Books What Are You Reading?

WolfBear

Well-known member
Yitzhak Arad's 2009 book The Holocaust in the Soviet Union is both a fascinating and an extremely tragic read:


It's fascinating because it provides a lot of extremely detailed data about Holocaust victims and Holocaust survivors for different parts of the Soviet Union and even different parts of each SSR. But it's also tragic because it describes the extreme butchery, brutality, and inhumanity of the Holocaust in the Soviet Union under Nazi rule/occupation in extremely massive detail. :(

You can find this book for free in its entirety on LibGen. I highly recommend it.

I think that it's reasonable to say that what this book of Raul Hilberg was for the Holocaust as a whole:


--Yitzhak Arad's book is for the Holocaust Soviet Union in particular.
 

Bear Ribs

Well-known member
I am just finishing up the Hapless Dungeon Fairy box set.

Decent for LitRPG but really suffers from the author's tendency to pad wordcount with stat blocks, especially when he decides to recite the entire stat block, exactly the same as the stat block he recited a few pages back except for one single number, over and over. I'm using fast-forward a lot to deal with that.

I also find myself mildly disliking his system, because almost everything is about making number go up. The story starts out promisingly, with the MC using a rarely-seen highly expensive special quality that lets her summon every member of a family of creatures instead of having to buy each variant individually. By choosing dogs she's able to get a massive range of foxes, coyotes, jackals, wolves, and giant mastiff hounds all working together via pack hunter that lets her build a far more complex dungeon than any other Core has ever managed at first level.

But then it kind of loses this track. Nearly every other special quality we run into consists of "Faster regeneration" or "Bigger Mana Pool" or "Cheaper traps" or the like. They serve only to make number go up (and provide an excuse to recite the entire stat block again, except with whichever number that special quality made go up changed) and don't actually add any interest to the dungeon building or story.

The base story is quite clever (The world looks like a bog standard LitRPG fantasy setting until the reveal that it's being invaded by sci-fi aliens who don't follow RPG fantasy rules and are wiping everybody out in secret raids while the various RPG factions blame each other and make things worse) and the character interactions are cute and fun. I recommend reading the story and skipping the boring-ass stat blocks and explanations of RPG mechanics.

Actually, I recommend that for virtually any LitRPG story ever, I've never found a gamer-type fic where the actual stat blocks were worth reading.
 

WolfBear

Well-known member
This book about pre-World War I Germany is extremely interesting:


It's written from an American point of view, I think.

So is this book about pre-WWI Anglo-German tensions by Charles Sarolea:


And this book about Russia's then-great potential written in 1916 by Charles Sarolea:

 

WolfBear

Well-known member
I found this early 20th century book about Afghanistan to be pretty interesting:


As well as this early 19th century book about Afghanistan by Montstuart Elphinstone:


Montstuart Elphinstone was a Scottish historian who was associated with British India:


800px-Mountstuart_Elphinstone_1911.jpg
 

WolfBear

Well-known member
This is a 50+ year-old thesis rather than a book, but it's still extremely interesting:


It's about Maurice Francis Egan, the US ambassador to Denmark before and during World War I, and his ultimately successful efforts to get Denmark to sell the Danish West Indies (later renamed the US Virgin Islands) to the US:


This late 19th century book about Otto von Bismarck was also interesting:

 

Bear Ribs

Well-known member
Just polished off the Tower of Somnus.

This is an interesting case. It's nominally LitRPG, crossed with a distinctly Shadowrun-flavored cyberpunk dystopia. Aliens made contact with Earth some 40 years ago and promptly threw up their hands in horror at the atrocities of the megacorps and embargo'd the planet, but not before leaving behind the great game, Tower of Somnus. If you have a subscription to the game, it coopts your REM cycles and allows you to play an RPG-like world in your sleep. Your actual real-life skills will translate over to your character, so f'rex the main character is rather nastily skilled with knives and thus even at level 1 is a force to be reckoned with once she gets a dagger. The LitRPG parts with stats and such are all in the game world.

