Recent Reads

With this summer being the 100th anniversary of the start of World War 1 there have been quite a few new books released on that topic.  Four that I recommend are "The War that Ended Peace" by Margaret MacMillan, "A Mad Catastrophe, The Outbreak of WW1 and the Collapse of the Hapsburg Empire" by Geoffrey Wawro, "Prelude to Blitzkrieg, The 1916 Austro-German campaign in Rumania" by Michael Barrett, and "Catastrophe 1914; Europe goes to war" by Max Hastings.  The first book is an excellent review of the events that led to the war, covering the period from approximately 1880 through July 1914.  The second two cover portions of the "eastern front" in WW1 which doesn't get a lot of coverage in western press.  Both are excellent.  And the last one by Max Hastings covers the first 4 months of the war.  I view it as "The Guns of August" extended through December.  An excellent read.

The trip to NC also regenerated interest in the Civil War, especially the "Overland Campaign" of 1864.  I read books about the North Anna River campaign, Cold Harbor, Petersburg and a travel guide of the overland campaign.  I really need to get down there to explore those battlefields, probably on my own since the family isn't interested.

I've also read two books for my book group, "Six Guys from Hackensack" (so so) and "Devil in the White City" (quite good).  A couple of classics and supposedly top contemporary fiction novels were also read (Great Expectations, Return of the Native, and the Crying Lot of 49-which I didn't like).

Finally I read a book in a genre that I usually have no interest in...Romance.  Only this is bit more explicit than the regular romance novels.  There's no "she fell breathless into his arms" stuff here...it is VERY explicit. A woman who joins us for our weekly trivia contests has been teasing me about a particular author and I finally asked her to lend me the books.  She lent me two, and I read one.  I didn't like it that much and thought the story was silly.  Plus I couldn't care less about the characters.  I started the second one of the series, had the thought "I just read this in the last book" and put it down.  I'll skip it.  As for the explicit parts, well, let's just say books like this should be read having someone you're quite fond of close by.  'nuff said.

Spent a week down in Topsail Beach, NC.  It's a good ways down the NC coast, about 40 miles north of Wilmington.  It was our first time there.  We've only had beach vacations at the Jersey shore so we decided to try something different.  We rented a 3 bedroom house across the street from the beach.  It was a very nice house within easy walk of the public beach access.  The beach was nice too, and the water very, very warm.  We brought our dog with us and she had a blast running around the sand and digging in it.  Topsail is a VERY dog-friendly place so there were lots of other dogs there too.  Topsail is a nice place to go if you're looking for a week of relaxing on the beach, but if you're looking for "things to do" it might be a letdown.  There is kayaking and jetskiing, but it's not a very "commercial" place so the pickings are slim.  That said, I liked it very much.  I don't think we'll go back next year...not because we didn't like it but rather to go to some place different.

The trip down almost KILLED me.  We past a bunch of civil war-related sites...Fredericksburg, Jackson Shrine, North Anna River, Cold Harbor, Beaver Dam Creek, Petersburg but on the way down I didn't stop at any of them.  On the way back I WAS able to stop and see a portion of the Petersburg battlefield, but I had a bunch of impatient kids and wife with me so it wasn't very enjoyable.  I'll have to go back there again on my own one day.