Ok, this is crappy and I know it but I am finishing the cannonball. Last year I finished book 52 on the 31st but I was a dozen reviews behind. This year, I got to 64 books and I’m still behind on my reviews but I can get there and I read all of these books for the same reason and that is professional development at work which makes them inherently less interesting to those who do not share my profession. Anyway, here I go. […]
World War I Novels Never End Happily
#cbr10bingo This is the End The Ghost Road is the third and final volume in Pat Barker’s Regeneration trilogy. Set during WWI in England, the trilogy tells the story of both real and fictional characters trying to make sense of a senseless war. The first book focused on the patients at Craiglockhart Hospital, an asylum for soldiers suffering from shell shock and being treated so as to be sent back to the front. Book two centered on the fictional character Billy Prior, a soldier recovering […]
Psychological Conflict Management
In volume one of Pat Barker’s award winning Regeneration Trilogy, readers experienced life in a hospital for English soldiers suffering from “war neurosis” (PTSD) during WWI. Barker uses both fictional and real historical characters (Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, Dr. Rivers) to show the trauma of war for soldiers expected to heal and return to action, and the impact of their experiences upon the doctor treating them. At the end of that novel, Rivers’ patients are being released back to action, which was his goal, but […]
What Happens After the War?
I listened to this one on Audible – figured it’s the kind of story I’m usually interested in but also am more hesitant to pick up nowadays because the genre does sometimes blend together so it seemed like the perfect selection for, “damn, how did I end up with so many Audible credits, I have no idea what I want!” The novel begins in 1947 with nineteen-year-old Charlie on her way to Switzerland for a procedure to take care of “her little problem.” The last […]
Women & Espionage in the World Wars
The Alice Network by Kate Quinn is an ambitious work of historical fiction that straddles two world wars and their aftermath, and that shines a light on the heroic work of female spies. Quinn uses a solid base of historical fact and real people to create her fictional heroine Eve (aka Evelyn Gardiner, aka Marguerite Le Francois), a spy for England in WWI who made shattering sacrifices and has never healed from her tragic and brutal experiences. Eve is an alcoholic recluse when, in the […]
Army Chief of Staff Reading List #11
The Sleepwalkers is one of the most thorough books I have recently read. It attempts to describe and make sense of the factors that led to WWI. The author attempts to discover the real causes beyond the notion that the war was inevitable. It’s a nearly impossible task that I think Christopher Clark does quite well. His findings do not provide a clear or simple answer but it is comprehensive and much better than the tired tropes we learned about in high school history class. […]
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