MikeKardec
One Too Many
- Messages
- 1,157
- Location
- Los Angeles
Here's some stuff I've been reading lately that might interest some of you ...
The Singapore Grip - J G Farrell. An amusing, somewhat goofy but AMAZINGLY researched novel about the year leading up to the fall of Singapore.
Jimgrim and Allah's Peace - Talbot Mundy. Middle Eastern political thriller circa 1920. Very interesting to read a novel written in the '30s about the '20s and to see how little has changed.
Everything by Allan Furst. Spies in eastern Europe during and before WWII. Very realistic, great research, written in a highly evocative but minimalist style. This guy can do more with an eight word sentence to make you feel the cobblestones and smell the coal smoke than most authors can do with an entire page!
The Bernie Gunther Novels by Phillip Kerr. Nazi Germany as the perfect setting for a noir detective series, though the books travel to Cuba and Argentina after the war
The older works of Wilbur Smith. When the Lion Feeds, The Sound of Thunder, The Burning Shore, Power of the Sword -- A Falcon Flies, Men of Men, The Angels Weep ... and more. These two series chronicle a good deal of the history of Southern Africa from 1870 through 1950 (and further if you keep reading). They are high adventure and political melodrama ... but all have great insight into a time and place I'm not very familiar with and period detail. The point of view is mostly that of liberal (British as opposed to Afrikaner) white South Africans. The writing is good but occasionally feels dated in a way that even Jimgrim does not. His best work is probably The Eye of the Tiger, probably the best "diving for treasure" novel out there, it's set in the '70s (I think) but definitely channeling the movie To Have and Have Not at times.
I won't get into the non fiction except for The Cold War: a New History and We Now Know by John Lewis Gaddis and The Cold War and the Color Line by Borstelmann. All new takes on an era I'm just getting interested in.
The Singapore Grip - J G Farrell. An amusing, somewhat goofy but AMAZINGLY researched novel about the year leading up to the fall of Singapore.
Jimgrim and Allah's Peace - Talbot Mundy. Middle Eastern political thriller circa 1920. Very interesting to read a novel written in the '30s about the '20s and to see how little has changed.
Everything by Allan Furst. Spies in eastern Europe during and before WWII. Very realistic, great research, written in a highly evocative but minimalist style. This guy can do more with an eight word sentence to make you feel the cobblestones and smell the coal smoke than most authors can do with an entire page!
The Bernie Gunther Novels by Phillip Kerr. Nazi Germany as the perfect setting for a noir detective series, though the books travel to Cuba and Argentina after the war
The older works of Wilbur Smith. When the Lion Feeds, The Sound of Thunder, The Burning Shore, Power of the Sword -- A Falcon Flies, Men of Men, The Angels Weep ... and more. These two series chronicle a good deal of the history of Southern Africa from 1870 through 1950 (and further if you keep reading). They are high adventure and political melodrama ... but all have great insight into a time and place I'm not very familiar with and period detail. The point of view is mostly that of liberal (British as opposed to Afrikaner) white South Africans. The writing is good but occasionally feels dated in a way that even Jimgrim does not. His best work is probably The Eye of the Tiger, probably the best "diving for treasure" novel out there, it's set in the '70s (I think) but definitely channeling the movie To Have and Have Not at times.
I won't get into the non fiction except for The Cold War: a New History and We Now Know by John Lewis Gaddis and The Cold War and the Color Line by Borstelmann. All new takes on an era I'm just getting interested in.
