What Are You Reading

[Trenchfriend]

Brigitte Reimann - Arrival in Everyday-Life (1961)

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

Testing the waters of mind before some horse capping, I skimmed the New York Times and found a rather
delightful article posted recently about a small town in coastal Maine where people flocked to the town library.
Since on holiday and trance sleeping all akimbo day hours and betting Asian and Aussie tracks at night, and
waking I simply book marked it for later. Bye the bye, The Dream stakes at Kentucky Downs is locked tighter
than a safe.

 

[Fading Fast]

Buddwing by Evan Hunter originally published in 1964


Buddwing is the story of a middle-aged man who wakes up one morning in New York City's Central Park with a mid-life-crisis-driven amnesia sparked by a failing marriage and a voguish 1960s disaffection with middle-class values.

Author Hunter unwinds the mystery of Sam Buddwing very slowly as Sam puts the pieces of his life together over the next few days by following clues that help jar his memory. "Sam Buddwing" is just the name Sam chose to give himself on the day he woke up with amnesia.

Amnesiac Sam has some vague memories of his past that, with a few clues in his pockets, lead him to visit several places around New York City. He meets people who don't know him, but we still learn a bit about Sam in his questioning of them.

That is only part of this very 1960s novel, though, as we see Sam, a handsome man, meet a few different free-spirited girls at separate times with whom he has sex, one encounter even turning into a mini orgy with homosexual overtones.

It's all tame by today's standards (what isn't?), but for early 1960s, it's pretty racy stuff. It's also more effective than the gratuitous and graphic sex of modern novels as it doesn't drown you in salacious detail.

Sam also gets mugged in a bathroom at Rockefeller Center. Later he has a long conversation with a crazy man who thinks he's God and that Sam is the escaped convict from an asylum the police are looking for.

Sam then meets a middle-aged socialite on a rich person's scavenger hunt that takes him to an illegal dice game in Spanish Harlem. The dice game, for big stakes with shady characters, is told so well, it could be broken out as a heck of a short story.

All the above adds up to a very 1960s trip through the aborning counterculture / hippie / psychedelic zeitgeist that would explode into the open in just a few years. But the Sam Buddwing story is more than just a preview of the later 1960s.

In an awkward construct that blends what is happening to Sam today with his foggy memory, Sam meets several women whom he confuses in his mind with his wife at earlier stages of their marriage. A marriage, we quickly learn, that was troubled almost from the start.

We see Sam and his wife as college kids meeting and falling in love and, then, as newlyweds struggling to get their post-college lives started. Later we see them in their twenties no longer infatuated with each other's quirks - her astrology, his writer's block.

The end, no spoilers coming, pretty much explains the mystery of the book, but after three-hundred-plus pages, it feels unsatisfying. The pact any storyteller makes with his/her reader is that the longer the mystery goes on, the better the payoff should be.

What really works in the novel, its most enjoyable part, is its intimate insider's journey through 1960s New York City when neighborhoods still had specific ethnic identities, when middle class people could still afford to live there and when it truly never shut down at night.

With Sam, we visit a few iconic landmarks, but better still, we visit a neighborhood diner, a penny arcade on Broadway, when that was a Saturday night's entertainment for some, several other NYC curios of the era and, finally, that awesome illegal dice game.

Sam Budding is a middle-aged man whose life and marriage didn't work out as planned, in part because of his failures, and in part because life is hard. In the early 1960s, we were just starting to learn how good it feels to blame others or "society" for the failures in our lives.

Buddwing is an interesting if overwrought effort that is worth the read if you like novels that are a combination of a distressed personal discovery journey, 1960s zeitgeist and, the best part, time travel to a vibrant 1960s New York City.


