My Queer War is the WWII memoir of James Lord, who I knew nothing about prior to picking up this book. The title is an intentional double entendre–James Lord is gay and his war was weird. He never saw combat and the vast majority of his service involved copious amounts of free time during which he was free to explore his sexuality in a way that he had never before considered possible. Bouncing from POW camps to Picasso’s social scene to underground bars where […]
Fake Out
Madeleine’s War is nominally about a woman who is accepted into SC2, the book’s version of the real SOE, and sent behind enemy lines in advance of D-Day to prepare saboteur networks for the coming invasion. The book follows her through training and through to the end of her service. She falls in love with her superior, Matthew Hammond, and learns a great deal about herself and her past as the novel progresses. Unfortunately, the book has two very serious flaws. Read the […]
Live. Die. Repeat.
Over and over again, Ursula Todd lives through two world wars. She’s never in as much control of her death and rebirth as characters in The Edge of Tomorrow, for example, but she does learn from her multiple lives. It’s somewhere between deja vu and being able to completely accurately predict the future (because you’ve already been there). I have to admit to being disappointed with this book, but I don’t think that’s the fault of the book. I just wanted it to be something […]
Swedish Fridges
I’m not going to extract from my review here because I don’t know if any of my paragraphs can stand alone. But I will say this. You know that trope of sticking women in fridges so the male characters can feel man pain? This is one very long, poorly translated slog of fridge after fridge after fridge. Read the rest (?) at Pop Culture Penalty Box!
Catching Literal Flak
The Wrong Stuff is the memoirs of Truman Smith, B-17 pilot and co-pilot during WWII. He very, very honestly recounts his various misadventures during the war in an odd, rambling, sort of conversational tone full of profanity, all-caps typing, and a good sense of humor about the whole experience. Read the rest at Pop Culture Penalty Box.
(Half) Cannonball!
This is sort of an odd book. The characters have arcs and there is definitely a story here, but there isn’t an obvious conclusion. There isn’t just one climax. Even very late in the book, I wasn’t sure where all the threads were going. This isn’t to say I disliked the book. It’s just not like anything I’ve read in a very long time. It’s more literary than anything I’ve read in a while, if that makes sense. Read the rest at Pop Culture […]
- 1
- 2
- 3
- …
- 6
- Next Page »