However... skills you learn in the game also translate into real life, albeit without game mechanics like a mana bar to help. If you learn to cast fireball or levitation or whatever, you will be able to do those things in the real world as well. The transnational megacorporations have seized control of the game as much as possible and try to keep a tight hold on subscriptions, allowing only the wealthiest managers to access it's power, but sometimes things slip out, and a new free subscription is a rare monster drop that happens even on the first level so once one person is loose, eventually many more will be.

Oh, but if you die in the Tower of Somnus... haha, no, you don't die in real life but you are locked out of the game until you get a new subscription, and all the power you gained along the way is lost and you start at level 1 again.

Kat is a debt-peon to a megacorporation, enslaved for life having to pay the corporation for every bite of food and drop of water, put into debt by the medical bills for her own birth and locked in for life. Her mother is slowly working herself to death in a factory and her only ambition is that Kat can get a little higher and become a lab assistant so she's safe from the OSHA non-compliant factories that killed her dad and are slowly killing the mom. Her little sister is equally indebted, and Kat has become a "Runner" to pay off their debts, a courier for sensitive information of the extralegal kind, sneaking through areas and smuggling datachips too sensitive to be transmitted even on secure channels. Kat aspires to one day be able to afford a datajack for her little sister, cyberware that will let her learn at superhuman speeds and break out of the laborer class into the scientist or perhaps even lower managerial class.

Then her crush Arnold, a boy from a much richer family of the higher managerial class, approaches her. He got a chance at a Subscription and blew his entire college fund to get it. Now he's toast unless he can get enough power to prove to his parents that the power of the game is worth losing his college fund for. And he got the rare lucky drop of another subscription, and wants Kat to join him because he's barely surviving even the tutorial level and knows she can fight...

The story's fairly solid, the worldbuilding is a bit shaky and some things don't seem to make a lot of sense but the characters are generally well written. Kat is a little bit of a sue, I really got tired of hearing every single Alien break out "You're a credit to your race, not like all those awful other humans" for the 10,000th time. The rest works well.

It interestingly seems to be written specifically to immunize the author from the Twitter mob, the first few chapters are quite woke with "Humans are the real monsters," benevolent aliens that are far more enlightened and beyond such things as profit motive, and Kat throwing a hissy fit over pronouns. Once you get past the first few chapters, what a twitter mob might look at before moving on, though, suddenly that starts falling away and the aliens are far more malevolent, the game itself is fairly suspect, and the evil corporate exec might even be more reasonable than she seems.
 

WolfBear

Well-known member
A 1915 book about Romania (here spelled Roumania) and the Great War (aka World War I) by R. W. Seton-Watson:


Describes the history of the region, Romania's territorial claims onto Transylvania and Bukovina, the possible future situation in regards to this, et cetera.

A 1915 book about World War I by R. W. Seton-Watson (the very same author as above) and a couple of other people called The War and Democracy:


Among other things, it discusses the post-World War I peace settlement if the Allies will win World War I. Highly informative, even more so than the book above, which itself is highly informative as well!
 

Husky_Khan

The Dog Whistler... I mean Whisperer.
Founder
Sotnik
Just finished reading Columbus: The Four Voyages by Laurence Bergreen and whoa, it was a really good book. I learned so much about the man who is coined as the Discoverer of the New World. Along with going into details of his life prior to his first voyage, it covers his three subsequent voyages to the New World.

FYI each voyage of Columbus that followed the first one almost was more interesting and surprising and yes even tragic then the previous one. If it wasn't for the entire first voyage actually discovering the New World (at least from a certain point of view) the subsequent voyages really eclipsed it over and over again in the extent of navigational exploits, adventure, excitement, drama, tragedy and so much more. And I learned a lot about Christopher Columbus and those around him then I previously was aware of. Each subsequent voyage is a better tale in every way then the first one except in the actual "initial discovery" of the New World.

The amount of interpersonal drama was incredible. What was really surprising to me was the sheer amount of muntinous disloyalty from the Spanish under this 'foreign' Genoans command. It's also a great tale of morality. Christopher Columbus proved time and again how he was one of the finest mariners and navigators in history, if not only his own era. Even when he was half blind, stricken almost mad with paranoia and nearly crippled with arthritis and gout, he was putting to shame all of the other experienced navigators and pilots with his nautical and maritime skills time and time again when it came to dead reckoning and reading sea states and the weather and so forth.

