What are you reading?

[revolution saint]

I'm currently reading "The End of the world as we know it" which is an anthology based on The Stand by Stephen King.  Got some decent authors like Joe R Lansdale and S A Cosby and so far I'm enjoying it.  Couple of stories haven't quite hit the mark but most have been good and particularly enjoyed the Joe R Lansdale one.

Also reading "Cool Hand Luke".  Haven't seen the film but for some reason thought it was a western (which it isn't), setup so far seems to be building the main character to be some anti-authoritarian rebel in the style of RP McMurphy in One flew over the cuckoo's nest which is right up my alley.

[Nordic Saint]

Tevye the Dairyman and Motl the Cantor's Son by Sholem Aleichem.

Why? I watched Fiddler on the Roof, found it more poignant than I'd expected, and wanted to know more about it so I dug out the book it was based on. I also decided to learn a little Hebrew. It is VERY similar to Arabic, which I speak already. You'll probably recognise the author's pen name as the Hebrew equivalent of As-salamu alaykum.

Edited Sunday at 21:21 by Nordic Saint

[sadoldgit]

On 20/09/2025 at 12:02, revolution saint said:

I'm currently reading "The End of the world as we know it" which is an anthology based on The Stand by Stephen King.  Got some decent authors like Joe R Lansdale and S A Cosby and so far I'm enjoying it.  Couple of stories haven't quite hit the mark but most have been good and particularly enjoyed the Joe R Lansdale one.

Also reading "Cool Hand Luke".  Haven't seen the film but for some reason thought it was a western (which it isn't), setup so far seems to be building the main character to be some anti-authoritarian rebel in the style of RP McMurphy in One flew over the cuckoo's nest which is right up my alley.

Watch the film if you haven’t since you posted. Paul Newman is excellent.

[Winnersaint]

The War in the West Vol 1 by James Holland. Challenges the narrative of the early years of the war that Britain was on its knees and a German victory was inevitable. Particularly after the rapid fall of France. Others have written similarly about this, for example Julian Jackson but James Holland takes the jigsaw pieces of other works and connects them up.

Some interesting nuggets I did not know.  Car ownership, despite Hitler building the Autobahn network, was significantly lower in Germany than in France or Britain. 1 in 47 compared to 1 in 14 in Britain in 1939 and 1 in 18 in France.

"The fewer vehicles there were meant there were also fewer factories than in say, France or Britain, making them. The fewer factories there were, the fewer people there were with the know-how to make vehicles, and the fewer mechanics there were to repair them; it meant there were also fewer people who knew how to drive them, and fewer petrol pumps to fill them. This shortfall in expertise could not be magicked out of thin air. It took time to build up."

"Germany ate proportionally more pork than any other country, but the problem with pigs was that they competed with humans for foodstuffs, in contrast to sheep, which ate grass. The solution was to reduce the number of pigs, but that then meant less fat was available, which in turn meant people ate more sugar beet and potatoes; this in turn led to less fodder for what pigs there were. British people, on the other hand, ate a higher proportion of mutton, which was a more practical meat source because sheep only required grass and their wool could be made into uniforms".

Also if you're interested in this sort of stuff the We Have Ways of Making You Talk pods with Holland and Al Murray are very good too. 

[badgerx16]

1 hour ago, Winnersaint said:

The War in the West Vol 1 by James Holland. Challenges the narrative of the early years of the war that Britain was on its knees and a German victory was inevitable. Particularly after the rapid fall of France. Others have written similarly about this, for example Julian Jackson but James Holland takes the jigsaw pieces of other works and connects them up.

Some interesting nuggets I did not know.  Car ownership, despite Hitler building the Autobahn network, was significantly lower in Germany than in France or Britain. 1 in 47 compared to 1 in 14 in Britain in 1939 and 1 in 18 in France.

"The fewer vehicles there were meant there were also fewer factories than in say, France or Britain, making them. The fewer factories there were, the fewer people there were with the know-how to make vehicles, and the fewer mechanics there were to repair them; it meant there were also fewer people who knew how to drive them, and fewer petrol pumps to fill them. This shortfall in expertise could not be magicked out of thin air. It took time to build up."

"Germany ate proportionally more pork than any other country, but the problem with pigs was that they competed with humans for foodstuffs, in contrast to sheep, which ate grass. The solution was to reduce the number of pigs, but that then meant less fat was available, which in turn meant people ate more sugar beet and potatoes; this in turn led to less fodder for what pigs there were. British people, on the other hand, ate a higher proportion of mutton, which was a more practical meat source because sheep only required grass and their wool could be made into uniforms".

Also if you're interested in this sort of stuff the We Have Ways of Making You Talk pods with Holland and Al Murray are very good too. 

Holland and Murray's Battle of Britain video series is excellent. Also their coverage of the early war in the North African desert. They have just done a series on Operation Pedestal, the convoy to Malta containg the tanker SS Ohio, ( which was captained by my BiL's grandfather ).

So much misunderstanding surrounds the build up to and early part of WW2: Chamberlain bought time with his "piece of paper" that allowed the RN and RAF to be better prepared for the inevitable; the German army High Command, ( OKW ) held the view that the army would not be ready until the mid 1940s, something the Kreigsmarine agreed with, and as a consequence 70% of the German army's transport was horse drawn, and the majority of the tank force comprised models that were never intended for front line combat, ( Pzkpfw1 & 2 ), or were captured Czech vehicles, ( almost all of Rommel's 7th Panzer Dividion in France were Czech 35ts or 38ts ). The British and French had better than parity in tanks and planes, in both quality and quantity, but the French CandC and operational dictrine were disastrously flawed.