N.B. Comments on the book's 1966 movie Mr. Buddwing, staring James Garner, here: #30,930

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

Buddwing must have gained traction off retail shelf for film adapt but I missed both book and pik.
Going thru middle age crisis now for what it's worth, so any relevant book is a blessing.
The Dream Stakes while not a nightmare proved mercurial after rain, and since Sha Tin in Hong Kong will
not open until Saturday, once New Mexico wrapped I chased after a Korean stakes then played some
Aussie tracks for fun by looking over the handle lay by local sharps so to chase smart money. I read most
of Michael Lewis' Liar's Poker today for some reason despite my holiday here at home.

 

[Fading Fast]

Letter from an Unknown Woman by Stefan Zweig originally published in 1922


Stefan Zweig penned a poignant tale of unrequited love in his long short story Letter from an Unknown Woman. For fans of the 1948 movie, while there is a similar jumping-off point, the written tale differs in several ways from the Hollywood version.

Bridging the Romantic Era and our modern and more pragmatic times, Zweig's story can be seen as a throwback tale of an overwhelming love or, in today's terms, as a story of an obsession, almost a mental disease, crippling a life.

Set in Vienna in the early twentieth century, an unnamed teenage girl falls in love with her unnamed wealthy, cultured and handsome neighbor, a successful writer in his twenties. She is besotted with him even though he does not notice her.

A move to Innsbruck does nothing to quell her passion, so at eighteen, she returns to Vienna to work in a shop to be near to him. After, effectively, stalking him, they meet and spend three "passionate" nights together where she willingly gives her virginal self to him.

He then leaves on a trip as their time together was casual to him, while she learns shortly afterwards she's pregnant. Unwilling to inform or burden him, she has the child as an indigent, but then becomes a high-priced escort so that his child can be raised with the finer things.

Ten year of sacrifice and pining later, they meet one more time. Her heart soars, but he does not recognize her. Once again, a night of passion is just a casual thing for him. He then gives her some money in the morning as he knows she's a prostitute. It's awful.

To tell more is to give the climax away. The story itself is told as one long cathartic letter from her to him, hence the title. How you react to this powerful story depends on your personal framing.

In 1922, many would see this as a moving tale of romantic love where one selflessly devotes oneself to another, because the passion of love is just that strong. Ethereal love was an embraced ideal of the, then, waning Romantic Era.

With that waning, though, pragmatism, not unrelated to technological advancement, was gaining cultural currency. Today, we would see her as a victim, not of him, as he never knew of her love or sacrifice, but of an obsession bordering on a mental illness.

It is hard as a modern reader to appreciate the story as Zweig probably intended it as a paean to the Romantic Era. Although, it's possible Zweig wrote it as a cynical rebuke of the Romantic ideal. Like most good art, it's up to each reader to decide.

When Hollywood got its hands on the story in 1948, it made extensive changes owing to the demands of telling a story on film and the restrictions imposed by the Motion Picture Production Code.

The result is a more-rounded story with a moral wrapper absent in Zweig's tale. It makes for a traditional and satisfying movie, but mitigates the arrantly painful, unrequited and unjudged yearning of the novel. Both versions haunt; each in its own way.

Zweig's writing has an economy of words that leans more Hemingway than Romantic Era, which happens during periods of stylistic change. It also makes Letter from an Unknown Woman more approachable for a modern reader looking for a short Romantic tale.


Comments on the movie version here: #30,939

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

^ Last eve to get my mind off work I found a Jeffrey Epstein docu on YT produced 60 Minutes Australia.
This sexual obsession arena is quite complex and dangerous and involves a personal favourite law prof YT-er
whom inexplicably socialized with the decedent ba***rd. I am still reeling from this feature. Tragic.
I want to read Letter, if I can. If you haven't seen Christian Bale in A Pale Blue Eye on Netflix it dovetails somewhat this genre and the damage sexual crime inflicts.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

A perennial favourite of mine, Milton Friedman's classic Capitalism and Freedom.

Friedman's 2002 preface admits to inherent thesis flaw in his 1962 opus due his revised thought regarding
necessary political freedom for capitalism, although he remained convinced freedom absolutely demanded
cornerstone capitalism. China epitomizes this with unmistakable proof.