But his story also revealed how Columbus was an extremely flawed Man. Prone to vanity and paranoia and sensitive to criticism and censure. He could also be manipulated and often was by jealous, petty and audacious mutineers and other rivals which fed into his own character flaws even more. He committed some great wrongs, some of which could be explained as simply a sign of the times. He was driven by gold lust (as was the whole enterprise) and exacted cruel tributes from the Natives he constantly described (at least as far as the Taino were concerned) as peaceful and innocent and open to being subjects of Castile. He also was the first to attempt to sell the Natives into slavery back in Spain though this turned out to be an exception in his personal case.

This is contrasted with how he constantly treated Indians with magnanimity and in many respects tried to segregate the often rapacious and exploitative Spanish under his command from predating on the Natives, and engaged them in trade and barter and gift giving and praised their qualities repeatedly. Most of his governance also had to be contrasted with other Spaniards that operated in the region. The Mutineer Francisco Roldan and later Spanish Governor Nicolas Ovando were exceptionally cruel to the Natives of Hispaniola and elsewhere, the former often taking advantage of Columbus' often inept administration.

There were also a lot of interesting little stories, dozens of them sprinkled throughout the book. Like how on his third voyage his flotilla of ships apparently survived an Earthquake and subsequent tsunami/tidal wave thans in part to Columbus' adept nautical skills. And the details of how Columbus' entourage was almost marooned and ruined in Panama on the fourth voyage (after making first contact with the Mayans) and were almost intentionally left marooned on the Island of Jamaica for a year because Governor Ovando there just didn't like Columbus. Or how Columbus lived an austere and monastic lifestyle between some of his voyages.

Great book for casual reading. I love history that reads as an actual adventure and this was almost an adventure in every respect into a totally alien world.
 

Husky_Khan

The Dog Whistler... I mean Whisperer.
Founder
Sotnik
WARHAMMER CHRONICLES: KNIGHTS OF BRETONNIA

I normally read lots of nonfiction, typically non-fiction History because I like the STORY part of history. Herstory... whatever. But I switched it up. Visited a Hobby/Game Shop and while none of the things in there were applicable to me I did stand around there gawking at everything a while and while I loath purchasing things at regular price, I decided to lower myself to support a small business and purchased one of their Black Library novels, a Warhammer Chronicles book called Knights of Bretonnia by Anthony Reynolds since I am appreciative of Warhammer and after looking online, the only other Warhammer Chronicles book they had was like two random compilations of Gotrek & Felix and seeing there were like a dozen of those, I figured I'd read something with a more digestible story with a start and finish.

Don't read fiction often, fantasy fiction even less and Warhammer Fantasy fiction... this might be a first for me outside of the internets and Knights of Bretonnia was a real page turner. The first two or three chapters started off slow but the subsequent two novels and two novellas that showed the main character, Calard of Garamonts growth from a sixteen year old Errantry Knight, to becoming a Knight of the Realm, Castellan of his own House, then a Questing Knight for the Lady's Grail and up to becoming *spoilers for the Table of Contents* Grail Knight was a great journey and a real page turner. I'm not sure if the story was one of the greats, but I liked how it told an epic sweep of a tale without requiring forty novels to do so like most of the legendary tales that Warhammer is famous for. I thought the story was well told, and at the very least was a real page turner as I said. Just kept wanting to know what would happen next and how his adventures would unfold. What happened between the books alone could likely fill a series of novels as well but alas, this is what we got and I was more then pleased with the tale of Calard of Garamont.

As a bonus it was real fun reading about Greenskins and Beastmen, Norscans and Wood Elves and seeing monsters like Minotaurs and Wyverns, Varghulfs and Mammoths/Tuskers being encountered. Or seeing folks like King Louen Leoncur and Duke Alberic of Bordeleaux referenced on the page.
 
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Husky_Khan

The Dog Whistler... I mean Whisperer.
Founder
Sotnik
Literally read this in one day. Today in fact so maybe like one morning.

