Normandy [the 29th was my father's outfit and my brother made major in it just before it disbanded]) and the subject of this post: Robert Kurson's "Shadow Divers."
My choice was random, and obvious from the topic of this thread. From the first page I did nothing that couldn't be done with one hand while holding this book in the other. What I ate that night is a mystery to me. When I had to pee, I carried out the necessary maneuvers one-handed. I did sleep from 05:00 to 08:00 but I dreamed about diving and when I woke, I read for another few hours before I got out of bed. It is quite possible that I slept in my clothes. Other than those three hours of sleep I did nothing but read until I was finished with this delightful book. I took the day off from work because of this book.
This has not happend to me in a long time.
"Shadow Divers" has everything that a reader of this forum would like. It centers around a U-boat. The writing is crisp and compelling. Kurson masterfully weaves the obsession of the divers in the 1990s with the obsessions of the crew in the 1940s. The central theme is about historical accuracy, its virtues, and its elusiveness. The story is captivating and suspensefull. And it is TRUE.
This forum and its members have kept me playing SHIII well beyond the time I would have been bored with the stock game. You guys love history and live for accuracy. "Shadow Divers" is about a few psychotic individuals who were lots crazier than you guys (us guys.) These men literally risked their lives to prove a point about historical accuracy.
Since I found this forum I have been enjoying diatribes on deck gun loading times, manifestos on visibility in the north Atlantic, obsessive quests for TOEs and many other examples of psychologically questionable behavior. I have loved it all.
You guys will find more of this kind of dedication in "Shadow Divers." Read this book!
But don't start it if you have to go to work the next morning.
JBC
Please forgive this long-winded discourse. "Shadow Divers" got me so fired up that I have to share my reaction. If you want to stop reading here, I won't be insulted, just read the book. It's very, very good.
Of my many quirks, one of the oldest and least harmful is my compulsion to read while taking a meal. Breakfast and lunch are not complete without a newspaper, and when dining alone I have to have a book to go along with my supper.
The other night, as dinner was coming together around 22:00 (the civilized time for the evening meal) I found myself without a current book. I had just finished Neal Stevenson's excellent series "The Baroque Cycle" - and I heartily recommend that as well. So there was dinner, but nothing to read.
Well, I wasn't worried. My apartment looks like an old bookstore with thousands and thousands of titles in shelves and piled up on every flat surface. My "Read this Next" pile is taller than I am. There was plenty to choose from.
Dinner was starting to cool so I needed to decide fast. I was wavering between Joseph Balkoski's "Beyond the Beachhead" (an account of the 29th Infantry Division's heroic but short lived efforts in Normandy [the 29th was my father's outfit and my brother made major in it just before it disbanded]) and the subject of this post: Robert Kurson's "Shadow Divers."
My choice was random, and obvious from the topic of this thread. From the first page I did nothing that couldn't be done with one hand while holding this book in the other. What I ate that night is a mystery to me. When I had to pee, I carried out the necessary maneuvers one-handed. I did sleep from 05:00 to 08:00 but I dreamed about diving and when I woke, I read for another few hours before I got out of bed. It is quite possible that I slept in my clothes. Other than those three hours of sleep I did nothing but read until I was finished with this delightful book. I took the day off from work because of this book.
This has not happend to me in a long time.
"Shadow Divers" has everything that a reader of this forum would like. It centers around a U-boat. The writing is crisp and compelling. Kurson masterfully weaves the obsession of the divers in the 1990s with the obsessions of the crew in the 1940s. The central theme is about historical accuracy, its virtues, and its elusiveness. The story is captivating and suspensefull. And it is TRUE.
This forum and its members have kept me playing SHIII well beyond the time I would have been bored with the stock game. You guys love history and live for accuracy. "Shadow Divers" is about a few psychotic individuals who were lots crazier than you guys (us guys.) These men literally risked their lives to prove a point about historical accuracy.
Since I found this forum I have been enjoying diatribes on deck gun loading times, manifestos on visibility in the north Atlantic, obsessive quests for TOEs and many other examples of psychologically questionable behavior. I have loved it all.
You guys will find more of this kind of dedication in "Shadow Divers." Read this book!
But don't start it if you have to go to work the next morning.
JBC