 

[GoetzManor]

I just picked up a copy of The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers. I'll probably start that tomorrow after I finish my Scary Monsters magazine. 'Tis almost the season to get spooky and all that...

 

[Tiki Tom]

View attachment 547312
Letter from an Unknown Woman by Stefan Zweig originally published in 1922


Stefan Zweig penned a poignant tale of unrequited love in his long short story Letter from an Unknown Woman. For fans of the 1948 movie, while there is a similar jumping-off point, the written tale differs in several ways from the Hollywood version.

Bridging the Romantic Era and our modern and more pragmatic times, Zweig's story can be seen as a throwback tale of an overwhelming love or, in today's terms, as a story of an obsession, almost a mental disease, crippling a life.

Set in Vienna in the early twentieth century, an unnamed teenage girl falls in love with her unnamed wealthy, cultured and handsome neighbor, a successful writer in his twenties. She is besotted with him even though he does not notice her.

A move to Innsbruck does nothing to quell her passion, so at eighteen, she returns to Vienna to work in a shop to be near to him. After, effectively, stalking him, they meet and spend three "passionate" nights together where she willingly gives her virginal self to him.

He then leaves on a trip as their time together was casual to him, while she learns shortly afterwards she's pregnant. Unwilling to inform or burden him, she has the child as an indigent, but then becomes a high-priced escort so that his child can be raised with the finer things.

Ten year of sacrifice and pining later, they meet one more time. Her heart soars, but he does not recognize her. Once again, a night of passion is just a casual thing for him. He then gives her some money in the morning as he knows she's a prostitute. It's awful.

To tell more is to give the climax away. The story itself is told as one long cathartic letter from her to him, hence the title. How you react to this powerful story depends on your personal framing.

In 1922, many would see this as a moving tale of romantic love where one selflessly devotes oneself to another, because the passion of love is just that strong. Ethereal love was an embraced ideal of the, then, waning Romantic Era.

With that waning, though, pragmatism, not unrelated to technological advancement, was gaining cultural currency. Today, we would see her as a victim, not of him, as he never knew of her love or sacrifice, but of an obsession bordering on a mental illness.

It is hard as a modern reader to appreciate the story as Zweig probably intended it as a paean to the Romantic Era. Although, it's possible Zweig wrote it as a cynical rebuke of the Romantic ideal. Like most good art, it's up to each reader to decide.

When Hollywood got its hands on the story in 1948, it made extensive changes owing to the demands of telling a story on film and the restrictions imposed by the Motion Picture Production Code.

The result is a more-rounded story with a moral wrapper absent in Zweig's tale. It makes for a traditional and satisfying movie, but mitigates the arrantly painful, unrequited and unjudged yearning of the novel. Both versions haunt; each in its own way.

Zweig's writing has an economy of words that leans more Hemingway than Romantic Era, which happens during periods of stylistic change. It also makes Letter from an Unknown Woman more approachable for a modern reader looking for a short Romantic tale.


Comments on the movie version here: #30,939

For a long time, Zweig’s “The World of Yesterday” was one of my favorites. It’s an autobiographical tale of his growing up in/near Vienna in the last days of the Habsburg empire. Full of color and pathos. I was living in Vienna at the time, so it added some depth to my understanding of the place. That notwithstanding, it’s a great read for anyone interested in central europe and the collapse of the old order.

 

[Fading Fast]

For a long time, Zweig’s “The World of Yesterday” was one of my favorites. It’s an autobiographical tale of his growing up in/near Vienna in the last days of the Habsburg empire. Full of color and pathos. I was living in Vienna at the time, so it added some depth to my understanding of the place. That notwithstanding, it’s a great read for anyone interested in central europe and the collapse of the old order.

That sounds interesting. It's also always fun to be in the place where a book you are reading is about.

