Which book are you reading now? Volume XIV

[EnglishEdward]

If those people were actively fighting, their commanding officers
may have overlooked that on the grounds that they wouldn't need
to take action as the advancing Russians would likely kill them anyway.

It is possible even that their COs may have encouraged doubters to dissent in
their private diary entries so as to divert them away from disssenting out loud.

My understanding is that they were motivated by:

(a) Fear of getting shot
(b) Nazi fanaticism
(c) Social or military, or unit cohesion.

and I suspect that towards the end of the war (a) greatly predominated.

What was Kershaw's conclusion anyway?

 

[Ajidica]

What was Kershaw's conclusion anyway?

I'm still reading the book, bro.

But his thesis seems to be coalescing around that the mass of German people couldn't conceive of an alternative to fighting, though the reasons for being unable to conceive an alternative to fighting varied.
It is an underwhelming conclusion, but as I noted in the original post, I may be expecting the book to answer questions Kershaw never intended to answer.

 

[EnglishEdward]

Think I best let you finish the book.

 

[sendos]

Watsonia
A definitive anthology that captures the masterful Don Watson at his best – powerful, insightful and funny.
Watsonia gathers the fruits of a writing life. It covers everything from Australian humour to America gone berserk; from Don Bradman to Oscar Wilde; from birds and horses to history and politics. Wherever Don Watson turns his incisive gaze, the results are as illuminating as they are enjoyable.

Watsonia displays the many sides of Don Watson: historian, speechwriter, social critic, humourist, biographer and lover of nature and sports. Replete with wit, wisdom and diverse pleasures, this comprehensive collection includes a wide-ranging introduction by the author and several previously unpublished pieces. No other writer has journeyed further into the soul of Australia and returned to tell the tale.

Lol. You copy pasted that from the back of the book.

I may as well give it a read. I have mainly been working legal stuff as part of my work.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Lol. You copy pasted that from the back of the book.

I may as well give it a read. I have mainly been working legal stuff as part of my work.

Well, yes. Having not read the book, it seemed a pretty concise description of what the book was about.

 

[tjs282]

Still working my way through The Silk Roads, but also received the following for Christmas.

Already read:

Uranus -- Ben Bova

I don't think I read any of his books before, including the preceding Grand Tour novels, so went into this one with no specific expectations, but was not particularly impressed. Overall fairly pedestrian writing, lack of narrative tension, and simplistic character-building. Having already read The Expanse, this felt lacking by comparison.

Still to read :

Broken Earth trilogy (The Fifth Season, The Obelisk Gate, The Stone Sky) -- N. K. Jemison
Just Like You -- Nick Hornby
Why The Germans Do It Better -- John Kampfner (non-fiction)

 

[Kyriakos]

I am at chapter 3 of the 3 body problem. The first chapter almost made me stop reading, but it seems it is easier to be interested now

 

[EnglishEdward]

I have just finished reading:

Zero History

by

William Gibson

which I thoroughly enjoyed.

It is an interesting and well written novel.

 

[Traitorfish]

The title is kind of a pun: it's about the way that the Wars of Religion trashed large swathes of Europe, but also about the way they lead to Medieval notion of "Christendom" to be supplanted by the modern notion of "Europe".

 

[Kyriakos]

Now read a bit over a fifth of the first book of the 3body problem. It is interesting. Something surprises me a bit:

Spoiler :

Why does the author present future tech - to my knowledge anyway; applied nanotech and anti gmf results - in the year (iirc) 2019? Maybe even the specifics of that virtual reality game apply too, not sure

As to the plot up to now

Spoiler :

I like the writing, after the (imo) very uninviting first chapter, but I am not sure about the pace. This moves rather too fast. The countdown comes out of nowhere, after just one chapter about altered laws of physics, so seems a bit too convenient. If the aliens had their sights on Wang, why didn't he see the countdown immediately after the discussion with Ding? (at the latest). Also, why first see it in the camera? Seems a bit random.

 

[jarred!]

I finished The Hypnotist, the book was fun to read, but the ending was a bit blah. The towels in the bus and the fact the diesel bus even started, especially in the middle of winter, was a bit too contrived for me.

