Finished ANGER IS AN ENERGY. http://rxttbooks.blogspot.com/2016/0...-tells-it.html

Not the best autobiography in the world, but much of it is like sitting and having a conversation with John Lydon, which I like.

about 1/3 thru of this 2nd classic Cossack epic



excellent

makes my head hurt

Stalingrad by Jochen Hellbeck

During and right after the battle Soviet historians interviewed key people, and then the interviews were locked up until recent times. The stories are intense. They had battles within a single building that went on lierally for days. The Nazi airstrikes would go on for 8 hours at a time - unending bombers screaming out of the sky dropping bombs. I get the impression of 2 great mechanized peoples colliding.

I read a Stalingrad history book about a year ago. I came away with respect for the Russians and pity for the Germans. Hitler was an ass, thinking he could get away with that in winter.


I'll bet this is a good one

There are references in Stalingrad to enough gang rapes and mass child murders by the invading Nazis to justify any killing of any of the invading fascists. There were thousands of corpses around, the children the nazis had butchered and hung from the trees were just some of many the arriving troops would see trying to get to the front. For weeks no one had time to deal with the corpses, the onslaught by the Germans just went on and on, one barely had time to dig your own trench never mind bury a frozen stranger.

One thesis of this book is that Soviet Russia saved the world by stopping Hitler from gaining Moscow and the resources of Russia.

understood, the atrocities played a lot of ways in the WW2 contest. Glad that kind of shit is not quite as widespread now.

I requested that Flattening book from my Library. I want a literary headache.....

review up at my blog

http://rxttbooks.blogspot.com/

Oh man, Rob, you rock! I'm checking the review out right now.

Planning to move on to the next one?

Awesome write-up. Based on what you seem to like about the story so far, I think it best that you power through. Thave not yet even begun to get truly strange or hypnotic. You're on the precipice of an entire universe, and I envy you.

Also, you've convinced me to pick this back up and take at least the first entry for another spin.

im reading Cashless: Bible Prophecy, Economic Chaos, and the Futre Financial Order. all you right jesus lovin mid-western comrades take notice.

this book is for you. me: I stomped on it, pissed on it, did a little drunk jig on top of it that disturbed my daughter while witnessing all this, then stuck it in the oven to dry and sold it back to the library that sold it to me for a dollar. then camped out in the corn fields by the moon and hungry deer.

he made great points. think i'll still vote democrat.:mad: unfortunately.

Sharing Big Data Safely: Managing Data Security by Ted Dunning & Ellen Friedman - - - my friend gave me the new Bernie Gunther novel by Philip Kerr for my birthday! - - this site works kind of weird when you stop script

The Shadow of the Torturer is my 99th review for my blog, and I am doing a special review for my 100th, but the next after that will be the Claw of the Conciliator....

and some Jorge Luis Borges

and you shall get it!
I will have to give it a re-read in a couple of days. There is SO much information in it. Apparently, it's a dissertation!

about 1/3 thru. Interesting things about A Jackson, I knew he was pretty fucking awful, but there was a lot I didn't know. Settlement and theft of indian land taking place at the same time slavery expanding. The American history you don't know

To Have and Have Not - Ernest Hemingway. This was a very good read, and having also recently read Portrait of an Artist by James Joyce I found some similarities, just in that the language would be very simple dialogue and then suddenly the chapter plunges in dense stream of consciousness. Also read A Moveable Feast, esp enjoyed the Fitzgerald chapters, sounds like Nancy Spungeon was a reincarnated Zelda Fitzgerald, but everyone was too polite back then to say anything. I can't quite put my finger on it but the writing has a cubist feel to it - like Hemingway keeps showing the subject from so many different angles at once.

Currently reading A Farewell to Arms. I always avoided Hemingway but certainly he should be read alongside Conrad and London and Orwell.

I've always loved the graphic novel version of City of Glass.