Dr Otto

They’re Lying : The Media, The Left, and the Death of George Floyd by Liz Collin

Minnesota/Twin Cities glibs probably recognize Liz’s name from the local WCCO news casts. She lost her job during the summer of fiery but mostly peaceful protests when they removed her from reporting due to what could have appeared as a conflict of interest due to her husband’s job as head of the police union. You may or may not remember mobs of people protesting her husband’s stance on the firings of the 4 officers involved. This also involved fire in the form of effigies and mostly peaceful death threats.

I haven’t gotten far into the book yet, and it already seems apparent that when it suits them, police unions get very concerned about “due process”. I may or may not finish the book due to it already being mostly what I have already heard about St. George of Fentanyl. So far, the one new nugget I have read that I didn’t see in any reporting was that Floyd was also a suspect in a rape allegation that was reported just previous to his fatal run in with the police. I guess the moral of the story is there were probably no good people involved in this incident on either side. This book is the police version of “didn’t do nothin’ ”

 

ZWAK

I finished the first book of the Silo trilogy (I know, late to the party) and enjoyed it, and although it could have been edited a bit tighter, I do understand that long door-stopper books are still in fashion. One interesting thing about the books, for those who might care, is that the maintenance of the Silo is described quite accurately. All of the talk about generator shaft alignment, pump wiring, and so on, was either well researched or the author did it for a living. Which is nice.

Still working my way through The Golden Century, a history of BSA sporting firearms. When you are a collector of objects, guns, books, tools, etc. you can easily spend nearly as much on reference books and whatnot. I have this author’s other book, BSA and Lincoln Jefferies Air Rifles, which focuses on pre-WWI production, as I have one from that period. I also picked up Early 20th Century Stanley Tools; a price guide. And although I knew it was outdated when I got it, it does have reprinted in it two catalogs from the turn of last century. As I said, the reference becomes just as important.

I also started Isobel Colegate’s Orlando the King, an interesting retelling of the Oedipal myth moved to England in prewar.

 

Dbeagle

This was a very busy moth at work and with the sailing thing so my reading count is down.

Fire and Fortitude: The US Army in the Pacific War 1941-1943 by John McManus. If you received the Purple Heart in the Pacific War in WWII statistically you were a US ground Soldier and not in the Navy or Marine Corps. Despite those Services roles their participation in the war was dwarfed by the US Army. The WWII Pacific (and CBI) campaigns are much less known in the US than the European campaigns. Rick Atkinson’s trilogy on the Army in Africa and Europe is well known and the 2d volume even won the Pulitzer Prize. McManus put out his trilogy on a similar timeline and to my shame I had never heard of it until last month. I finished Volume 1 this month and it is a rich and rewarding history which I highly recommend. He shows the steep learning curve the Army undertook in learning to fight and dominate a formidable foe. My contempt for McArthur grew as I learned how he fought against any other generals receiving the Medal of Honor in the Pacific and kept high performing subordinates from being promoted into positions that could have saved US lives. McManus also went through the archives to get the translations of hmultiple Japanese diaries to show battles from both sides. With a fine eye he covers the fights from the Aleutian Islands in the north to the bitter and unknown New Guinea fighting in the south from the individual rifleman to corps command concerns. I have already requested volume two. Highly recommend.

Well I missed the deadline for June submissions so I will add on McManus’s second volume Island Infernos which covers 1944. Another highly recommended volume and I just received Volume 3 (To The Ends of the Earth) through ILL. I am only 30 or so pages in and he has retained the same high standard of writing and using US and Japanese diaries and official reports. Recommend as well.

I also read technical stuff on current and projected PRC military capacity and capabilities. Suffice it to say that if we fight the PLA it will not be like fighting the Serbian or Iraqi militaries. They aren’t ten feet tall and have issues with fighting in a joint manner, but they have a “metric shit tonne” of stuff and home field advantage.

 

LACK

Hey buddy, here is my submission.