I only found my way to Zweig by way of the movie "Letter From an Unknown Woman." The copy I bought included several of his other short stories too, all of which I enjoyed.

I think you've encourage me to look for a copy of "The World of Yesterday."

 

[Fading Fast]

Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman by E. W. Hornung originally published in 1898


E. W. Hornung, a brother-in-law of Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle, wrote this collection of eight stories almost in response to a challenge from his famous relative to create a gentleman crook equal to Conan-Doyle's famous gentleman detective.

Hornung's character, Raffles, is less well known and, to be fair, the quality of writing in these stories isn't at Conan-Doyle's level. Yet the collection is enjoyable as Raffles is an engaging character. Plus, today, the book time travels a modern reader back to Victorian England.

Raffles is a "gentleman" in a time and place when that term had a class distinction. He has few funds, but being a gentleman and a successful amateur cricket player, he is accepted into "proper society" That's the plus; the minus is "proper society" is an expensive place to be.

This has "forced" Raffles to turn to pilfering jewels from his rich friends and jewelry stores. We're introduced to Raffles when his old school chum, Bunny, comes to him asking for help as Bunny has written checks that he can't cover, which will ruin his reputation in society.

Raffles, to save his friend, takes him along on a caper to rob a local jewelry store. With that first crime together under their belts, this crooked-world's mirror image of Holmes and Watson (Bunny's no genius either, but has his moments, like Watson) is off and running.

Raffles is the brains behind this team. He is a meticulous planner with a deep knowledge of the criminal profession. Yet, at his core, he's also a gambler and adventurer who isn't afraid to take a chance on a whim as, in truth, a crook has to have a gambler's nature.

In different capers, we see Raffles use wit, disguises, guile, tools, nerve and patience with, usually, only a little help from Bunny. Like his fictional detective reflection, Holmes, he often sees people's next move or motivation almost before they do.

These vignettes, narrated by Bunny, are pretty well-written crime mysteries that you'll, occasionally, figure out ahead of time. That's okay, though, as the real fun in these tales is the relationship between the two crooks.

Bunny is in awe of Raffles, but Raffles needs Bunny as, otherwise, he'd have no one to show off too. As opposed to Holmes, he can't advertise his exploits. Overtime, these two form a deep bond that sits at the core of the stories.

While the stories work individually, there is an overall narrative arc that makes these tales much more than just good "crime drama" stories. We see that, while Raffle and Bunny's life of crime, maybe pays, it also has an enormous cost.

Hornung slyly tucks a morality tale inside his "simple" stories as Raffles' and Bunny's lives get brutally buffeted several times. They don't always get away with their crimes and the cover-ups or escapes often exact a very large price. There's is not an easy life.

Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman is a fun, quick read that takes you to Victorian England with two "gentlemen criminals" as your guide. It's a light criminal-doppelganger pairing with Conan-Doyle's Sherlock Holmes tales.

Written in 1898, it is wonderfully free of the obsessive modern politics that ruins most of today's period novels. It also nicely rounds out the character of Raffles that many of us know only through one or more of the several movie versions that have been made from the book.


Comments on the enjoyable 1930 movie version of Raffles here: #30,983 . The movie only covers one chapter in the book and takes several large liberties with the story.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

Raffles that rake would enjoy a romp with Innovative Horse Race Handicapping writ an American horseplayer,
Paul Lambrakis. I always skim available titles listed Amazon to improve my track swing or refer back basics
like past performance, class drop, trainer, rider-all essentials for sound handicapping.

 

[Tiki Tom]

Bucket list item checked off: I am now a member of the elite club of people who have actually read Les Miserables. At 1,460 pages, it took me four months of fairly disciplined reading.
More than a decade ago, my wife and I introduced our daughters to the musical Les Miserables. Our 13 year old was so enamored of the musical that she promptly read Victor Hugo’s doorstop of a book. And, as she was reading it, she would fill us in on the little known details that the musical skims over. That’s how the book came to be on my bucket list.

