BillP's Book\Miniature\Wargame Blog

Life in Prison: Eight Hours at a Time by Robert Reilly is a well written little memoir about a British ex-pat musician who finally gives up on a career in music and takes a job as a prison guard in Pennsylvania, then, later, Maine. The book is a pretty interesting look at a modern US prison through the eyes of a well-educated and articulate foreigner. I quite enjoyed it.

Armchair Astronomy by Sir Patrick Moore is a delightful little book containing a couple of hundred interesting articles on astronomy intended to help amateur astronomers while away cloudy nights when they can’t observe. It was very cool if a bit dated by being written more than 30 years ago.

37 for the year

Axis Power: Could Nazi Germany And Imperial Japan Have Won World War Two? By Roger Townshend is a superficial little analysis of what the Axis might have done differently to win WWII. The book reads kind of like a wargamer discussing how the bad guys might have won. The guy has a few interesting arguments, but his real “war winners” for the Axis essentially founder on the rock of logistics. He believes the Germans could have beaten the Soviets by not diverting the Panzers from attacking Moscow to clean up the situation in the South, and by a more judicious sequencing of Blau instead of trying to do it all at once or by foregoing Blau altogether in favor of another campaign toward Moscow. Stahel has proven, to my satisfaction, that the German’s weren’t going to take Moscow in 1941, and I think the fighting in 1942 proved that by then it was too late for the Germans.
He has a similar problem with his Pacific scenarios. He believes not attacking the US but concentrating on the British and Dutch was a valid Japanese strategy, but fails to recognize that the interval would have seen MacArthur’s establishment in the Philippines become an unacceptable strategic “Sword of Damocles” held over the heads of the Japanese. He also thinks the Japanese had the capability of conquering and occupying the Hawaiian Islands totally contrary to the facts of their amphibious lift and logistic projection capabilities. You can skip this one.

Tiger Tracks – The Classic Panzer Memoir by Wolfgang Faust is purported to be a memoir of a Tiger driver during one harrowing 72 hour period on the Eastern Front. It is almost certainly made up whole cloth. It is pretty typical Axis fanboi, Sven Hasselesque drivel. Another one that can be skipped.
Strategy for Defeat: the Luftwaffe 1933 – 1945 by Williamson Murray was simply outstanding. If you want to understand the Luftwaffe and what happened to it in WWII, you have to read this book. A tip of the hat to Consimworld’s Lee Brimmicombe-Wood for turning me on to it. One note, you might be tempted to buy this for the Kindle as that version is only $2.00, resist, or at least realize that you’ll want to get a hardcopy as well, because Murray has provided a plethora of tables and graphs which are absolutely essential to the narrative, but totally useless on the Kindle.

Monk’s Hood and One Corpse Too Many by Ellis Peters are the second and third installments of The Cadfael Chronicles, murder mysteries solved by a 12 century Welsh monk in an English monastery. They were fine. Not great literature, but a good way to while away a few hours.
Tudors: The History of England from Henry VIII to Elizabeth I by Peter Ackroyd is the second volume in his three volume History of England. I found it superb. Ackroyd manages to paint vivid pictures of the characters, while maintaining all the threads of the narratives. The book is comprehensive, but not tedious. I can’t wait to get started on the third volume.

Faking It by Elisa Lorello is a harmless little romance novel that I found lying around the house. It’s the story of a romantically and sexually awkward English professor and a not very well educated male escort who make an agreement to share their expertise with each other. The plot is easily imaginable from the premise, but there is a bit of a surprise in the end.

35 for the year.