What are you reading right now?

[lesrae]

Sepulchre by Kate Mosse.

[ENEMY BELOW]

Re-reading Red Storm Rising Because Amidst My Many Underway History,
Biography And Philosophy Books I Needed A Good Old Winter Time Tom Clancy Potboiler.that's The Only Bummer About The Demise Of The Cold War Era,tom Clancy Almost Out Of Work.his Books Since The Cardinal Of The Kremlin Are Just Not As Flippin Riveting.

[FIREWALL]

U-BOAT ACE The Wolfgang Luth Story for the 6th time. I get more out of it everytime I read it.

[RealJambo]

Originally Posted by FIREWALL

U-BOAT ACE The Wolfgang Luth Story for the 6th time. I get more out of it everytime I read it.

My favourite Kaleun, and also one of my favourite books. I reccommend it to anyone

[Sailor Steve]

Just finished The First Civilisations, by Glyn Daniel, 1968. It's a study of the earliest know civilizations, and the archeologists who explored them, and their differing opinions on who influenced whom and what it all means.

Just started Mary Tudor, by David Loades, a biography of Elizabeth I's older sister (AKA 'Bloody Mary') and her reign as England's first queen.

[Grizzybear]

I just returned from a Milwaukee trip and spent about a week down there. Well in short I was bored and I remembered the library i grew up near had some awesome sub and war books. So off I went...
Read-
Silent Service..an oldie but a goodie. I was astounded in the malfunctions of the torpedos and the number of skippers getting canned..yikes glad SH4 is not as mean as them.
Also picked up and scanned thru these..
Uboats under the swatztika..good refrerence for the uboat side of things.
Also another ..time life book I think..forgot what is was called. Lots of pics and diagram of standard fleet boat.
Overall a good reading week...Now Iam back to my twilight 2000 idea generation and iam reading Slow Dance in the killing ground.
Rich

[Kapt Z]

'On the Road', by Jack Kerouac

Heard so much about it over the years and finally picked up a copy to see what all the fuss was about.

Besides, I needed a break from the History/submarine/Military stuff.

[Sailor Steve]

Just started We Hold These Truths, by Mortimer J. Adler. Adler was a philosopher/writer who specialized in education. He wrote many books, but was best known as the editor and compiler of the 60-volume Great Books Of The Western World.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_B..._Western_World

We Hold These Truths was written in 1987 for the bicentennial of the US Constitution. It's supposedly written for the layman, but it is a bit strong on the philosophical side, discussing the "ideas and ideals of the Constitution". Still, I'm having fun so far.

[Dowly]

Started reading the Guy Saijer's Forgotten Soldier for the omphteenth time. Just cant get enough of it.

[eljeffo41]

I just finished a good one called "The Depths of courage" all about the Pacific submarine war.I don't have the book here at work so I don't remember the authors name,but I think it's pretty new!

[Sailor Steve]

Am just starting The Royal Kingdoms of Ghana, Mali, and Songhay: Life in Medieval Africa, by Patricia and Fredrick McKissack; a book about Africa's history written by Africans.

From the Authors' Note:

Once knowledge of these old empires resurfaced, some claimed that Jews, who had rebelled against the Romans in Cyrenaica (Libya) had migrated to the Western Sudan around A.D. 115 and built these civilizations. Another group pushed the theory that Sudanese achievements were the result of Arab invasions and the coming of Islam. Some even suggested that African accomplishments were the result of visitors from outer space. Any wild idea was more acceptable than to admit that Africans had the intellect and ingenuity to develop and control well-ordered empires.

It's a fairly short book, but looks to be informative in an area of history I'm definitely unfamiliar with.

[Henry Wood]

"Simple Courage: A True Story of Peril on the Sea"
by Frank DeLaney

After reading this book, I remember as if it were yesterday the live story relayed every single day on our radio and in our daily newspaper, the story of the "Flying Enterprise", and her Master After God, Captain Kurt Carlsen, who tried so heroically to evade the savage hunger of the sea. Alongside him eventually stood Mr. Kenneth Dancy, Mate of the deep-sea salvage tug "Turmoil".

Listen to those names again: "Flying Enterprise", Carlsen, Dancy, "Turmoil"! They are names to write a book about!

No wonder we listened in each day, the whole family from grandparents down to youngest children, and found the real news much more exciting than "Dick Barton, Special Agent," or even "Journey Into Space"!

This book recreates it all in a most splendid fashion. I truly did relive those memories I thought were long gone, long lost, and yet, once revived I remembered this was one of the real live tales of my childhood which made me seek out a life at sea.

The author seems to tell it as it was at the time and not a lot of time is wasted at the end on the "conspiracies" which seem to abound over every single story these days, and I'm glad for that. We don't need conspiracies to create "excitement" or "thrills", not when there are photos of Captain Carlsen and Mate Dancy hanging on to the dying "Flying Enterprise" for grim life.

From what I have now read after discovering this book, this does seem the definitive account of the "Flying Enterprise"'s last voyage. A great read.

[ceedub]

'Send Down a Dove', by Charles MacHardy (1968).

I'm almost finished this book. A great atmospheric tale of daily life aboard a British sub, on a mission into the Norwegian fjords to disrupt U-boat traffic near the end of the war.

Lots of details of the everyday routine: meals, rum rations, hygiene (lack of), how the 'head' works, re-loading torpedoes,etc.

And of course, the attack runs, depth-charging, tension between crew members.

A British "Das Boot".

Don't know if its been mentioned here before but I highly recommend it.

Cheers
Ceedub

Stuka Pilot by Hans Ulrich Rudel. Interesting reading altough Rudel stayed a national socialist after the war.

[Sailor Steve]

WELCOME ABOARD!