What are you reading 2023

Victor David Hanson pretty much nailed it on the idiocy on his latest podcast.
Harry claiming to have killed 25 Taliban is an exercise in stupidity… whether he did or not, it increases the threat to family members. While coming across as a puss, he wants to contrast himself with dad and big bro that did not serve in combat.

What a tool.

Men who have killed other men in combat don’t talk about it.

Yes Bob, killing people is something a man doesn’t talk about, his wasn’t I assume close and personal, I’ll leave it at that!

Same here, my dad was a true warrior he never talked about lives taken in Korea or Vietnam. One night after several drinks, he spoke about a VC kid that fragged my dads buddy in his hooch with a hand grenade. He was a “known” kid, but my dad had to walk the .50 cal up the backside of the fleeing youth.

He said he was screaming “Brucie” as he did so, ( my oldest brother’s name)his CO saw what was happening and asked if he needed to go home. He declined, but I don’t think that was a great idea from my armchair perspective.

Vietnam really changed him, and our family life really sucked.

Man, you are really speeding through those books. I can't read as fast as I used to.

I picked up a ton more over the past week, including White Nights, The Brother's Karamazov, The Friend of the Neighbors, The Idiot, Notes From A Dead House, The Gambler and The Double all from Dostoevsky, Idoru and All Tomorrow's Parties (The last two of William Gibson's Bridge Trilogy, read his other first five novels over the past year) and I got a nice illustrated copy of The Haunted Bookshop in hardback, and the first Morley book, Parnassus on Wheels in paperback(Not the first Christopher Morley book but the first book before Haunted Bookshop). I bought a brand new shrink wrapped copy of the entire complete works of H.P. Lovecraft in a nice hardback with silver-edged pages from Barnes and Noble, and I picked up a complete works copy of Edgar Allen Poe.

When I lived in NYC, some of my classes were in his former residence. Everybody just called the building “Poe”.

That sounds appropriate. I got my copy when I was 11. It's fake leather and gold edges and pretty worn.

Another Country, subtitled “Personal adventures of the twentieth century”
By Jeff Cooper.

Brand new book at a thrift store for .50 cents.

I looked at that book after reading your post and I think I'll pass. I went into town the other day and drove some of the back streets and saw all the misery I needed this year.
Also true about Hemingway, great writer, but not much of a friend. He was always focused on HIS reactions to situations, his perception. His imagination of what someone else was thinking.

Foreign Countries
C.Claudy

I've been reading One Nation under God, Kevin M. Kruse, 2015.  He argues that the American Christian nation canard was promulgated more by big business in reaction to domestic New Deal "communism" than in postwar Red Scare and McCarthyism.  I've read a lot on the topic and he has an interesting take.

I finished No Peace and Tress of the Emerald Sea. No Peace was the usual fun western that was hard to put down. Tress started out rough but got better.