The screwtape letters:

In this engrossing read CS Lewis takes on the role of a demon named screwtape to write letters to a young, aspiring demon trying to tempt a man’s heart to the dark side. The concept is fun and engaging, but the content is deadly serious. This one had me both laughing and thinking deeply. It’s interesting to see a lot of the temptations I suffer from mentioned and the author including real life solutions in the form of his advice to the tempting demon of what not to allow his victim to do. Highly recommend this.

From the Silent Planet:

A little on the nose as CS Lewis tends to be, but this is a great Sci Fi to read if you enjoy some of the old classics. Intrepid adventurers travel to another world on a long shot trip, discover strange creatures and planet with a deep secret that affects the earth. Great stuff.

 

Fourscore

Last fall I laid in my winter’s reading, the pile grew a book or two around Xmas. On the bottom of the pile was Young Benjamin Franklin, authored by Nick Bunker. I finally got around to reading what I thought was going to be a dry and boring book.

Most of what I and perhaps you know about Ol’ Ben was his later years in France, enjoying all the French things. Surprisingly enough Young Ben had a childhood, doing those things that border on daring and mischief. As he grows in years so does he grow in his philosophy, taking a little here, some there and eventually emerges as a businessman, sometimes successful, sometimes not.

I’m not quite finished but at this point he’s now into his 30s, politically adjusting to become the B. Franklin we remember from a high school American History class.

Anyone that’s interested can get a once read 1st Edition that was remaindered by giving a holler.

 

RICHARD

This month’s desperate attempts to escape reality included re-reading the Spatterjay trilogy set in Neal Asher’s Polity universe:

https://www.goodreads.com/series/49126-spatterjay

There are several plots going on in these books set late in the Polity timeline. One of them is an awesome rags-to-riches story.

I recently got my greedy hands on a copy of the two volumes of the 1861 Report on the Geology of Vermont by finally wrestling them from my father’s greedy hands:

https://dec.vermont.gov/geological-survey/publication-gis/vermont-geology/ReportOnGeologyOfVermont

I’m halfway through the first volume and it’s so interesting that I’m going to write an article about the report when I’m done. The author makes some references to the work of a contemporary, a Mr. Charles Darwin, who at that time was primarily known as a geologist.

Last month I mentioned that I read Jim Butcher’s latest book The Aeronaut’s Windlass. This made me recall I’d never watched the 2007 TV series of Butcher’s “The Dresden Files”:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0486657/

So I watched it. It’s pretty good but not nearly as gritty as the books. I know this because I was then inspired to re-read the books. I’m in the middle of the series now.

The 2023 Hugo award nominations are out:

The only novel on the list that I’d read was Nona the Ninth which I didn’t like:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58662507-nona-the-ninth

I just read two more:

Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56179377-nettle-bone

Which is a very Kingfisher-like production and similar to some of her other books. It’s not Science Fiction and it’s not of Hugo caliber.

The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57693406-the-kaiju-preservation-society

This is Science Fiction and there are a lot of SF jokes. While the concept and execution are good it’s also not of Hugo caliber.

 

The Hyperbole

Slow month again, I finished the first Hardman and Hump novel – Atlanta Deathwatch,  that I mentioned last month, it was just as good as I’d heard so I read the second – The Charleston Knife is back in Town  and am on to the third – The Golden Girl and All. Written and set in the 70’s, Hardman an ex-cop turned sorta PI and his partner Hump, ex-NFL work the mean streets of Atlanta on both sides of the law. There are only 12 or so books in the series and the author, Ralph Dennis died in 1988 so hopefully they don’t flame out, like so many multiple novel series do. Joe R Lansdale of Hap and Leonard fame writes the forward to the collection I got and claims he had this series in mind when creating Messrs Collins and Pine.

Speaking of Joe, I also read his latest The Donut Legion, a standalone thriller/crime/mystery. A writers ex-wife goes missing and he and his hard ass PI brother investigate. Cults, Murders, ghosts, a dog named Tag, and a killer, cowboy-hat-wearing chimpanzee. All the fun you’ve come to expect from The Champion Mojo Storyteller.