BillP's Book\Miniature\Wargame Blog

First I closed out James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux series: Creole Belle (#19), Light of the World (#20), Robicheaux (#21), and The New Iberia Blues (#22). I continue to be conflicted about these. They’re still beautifully written but indifferently plotted. The main characters are still self-destructive and the books are still formulaic. But they’re so well written. At the end of the day. I’m glad I read them. I’ll keep reading new ones as they come out, but I doubt if I’ll re-read them in the future.

Next up were the two volumes on The Atlanta Campaign from Savas Beatie’s Emerging Civil Way series both by Stephen Davis. A Long and Bloody Task covers the first part of the campaign up to the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain while the second one, All the Fighting They Want covers the rest of the operation. Both books were excellent. Concise, descriptive, and accessible. They would make an excellent introduction to the campaign for anyone who is interested in it. My primary interest in the books was using them as source material for my annual Battlefieldapalooza tour which will take place next month and cover operations from Chickamauga to Savannah. Readers should be aware that Davis has some strong opinions of Sherman and Johnston.

Retracing the Route of Sherman’s Atlanta Campaign and the March to the Sea by Robert Jones is a slim little volume (110 pages) that provides a nice little tour guide for both the Atlanta Campaign (23 stops), and the progress of both the Right (8 stops) and the Left (10 stops) Wings of Sherman’s Army. There’s not a whole lot of information on the campaigns themselves, just enough to provide context for the stops. But it still looks like it will make an excellent framework at least for the March to the Sea portion of the excursion.

The Cause Lost: Myths and Realities of the Confederacy by William C. Davis is a collection of 18 essays on a wide variety of aspects of the Confederacy and the Civil War. Davis addresses a slew of topics with a particular focus on the Confederate command situation, Jeff Davis’ relations with his generals, how the Lost Cause mythologizing distorted ACW historiography, even how the ACW has been portrayed in film. It’s not a long book, only 276 pages, but it’s probably the most information rich book I’ve come across in quite some time. And, since its only $.99 for the Kindle edition on Amazon I think it’s easily the most cost effective ACW book in my library. I can’t recommend it highly enough

Finally, The Reckoning by John Grisham is a pedestrian novel about a Mississippi cotton planter and recently returned WWII Hero/POW who drives into town one fall morning and shoots the local Methodist minister graveyard dead, then refuses to explain why he did it. The rest of the book is about the reader gradually learning the motive. Problem is, by the end, I didn’t care. Anyway, not Grisham’s best work. You can skip this one.

119 for the year

This year marks the earliest I have ever hit 100 books read for the year and I have no clue why. I don’t think I’m doing anything different from previous years. Anyway, since my last update I’ve finished another fourteen books.

First up was A Tough Little Patch of History: Gone with the Wind and the Politics of Memory by Jennifer W. Dickey which is really mostly an account of how the apartment house that Mitchell lived in when she wrote most of GWTW came to be preserved as a tourist attraction here in Atlanta. It was quite fascinating in an inside baseball sort of way to see how all the various players interacted and the various iterations the “Margret Mitchell House” went through before it became what it is today. I enjoyed it, but if your not from Atlant, or a hard-care GWTW fan I doubt you will.

Next were Cadillac Jukebox (#9), Sunset Limited (#10), Purple Cane Road (#11), Jolie Blon’s Bounce (#12), Last Car to Elysian Fields (#13), Crusader’s Cross (#14), Pegasus Descending (#15), The Tin Roof Blowdown (#16), Swan Peak (#17), and The Glass Rainbow (#18) a series of Dave Robicheaux novels by James Lee Burke. I continue to be seriously conflicted about these. They’re beautifully and lyrically written, one of them, Tin Roof Blowdown has a very poignant elegy to the New Orleans lost during Katrina. But overall they’re formulaic, badly plotted, and un-original. But the writing is so good!

19 Minutes to Live – Helicopter Combat in Vietnam by Lew Jennings is a memoir by a gunship pilot with the 101st AB in Vietnam. Since my dad flew gunships with the 4/77th ARA, (also assigned to the 101st) I am a sucker for these memoirs. This one was even more special because Jennings’ tour was co-incident with my dad’s. I was talking to my old fella about the book and he recalled several of the incidents described in the book. The book was consistently interesting, and I enjoyed it. If you’re at all interested in helicopters in Vietnam, you’ll probably like this.

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers is an interesting sci-fi book about the crew of a “tunneling ship” which travels around the galaxy creating new wormholes to facilitate commerce between star systems. The book was quite good, the characters were interesting and well developed, the universe worked, and there were several races of well-conceived aliens. If the book had a flaw it was that the overarching plot was kind of a “mcguffin” that is not terribly important but rather more a device to bring the characters together and give them a framework. Despite this I enjoyed it. I should also give a trigger warning here, most of the central characters, with whom the reader spends the most time, are female so anti-PC/SJW haters would do well to avoid the book.

Last was Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead by GEN (ret) James Mattis, which is a fairly straightforward account of GEN Mattis’ service to the US over the past four decades. I found the book (as I have the man himself) fascinating and it certainly provides a clear and unvarnished account of GEN Mattis opinions on both leadership and US foreign policy over the time he’s served. While there is very little on the current POTUS, Mattis pulls no punches on his accounts of his dealing with either President Obama or Bush (43). He’s quite clear in the foreword to his book that he refused to criticize sitting Presidents, based on some of his more general comments and his letter of resignation as SECDEF, one can only imagine what his next book will be like once Trump leaves office. Anyway, unless you’re looking for a hatchet job against the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, you should read this.

110 for the year