By sheer coincidence, later that evening, Gunsmith Bob pulled the identical book off his shelf and said "I'll let you read this while you're here, but I don't want to lose the copy, so..."
Two recommendations, same book, same day. I'll therefore recommend it to y'all: My War Gone By, I Miss It So
.I first read it in the back of a minivan headed to SHOT Show in Orlando. I started on page one in the driveway in Knoxville and glanced up fifteen minutes later to see that we'd somehow already made it to Florida. I'd let y'all borrow mine, but I don't want to lose the copy, so...
Fiction:
ReplyDelete'The Painter of Battles'
http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9781400065981&view=excerpt
J - tR
definitely great book.
ReplyDeleteFunny thing, that. I'm looking at that book on the shelf right in front of me.
ReplyDeleteBetter be good. I just bought it from a Finnish net shop, on your recommendation. Will get it in a couple of weeks.
ReplyDeleteOK, I admit I bought the book for the cover photo. Turned out to be one of my favorites.
ReplyDeleteWV: subilm
Subliminal by They Might Be Giants
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6bfJIoabcE
Speaking of rare books, I've been hunting a copy of "Ignition!" for years... found out about it just after some college press that was selling copies from microfiche for $80 folded up, and that seems to be the only source.
ReplyDeleteDamn thing sells for $300 and up regardless of condition.
Closest thing to an NFA/Hughes amd. regulated book I've ever seen.
heh, capcha = "grate".
If you are so near Nashville, why don't you stop by for a visit. Call me.
ReplyDeleteread it. Great book. can't recommend it enough.
ReplyDeleteA buddy of mine is half Serb Christian, half Serbian Moslem, and assures me that, as General DeChastellain, the NATO commander said, "There are no good guys here".
ReplyDeleteBoy Clinton selectively demonized the Serbs to draw attention from his own peccadillos. Yes, Milosevic deliberately used his worst prison sweepings as irregulars. And thousands of Afgani and Irani volunteers used by the Moslems were even worse.
An interesting bit of history, delivered from as impartial an observer as one could find (Milo hates both sides).
The Moslems in Bosnia are the remains of the medieval Serbian middle class, which converted to Islam to keep it's property and enjoy a tax rate half that of their Christian neighbors.
They were also exempt from surrendering their babies to be raised as a Janissaries by the Turkish army, unlike Christians.
The king and army of Serbia died at the battle of Kosovo Polye, the aptly named Blackbird Fields, and the peasants were all that were left of the culture.
They rose in hopeless rebellions for almost four centuries, until, in the 1870's, they shamed the Czar into giving them support, and threw the Turks out.
The surviving Moslems, called "Baby-Stealers", were driven across the Danube into the wilds of Bosnia.
During WWI, the Moslems joined the Turks again, and administered the campaign of butchery and torture carried out against the Serbian population after the Serb army had been driven back into Greece.
When King Peter and his army fought their way back into the country again, the Moslems once more paid the price for their actions, the survivors again seeking the security of Bosnia's hills.
During Hitlers time, the Moslems joined the Nazis and formed their most effective SS units in the campaign that killed off almost half the world's supply of Serbs.
At war's end the usual cycle of reprisal didn't happen, as a Croatian named Tito, "The Only Yugoslav", placed regular army troops throughout Bosnia and required all priests and imams to get real jobs, confiscated the churches and mosques, saying "Do the religion thing on your own time, on your own property".
Sadly,the enforced peace lasted only as long as Tito.
When the fighting started again, the regular army units in Bosnia, heavily Serb in the tanks, armor and artillery units, gave the national government a major advantage.
German and American support gave the Croatians an enourmous edge over the Serbs, who were quickly driven out of the oil fields of eastern Croatia.
In Bosnia, the country was checkerboarded with Serb, Moslem, Albanian, and Croatian villages, all of which were at war with most of their neighbors.
It was common to see a Moslem village come to the rescue of a Serb village, in order to gain an advantage over a Croatian village they both feared, and vice-versa. It was, is, a total madhouse, and was brought to some form of stability only by the organization of the Albanian Moslems, mostly 20th century illegals who jumped the border.
The Kosovo Liberation Army is a criminal organization that controls most of the drugs, prostitution, car theft, and white slavery in central Europe.
They were on the State Department's list of bad guys until they were legitimized by Mr. Clinton after their successfully driving out a majority of the province's Serbs, Turks, and twenty plus other ethnic groups.
Now they openly hunt the few remaining Serbs, Croatians, and other holdouts. Last year they killed a Serb mayor, knowing it would yield an excellent concentration of targets at the cemetery, all of which were massacred. I'm not usually a cursing man, but FUCK THEM ALL!
Milo is married to a classy little French girl who understands his demons and gives him an anchor to swing around. He deserves it, he's a fine man.
As to the former Yugoslavia, may I suggest Kim Du Toit's idea for fixing Africa, to whit: Build a wall around it, then throw ammunition and raw meat over it until the noise and smoke stops.
Anonymous says "The Painter of Battles". (Arturo Perez-Reverte is the author.)
ReplyDeleteI agree.
And Tam, thanks for the tip.
Gale_H
Anonymous, please try Reverte's historical fiction stuff. The Captain Alatriste series obviously had a lot to do with LT Leary's adventures, and I suspect Adele Mundy is in part a homage to Adele De Otero in "The Fencing Master".
ReplyDeleteOff and on, I'm trying to read some of his stuff in the original Spanish, but cracking the dictionary every two sentences does reduce the suspense a tad.
Still, even in English, the prose is superb, and the action amazingly real. The concept of an honorable man in a corrupt time, clinging to that honor as the only excuse for existence, rings more truely every day.