I have started New Spring but I haven't found myself wanting to pick the book back up again. I found The Lady of the Barge by W.W. Jacobs on Libby and read the stories The Monkey's Paw and An Adulteration Act. The former was nice and spooky, while the latter was more of a comedy.

I finished New Spring by Jordan. It was a little difficult to get into, I think because it was written after the first handful of books in the series which I have not yet read. But, I ended up enjoying it quite a bit and have The Eye of the World to read now.

 

[Smellincoffee]

Three things:
Permanent Record, Edward Snowden
The Old Man and the Boy, Robert Ruark
Beyond Tenebrae: Christian Humanism in the Twilight of the West, Brad Birzer

 

[AmazonQueen]

Just finished rereading Surface Detail. First time I read it I hadn't read Use of Weapons so the final reveal that Vatueil was Zakalwe meant nothing to me then.

 

[EnglishEdward]

Just finished rereading Surface Detail. First time I read it I hadn't read Use of Weapons so the final reveal that Vatueil was Zakalwe meant nothing to me then.

Splendid book. When Iain (M) Banks was in Norwich I got him to sign a hard copy of it to give to my older brother.

 

[Kyriakos]

Now read half of the first book of the Three Body Problem.

Pacing is an issue, but it seems things are about to get quite intense

 

[Ajidica]

Finished up Ian Kershaw's The End, and my opinion remained pretty much unchanged. I would have liked a bit more information on the food system and agriculture. I seem to remember that Nazi Germany had a lot of problems with food supply in that they were using seed crops for food instead of saving for replanting.

Starting on Gerard Prunier's Africa's World War: Congo, Rwanda, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe. The book is a well written and outstanding look at the aftermath of the Rwandan Genocide and the Congo Wars. The book is translated from French, and the revised edition (which I have) has a much better translation than the original edition (which I started but never finished in college). Translation can still be rather wooden and awkward in spots.

 

[Takhisis]

Terry Pratchett's Carpe Jugulum.

 

[Kyriakos]

“Seen with the terrestrially sullied eye, we are in a situation of travelers in a train that has met with an accident in a tunnel, and this at a place where the light of the beginning can no longer be seen, and the light of the end is so very small a glimmer that the gaze must continually search for it and is always losing it again, and, furthermore, both the beginning and the end are not even certainties. Round about us, however, in the confusion of our senses, or in the supersensitiveness of our senses, we have nothing but monstrosities and a kaleidoscopic play of things that is either delightful or exhausting according to the mood and injury of each individual. What shall I do? or: Why should I do it? are not questions to be asked in such places.”

(yes, it's by Kafka, who else)

 

[EgonSpengler]

The Last Battle, by Stephen Harding (2013)

tl;dr version: US soldiers, POWs held by the Germans, and Austrian wehrmacht join forces to fight the SS in a 15th-century castle.

Longer version: The Germans were holding a number of "high value" French prisoners of war in a mountain-top castle in Austria. A couple of WWI generals; a former PM; a tennis star. The castle was also staffed by slaves from Dachau who had useful skills, one of whom was member of either the French or Czech Resistance, I forget which (the Germans just thought he was an electrician). At the end of the war, just a few days after Hitler's death, a small American unit secured the castle, but word got to them that a Waffen SS unit was coming to either recapture or execute the POWs and sweep the nearby Austrian village of collaborators and any soldiers who'd surrendered to the Allies. We might think of Austria as part of Germany today (back in WWII, I mean), but Austria had only recently been annexed by Nazi Germany in the "anschluss" of 1938 and a lot of Austrians still thought of themselves as Austrian, not German. There were Austrian resistance cells during the war, and as the Allies were advancing, some Austrians hung Austrian flags from their houses to show the Allies they weren't Nazis. The fear was that the SS would execute any Austrian civilians who had hung either a white flag or an Austrian flag. A unit of Austrian Wehrmacht artillerymen who were nearby - I guess they were probably walking home - came to help the Americans against the SS attack (which included a Tiger II heavy tank, iirc).

Someone on this forum - sorry, I forget who - wrote about a boardgame based on the fight a while back, and the book has been optioned for a film.

 

[Ferocitus]

I received a book Watsonia by Don Watson. Anyone have any thoughts on this book?

There's a podcast from 19 Nov. 2020 of Watson discussing his book with our best interviewer.
https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/latenightlive/don-watson---a-writing-life/12901522