It was titled The Bomber Mafia by a Social Psychologist named Malcolm Gladwell.

Not... sure if I liked this book. It was pretty awkwardly formatted and he goes into a lot of diversions and digressions and really stuffs his own opinions and thoughts into things which sound like they should be self deprecating but I think he is trying to show how worldly and profound and witty he is. Which is definitely something... when your writing a 'revisionist' history. I really didn't like the format of his storytelling with all of the quotations from interviews kinda tossed in and him drawing in metaphors about Second and Third Wave Feminism and comparing them to the efforts of Bomber Advocates in the 1920's and 30's.

I've read a lot of popular history and I think he was trying to be hip and relevant and accessible and interesting, but I've read interesting popular history before where it tells interesting stories about historical events and people and you don't have to be as scatterbrained as this guy is with his telling of history.

I will say I did learn a lot from the book. It's a very character driven story with lots of interesting insight into the Chemists who helped create Napalm, as well as Air Generals like Curtis Lemay, Howard Hansell and Donald Wilson, the latter two who were members of this so-called 'Bomber Mafia." I also learned about the eccentric fellow behind the creation of the wondrous Norden Bombsight, Carl L. Norden who created this perfect contraption because he, like much of the Bomber Mafia, wanted to create a way of ending war decisively with airpower through precise strategic bombing. Norden apparently invested in the work because he was a very ardent Christian for example.

It was interesting to learn about how the Pittsburgh Flood of 1935 which took out the only Propeller Spring Plant in the United States of America gave the 'Bomber Mafia' the idea of how to cripple a nations war economy through targeting certain factories, powerplants, aqueducts and other key locations and how it was far more humane then the 'area bombing' advocated by the Royal Air Force and yet theorized to be even more decisive and how those concepts really failed to turn out in practice both in Europe in 1943 and in Japan in 1944.

But the author is scatterbrained. He makes a strong point, such as that the War in the Pacific in WW2 was unlike any prior War in history which I could agree with considering the scale and distance and massive amounts of material and men and war machines being brought to bear in the vast emptiness of the Pacific with very little existing infrastructure.

The European War meanwhile resembled previous iterations of warfare and military campaigns. Okay sure... makes sense.

He explains that the European War was absurd in a familiar way and then states "People can swim the English Channel. On the ground, troops marched, holding rifles. They fired big pieces of artillery."

Okay I get you, example made. He continues:

"Give Napoleon one week of training, and he probably could have managed the Allied push across Europe as well as any general from the twentieth century."

What?

There's a lot of these diversions and digressions in this book. I wouldn't recommend it if it wasn't for the fact someone as dumb as me could read it in one morning between breakfast and lunch while doing my cardio. So actually, I do recommend it. It's a popular book with the nonsensical latte drinking hipster crowd as one can tell from all of the glowing review blurbs on what an excellent 'revisionist' history it is from the blue checkmarks at The New Yorker and Daily Beast. But there's a lot of interesting anecdotes and factoids sprinkled through the book for amateur military readers. Like how the Army Air Corps over Japan wasn't quite aware of the Jetstreams plaguing their precision bombing strikes over Tokyo because the Japanese researcher who discovered them back in the 1930's wrote about them in Esperanto.

Whut?

Sometimes I wonder if this author thinks in Esperanto.
 

Bear Ribs

Well-known member
Just finished off Mogworld by Yahtzee Croshaw, yes that Yahtzee.

It's a rather clever twist on traditional fantasy, overall it was a fun read though it's a real slog through the first couple of hours before things get going. Yahtzee's going for Terry Pratchett style humor but isn't quite skilled or disciplined enough to concisely pull it off so instead of quippy one-liner gags it feels like there're paragraph-long asides that meander around and while he's doing his initial worldbuilding, it stretches a lot before the plot really starts going.

Very hard to describe anything in the story without spoiling the plot pretty badly. It's the tale of Jim, a first-year student going to mage college who gets murdered in the first chapter, raised to be an undead zombie minion by a Dark Lord, and from there discovers that the laws of reality broke while he was dead and the entire world is falling apart as badly as his rotting body is.
 
