RE: Favourite Book

I’ve been thinking about this since it was first posted, and it’s really difficult, so, here we go…

Fiction
Watership Down. I know it’s about rabbits but these aren’t just fluffy bunnies, it’s one of the most violent books I’ve read and spawned a whole generation of similar stories, the best of these being Cold Moon, about Badgers, and the Duncton series about moles.

I’ve read all of Tom Clancy’s stuff and loved Executive Orders. All of the Ryan series are excellent.

Of the Vietnam novels I particularly liked The 13th Valley. Anything like James Webb’s work or Caputo or Dale Dye and Tim O’Brien are well worth reading.

The best war novel of all time for me has to be A Covenant With Death by John Harris. This is a First World War novel about a ‘Pals Battalion’ and their journey from inception to destruction on the 1st of July, 1916.

Non-fiction
Biographies, squadron histories, war diaries are all worth reading. Anything by Middlebrook is worth reading. Lyn MacDonald writes wonderful accounts of the Great War.

Richard Bach is wonderful from his factual, almost spiritual accounts of flying such as Biplane or Nothing By Chance to his amazing fantasies such as Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, There’s no such place as far away and the totally amazing Illusions, the confessions of a reluctant messiah. If anyone out there is interested in an aviation romance, try his Bridge Across Forever. Anything by him is emotional and inspirational, with more than the odd surprise thrown in.

One final pair of writers are Michael and his son, Jeff Shaara.
These are a trilogy about the American Civil War, the centrepiece being ‘Killer Angels’ which, almost word for word, became Gettysburg. Amazing in it’s characterisation and it’s ability to draw the reader in. The first time I read them I read all 3 together, one after the other, in about 36 hours.

I could probably go on forever as I have always had a love of books.

Regaeds,

kev35