In fact, my main criticism is that the musical does a good job of, fairly faithfully, following the plot of the book. So much so, that the reader of the book sometimes struggles not to picture specific actors in the rolls, or to anticipate the action too much.

That said, the musical is no substitute for having read the book. Les Mis captures Victor Hugo’s immense world view, with all is compassion and humanity. It’s a romantic plunge into post-Napoleonic France, with plenty of drama, action, sentiment, and idealism. All of France is laid at your feet, from poor to rich and from believably evil to astoundingly saintly.

At it’s heart is the story of Jean Valjean, a simple peasant and convict who is slowly change from a man who hates the world into a man who is pretty darned close to saintly. The transformation is thanks to a series of sticky moral situations in which Valjean always chooses the difficult way out, as opposed to the easy way out. And, in doing so, transforms lives. Really it’s a book about the unexpected transformative power of duty and of love.

The book does pack an emotional punch. At times you might catch yourself wiping away a tear. The descriptions of young love, of heartbreak, of death and salvation are sincere and well drawn. If it’s an emotional trap set for the reader, it’s not without purpose. Sometimes it’s terrifying, sometimes it will make you happy, despite yourself.

Like War and Peace, much has been written about the long digressions in Les Mis. The difference is that I found the digressions in Les Mis to be mostly interesting. Many pages are spent giving a blow-by-blow description of the Battle of Waterloo. It was mostly unnecessary from a plot point of view, but —as a student of the Napoleonic wars— I found it very good. The long sidetrack into the story of the Paris sewers will also make you think of Paris in a whole new light.

Victor Hugo’s plan was to hook you with many well drawn characters and then keep you there for the history and sociology. He does a good job of both.

In short, I think Les Mis has completely earned its reputation as one of the great books of Western Civ.

Highly recommended. But it is a major undertaking!

 

[Fading Fast]

Bucket list item checked off: I am now a member of the elite club of people who have actually read Les Miserables. At 1,460 pages, it took me four months of fairly disciplined reading.
More than a decade ago, my wife and I introduced our daughters to the musical Les Miserables. Our 13 year old was so enamored of the musical that she promptly read Victor Hugo’s doorstop of a book. And, as she was reading it, she would fill us in on the little known details that the musical skims over. That’s how the book came to be on my bucket list.

In fact, my main criticism is that the musical does a good job of, fairly faithfully, following the plot of the book. So much so, that the reader of the book sometimes struggles not to picture specific actors in the rolls, or to anticipate the action too much.

That said, the musical is no substitute for having read the book. Les Mis captures Victor Hugo’s immense world view, with all is compassion and humanity. It’s a romantic plunge into post-Napoleonic France, with plenty of drama, action, sentiment, and idealism. All of France is laid at your feet, from poor to rich and from believably evil to astoundingly saintly.

At it’s heart is the story of Jean Valjean, a simple peasant and convict who is slowly change from a man who hates the world into a man who is pretty darned close to saintly. The transformation is thanks to a series of sticky moral situations in which Valjean always chooses the difficult way out, as opposed to the easy way out. And, in doing so, transforms lives. Really it’s a book about the unexpected transformative power of duty and of love.

The book does pack an emotional punch. At times you might catch yourself wiping away a tear. The descriptions of young love, of heartbreak, of death and salvation are sincere and well drawn. If it’s an emotional trap set for the reader, it’s not without purpose. Sometimes it’s terrifying, sometimes it will make you happy, despite yourself.

Like War and Peace, much has been written about the long digressions in Les Mis. The difference is that I found the digressions in Les Mis to be mostly interesting. Many pages are spent giving a blow-by-blow description of the Battle of Waterloo. It was mostly unnecessary from a plot point of view, but —as a student of the Napoleonic wars— I found it very good. The long sidetrack into the story of the Paris sewers will also make you think of Paris in a whole new light.

