Tales From the Recently Read Stack...
I've been on a run of WWII-themed reading material of late. I'm going to have to take a break soon to fit in"The No-Cry Sleep Solution" so that my wife and I can sleep for longer than 2-3 hours at one time without having our toddler go ballistic on us. But in the meantime, here's some of the recent reading material that has been cluttering up our apartment.
Harry Turtledove continues on with his Great War or Southern Victory series. I can't bring myself to pay hardback prices for this series, so I've just finished The Grapple while In at the Death hits the bookstore shelves. These two represent books eleven and twelve in Turtledove's alternate timeline the separates from ours shortly before the battle of Antietam. Some eighty years later, North America is embroiled in a Second World War between the USA and CSA.
The many different point of view characters and lack of traditional narrative arcs makes epic alternative history books like these hard to follow at times. Turtledove fans have even spawned their own wiki to keep track of his works, timelines, and characters. I will never argue that Turtledove creates great literature, but I think it is good sometimes for Americans to imagine what life would have been like if the ravages of war had visited our shores as well as those of Europe.
The Foreign Correspondent by Alan Furst does aspire to be great literature. The story follows the life of an Italian emigre in Paris in 1939. Carlo Weisz splits his time between reporting on a Europe lurching towards war for Reuters and serving as editor for a clandestine Italian resistance newspaper. There is, of course, a romantic plot line thrown in as well. I really felt that the strongest portions of the book centered on Weisz serving as a witness to history, from the end of the Spanish Civil War to the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia. These scenes of 'neutral' reporters rushing with and ahead of armies to get the scoop and the story were more compelling and tension-filled than the shadowing and counter-shadowing of Italian emigres by Mussolini's secret police.
Finally, I'm still working my way through a non-fiction entry, a biography of John Whitesides Parsons. Strange Angel covers Parsons' work as one of the pioneers of rocketry during the 30's and 40's in America. Parson's was central to the creation of modern solid-fueled rockets and the use of JATOs by the US Army Air Corps and US Navy. He was also a priest in Aleister Crowley's cultish Church of Thelema. Parson's was a renaissance man and all-around geek at a time in which membership in the American Communist Party, the Ordo Templi Orientis, the American Interplanetary Society, and the Los Angeles Science Fiction League were all technically legal, but looked down upon with equal disdain. All of these groups sought to change the world and open up new frontiers through learning, and Parsons moved in the circles of them all until his death in an explosion in 1952.
Harry Turtledove continues on with his Great War or Southern Victory series. I can't bring myself to pay hardback prices for this series, so I've just finished The Grapple while In at the Death hits the bookstore shelves. These two represent books eleven and twelve in Turtledove's alternate timeline the separates from ours shortly before the battle of Antietam. Some eighty years later, North America is embroiled in a Second World War between the USA and CSA.
The many different point of view characters and lack of traditional narrative arcs makes epic alternative history books like these hard to follow at times. Turtledove fans have even spawned their own wiki to keep track of his works, timelines, and characters. I will never argue that Turtledove creates great literature, but I think it is good sometimes for Americans to imagine what life would have been like if the ravages of war had visited our shores as well as those of Europe.
The Foreign Correspondent by Alan Furst does aspire to be great literature. The story follows the life of an Italian emigre in Paris in 1939. Carlo Weisz splits his time between reporting on a Europe lurching towards war for Reuters and serving as editor for a clandestine Italian resistance newspaper. There is, of course, a romantic plot line thrown in as well. I really felt that the strongest portions of the book centered on Weisz serving as a witness to history, from the end of the Spanish Civil War to the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia. These scenes of 'neutral' reporters rushing with and ahead of armies to get the scoop and the story were more compelling and tension-filled than the shadowing and counter-shadowing of Italian emigres by Mussolini's secret police.
Finally, I'm still working my way through a non-fiction entry, a biography of John Whitesides Parsons. Strange Angel covers Parsons' work as one of the pioneers of rocketry during the 30's and 40's in America. Parson's was central to the creation of modern solid-fueled rockets and the use of JATOs by the US Army Air Corps and US Navy. He was also a priest in Aleister Crowley's cultish Church of Thelema. Parson's was a renaissance man and all-around geek at a time in which membership in the American Communist Party, the Ordo Templi Orientis, the American Interplanetary Society, and the Los Angeles Science Fiction League were all technically legal, but looked down upon with equal disdain. All of these groups sought to change the world and open up new frontiers through learning, and Parsons moved in the circles of them all until his death in an explosion in 1952.
Labels: Alternate History, Cults, Resistance, Rockets, Wiki
posted by Christopher at 13:41
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