Favourite Book

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

RE: Favourite Book

yeh we did animal farm in english at school and i got A* for my presentation on the relevent russian history 🙂

i lke tom clancy (early ones the best – esp red strom), the sharp books, fredrick forsyth, jack higgins, jerrefry archer (good story teller but crook), the first two larry bond, dale brown ,etc, etc

i have a rather large libary of books on my shelfs with model planes sitting in front of them all 🙂

rabie :9

RE: Favourite Book

I’m a big Wilbur Smith fan – constant reference to the African wild and strong characters

RE: Favourite Book

My favourite book is Animal farm because there are so many different ways you can interpret it such as the simple way about a group of animals who take over a farm or you can take the hidden meaning about communism.I also like reading biographies,I read the autobiography of Richard Branson around a month,very good.

RE: Favourite Book

Tom Clancy? Great stuff in general, but I’m not too sure about The Bear and The Dragon…
Then there’s James Ellroy’s novels. Relentless sleaze, perversion, filth, corruption, racism, protagonists you absolutely cannot stand, other protagonists you really should hate but can’t, grotesquely inhuman crimes and plots that have anything up to ten seemingly independent storylines running simultaniously. I like these stories, but I’m not entirely sure why.
Stephen Coontz’s Flight of the Intruder must be an all-time classic war story. His later novel The Intruders is also one of my favorites; doesn’t have much of a plot, but it doesn’t matter because the utterly vivid descriptions of carrier aviation and operations seem to be the bulk of the book. They’re enough for me.
Voyage, by Stephen Baxter. Alternative history novel set in a world where NASA gets the chance to follow Apollo 11 with a manned flight to Mars – suffering problems and human cost along the way.

RE: Favourite Book

Just been reading Alan Clarke’s “Barbarossa”. It’s quite thoroughly researched but leaves a lot of detail out (particularly the Crimean campaign). However, I am impressed because he is one of the authors of Eastern Front history who sn’t afraid to blame the German generals for some of the mistakes. He certainly takes chunks out of Paulus.

Favourite book of all time: War and Peace – Tolstoy.

Also, I quite enjoyed “A Hero of Our Time” – Lermontov.

RE: Favourite Book

Just to tease elp let’s say ….. Karl Marx -:)

More seriously : Stephen King :Nightmares & Dreamscapes (in english)

RE: Favourite Book

Ohhh, and gotta mention ‘JAWS’, a great book that translated into a great movie.

Cheers,
James

RE: Favourite Book

My favourite is Red Storm Rising, first time I got it I finished it in a night, just couldn’t put it down, except to get coffee 😉

Frank Herberts ‘Dune’ is also a great read, as is Churchills ‘The Second World War’ and Chester Wilmotts ‘The Struggle for Europe’

Cheers,
James,

BTW, Squasher, why do you think so little of Clancy? IMO all his books are worth reading at least once (some being far better than others, of course).

RE: Favourite Book

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, anything by Franz Kafka, Nabokov’s Lolita… oh, aviation books? Currently reading Vietnam Combat Losses, very insightful.

Regards,

Arthur

RE: Favourite Book

My reading tends to be partial towards military history, geo-politics etc. Some of my favourite authors and books are:

a. John Masters – Ravi Lancers , Bugles and a Tiger ( great books on the British – Indian army)
b. Collins and La-Pierre – Is Paris burning / O Jerusalem, city of Joy
d. John Le Carre – Spy who came in from the cold, Tailor of panama, Our game infact almost all his books ( this man can write)
e. Leon Uris – QB -VII, Haj
f. Anthony Bevoor – Stalingrad
e. Martin Middlebrook – The Schweinfurt Regensburg raids / The Nuremberg raid / The fight for the Malvinas ( I have never seen such fantastic and thorough research ever undertaken by anyone)
f. Tom Clancy – writes crap, but I must admit I did like some of the battle scenarios in Red Storm Rising.