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Bear Ribs

Well-known member
Just finished off Exodus of Gnomes in time to start Jake's Magical Market for the book club.

Overall it was decent but it's only the author's second book and it kind of shows in the worldbuilding. The story is built around Corey using his powers to convince the Gnomes to go on a grand journey and find a new home. The problem is, it contradicts God of Gnomes in too many places for comfort. The primary one being the core concept of Corey using his Exodus power, in the previous book it was perfectly possible (and indeed at one point the recommended strategy) for the gnomes to simply pick Corey up and carry him around, and the first story opens with Gneil carrying Corey around before building the altar. But now in order to be moved Corey has to have the gnomes build an ark, put him inside, transport him by chariot, and go at a huge risk because if Corey can't complete the Exodus in 40 days and 40 nights he loses all his gnome's faith. So why not just have Gneil pick him up and carry him again?

Nitpicks about continuity aside it's an entertaining read. It fleshes out the world considerably and explains a lot of stuff about how it works. It's an excellent example of LitRPG that doesn't get bogged down in numbers (actually almost nothing is enumerated, it's mostly about what special skills a character has) and stat blocks but instead uses the LitRPG as a framework with the story actually taking precedence. The characters are quite fleshed out and Cheer and Swift were a blast, easily taking the forefront as the most interesting characters with their antics despite not having a word of dialogue between them. Overall I give it high marks, I just don't like how badly it contradicts the last book.
 

WolfBear

Well-known member
Not a book, but I enjoyed reading this 1917 article called The Future of Bohemia:


I also liked reading some old geopolitical articles from The Atlantic:




Speaking of Russia and Constantinople, here is another interesting article worth reading:

 

WolfBear

Well-known member
@Husky_Khan Some more reading, this time from HathiTrust:

Rumania at the Paris Peace Conference by Sherman David Spector:


A book that talks about Romania at the post-WWI peace negotiations and also about Romania's 1919 invasion of Hungary in order to overthrow the tyrannical Bela Kun-led Communist regime there. Talks about what kind of post-WWI peace Romania wanted in regards to territory, security, et cetera. Quite interesting!

Italy at the Paris Peace Conference by Rene Albrecht-Carrie:


A book that talks about Italy at the post-WWI peace negotiations and its various demands there and also about what kind of peace it managed to successfully obtain at the end. Highly recommended!

Immigration, a world movement and its American significance by Henry Pratt Fairchild:


A 1913 book discussing all aspects of the immigration issue, its benefits and harms, and possible approaches in dealing with this issue in the future.

The frontiers of language and nationality in Europe by Leon Dominian:


A book written during World War I that discusses the various languages and peoples in Europe and possible changes in Europe's geopolitical map after the end of World War I.

Europe in the melting-pot by R. W. Seton-Watson:


Another book written during World War I that discusses the various languages and peoples in Europe as well as the general geopolitical situation in Europe and possible changes in Europe's geopolitical map after the end of World War I.

The Russian plot to seize Galicia by Vladimir Stepanovsky:


A short book from the time of World War I that discusses the history of Galicia in present-day Ukraine as well as Russian designs on it.

The Inquiry: American preparations for peace, 1917-1919 by Lawrence E. Gelfand:


A book about US President Woodrow Wilson's study group called The Inquiry that worked very hard on providing recommendations to Wilson about how the post-World War I peace settlement should look like. It's quite an interesting and extremely detailed book. Highly recommended!
 

WolfBear

Well-known member
Charles Sarolea's Letters on Polish Affairs (1922):


This book discusses various issues that the newly independent Poland is facing after the end of World War I, from economics to its territorial disputes with its neighbors to appeasing its minority populations. Sarolea is a Belgian who lived in Scotland, so he's an external observer to all of this who doesn't actually appear to have a direct personal stake in this.

Charles Sarolea also wrote some other good books:


Here are the other ones that I've read and/or taken a look at, I think:
  • The Anglo-German Problem (1912)
  • How Belgium Saved Europe (1915)
  • The Curse of the Hohenzollern (1915)
  • Europe's Debt to Russia (1916)
  • Great Russia Her Achievement and Promise (1916)
  • German problems and personalities (1917)
 

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