This is the image on the cover of “No Less Than Victory” by Jeff Shaara, the book I read last week whilst in the South. Kills me. This was the coolest book on WWII I’ve ever read. This guy manages to avoid the dialogue cliches of the genre but still gets the occaisional macho dramatic scene to really happen. Damn. So good. You really should read this.
COURTNEY TAYLOR-TAYLOR
I was told that this guy is a pulitzer prize winner then told that his dad was. I didn’t bother googlefuckin around about it either way. I had a seven hour flight ahead of me so I went into Powell’s, opened it up and read “to the reader”. Hooked. This guy has a clear and powerful writing “voice”. I’m now about fifty pages in and wouldn’t bother telling you about it if it wasn’t great.
This is apparently The 3rd in a trilogy of WWII novels so I’m entering near the end after Gen. Montgomery had fugged up his idiotic “operation market garden” (see “A Bridge Too Far”) and Gen Courtney Hodges (I just love that name) had taken the town of Aachen The war was at a winter stalemate with all of the Allied Forces waiting for spring to try and take Berlin. Awesome.
Also I like the way this guy uses commas, ands, and run-on sentences. A lot like what I do except that he’s really good at it.
COURTNEY TAYLOR-TAYLOR
This book is more or less a page-burner version of Lake Wobegon Days.
I wouldn’t mind if this guy just kept writing and writing on this story. I most certainly would read and read, as long as the pages kept coming. It has the languid, lazydays feel of all the greatest “growing up smalltown” novels (ie To Kill A Mockingbird, etc) but with a murder mystery woven in.
This brings up an extremely interesting character in the book who is incidentally a failed writer of just this sort of thing. I’m not going to say more about it cuz I really hope you all find this book and read it. With summer right around the corner I feel that this is “just the thing”.
COURTNEY TAYLOR-TAYLOR
Have you read This Side of Paradise ? Holy fuck. Read the first two sentences and weep. Man am I gonna love this. We should call our record The Dandy Warhols are The Father and Mother of Amory Blaine.
And the story that happens between his dizzying feats of sentence writing isn’t half bad either.
COURTNEY TAYLOR-TAYLOR
Well I finally got back to and finished this book. If you’re into Henry VIII like I am, you should definitely read it.
As I said earlier, the writing style is a bit shotgun in its approach. It’s basically a few hundred pages of anecdotes and assumptions/insights into Henry VII as an old man and Henry VIII as a young one in their respective courts and its a great study in the motives and manipulations that made European empires back in those days as well.
Since this book ends quite abruptly at the introduction of Thomas Wolsey, I suggest that you have ready a book about Henry’s adult years. Perhaps beginning with the end of his first marriage so that you don’t find yourself lying there in bed thinking “damn that ended abruptly”.
This is the kind of writing which I love and there’s a small abundance of it here.
COURTNEY TAYLOR-TAYLOR
I’d love to tell this guy how much I love and admire his attention to prose and from the perspective of “clarity IS style”. Opon further consideration I had to temper it with the reality that his style of storytelling is most reminiscent of two elderly yet passionate, drunk yet focused, Tudor geeks having a long drunken jack-off at a bar session with the elegance to let each other speak fully before clipping off on a somewhat relevant tangent.
All Tudorphile of course.
I’m really enjoying it. Thanks, dude.
COURTNEY TAYLOR-TAYLOR
If you like stories about horrible things happening to good people…well then you have problems. Or an amazing sense of humor. I certainly will not be continuing this book but I have flipped thru to see if she lightens up.
Nope.
This book is a Kafka-esque excercise in injustice, a subject I already know plenty about and hopefully will never have to learn much more.
COURTNEY TAYLOR-TAYLOR
If you dug the miniseries ROME then I highly recommend you find this book.
The First Man in Rome focuses mainly on the rival factions of the Roman senate during the republican years (circa 100bc) and the meteoric rise of Gaius Marcus who was repeatedly named “The First Man in Rome” due to his success as a general during the African revolt and then for defending Rome against the German hoarde.
There’s plenty of “common man” soap opera to keep it, well, common, but damn Colleen McCulloch really did her homework. You’ll learn a lot about how Rome worked as well as how they could eventually bungle it so badly that even an uncouth tribe of filth from the backwaters of europe could finally bring down the eternal city.
But that’s a story for another book…
COURTNEY TAYLOR-TAYLOR
It’s Tom Clancy or Robert Ludlum meets John Grisham. This writer has the voice and timbre of all those New York Times bestseller dudes, and boy did I just love it. I think I read about 400 pages in the first sitting. Damn. This book is a great ride so, um… Well If you’ve been dreaming of a vacation in, lets say Mississippi, but only have around fifteen bucks….
COURTNEY TAYLOR-TAYLOR
Okay I’m only about seventy pages in but I keep feeling like this is my favorite book ever. About every other page I just get overwhelmed. Amazing. Jeez this guy is so deeply wise and funny as hell.
UPDATE 10/14/09: I just had a friend ask me what he should read next. Alright, let me just say again, read this book. It is still blowing my mind every day. Amazing in every way. Best book ever. Holy.
COURTNEY TAYLOR-TAYLOR