Victor Hugo’s plan was to hook you with many well drawn characters and then keep you there for the history and sociology. He does a good job of both.

In short, I think Les Mis has completely earned its reputation as one of the great books of Western Civ.

Highly recommended. But it is a major undertaking!

What a wonderful review.

I particularly loved this paragraph:

"The book does pack an emotional punch. At times you might catch yourself wiping away a tear. The descriptions of young love, of heartbreak, of death and salvation are sincere and well drawn. If it’s an emotional trap set for the reader, it’s not without purpose. Sometimes it’s terrifying, sometimes it will make you happy, despite yourself."

It's been a long time since I've read Hugo despite having loved his "The Hunchback of Notre-Dame." Its "sanctuary" scene is one of my favorites in all of the books I've read. Because his books are such a commitment, though, I tend to shy away, but you're getting me to think about taking one on again.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

I dreaded Les Mis not for its heft but sanguineous testamentary letter writ Hugo to humanity.
The book to read is Simon Lays' The Hall of Uselessness, an essay collection that includes Hugo.
and Barzun's Dawn to Decadence---I've grappled this monster for a decade but well worthwhile excellence.

 

[Tiki Tom]

Well, yes. In Les Mis, Victor Hugo certainly wears his politics on his sleeve. But in the twenty first century, his pet issues don’t seem very radical. He beats the drum about supporting mandatory childhood education, he supports republicanism, acknowledges that women had it rough in the 1800s, is anti-slave-trade, and is very vague about the Need for some sort of justice system reform. (True bit of surprising trivia: At the end of the book, the evil innkeeper flees to America and becomes a slave-trader!) Hugo was writing in the 1850s/60s, so none of his views ring of being particularly radical from our perspective.

I did find his discussions of the divisions found in France in the 1820s to be really interesting. There was a crazy spectrum from old school monarchists to 1793-style supporters of the revolution, but every viewpoint was filtered through the lens of Bonapartism, and every faction seemed to have a pro-Napoleon sub faction and an anti-Napoleon sub faction. Napoleon Bonaparte was the invisible ghost haunting every conversation. I really loved that aspect of the book.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

I did find his discussions of the divisions found in France in the 1820s to be really interesting. There was a crazy spectrum from old school monarchists to 1793-style supporters of the revolution, but every viewpoint was filtered through the lens of Bonapartism, and every faction seemed to have a pro-Napoleon sub faction and an anti-Napoleon sub faction. Napoleon Bonaparte was the invisible ghost haunting every conversation. I really loved that aspect of the book.

I would posit Hugo wept while Voltaire smiled. I find Les Mis a creation of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution a crucifixion of Christianity with its attendant moral strictures cast to the devil wolf.
Napoleon I view as an anti-Christ figure; nothing less, and Edmund Burke's sage writ a singular sane cry
plead to humanity against the backdrop of the Reign of Terror. Schopenhauer traveled the resultant desolate
after Napoleon only to be shocked its rapine. And the philosophes who scribbled blood soaked quills.

Hugo is as much a cornerstone as Spinoza; however, I fled back to Newton's calculus while school,
then sailed Melville to Russia for Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, most particularly Fyodor, bright illumine of life.
A whorechaser, anyone who reads Hugo knows he possessed the heart, if not the soul, of Quasimodo.
I've found this inexplicable.

 

[Fading Fast]

Pursuit by Ludovic Kennedy originally published in 1974


Written before the release of information about the breaking of Germany's Enigma code, Pursuit's telling of the chase and sinking of the Bismarck, while not the subject's definitive book, is still a good, short and engaging account.

It is also, thankfully, free of today's political obsessions, which often destroy modern books. Further, it shows that, despite our current beliefs, even in the prehistoric days of the 1970s, WWII books weren't just "triumphant" affairs devoid of balance or perspective.

Kennedy distinguishes between fanatical Nazis and German Naval officers who tried to abide by the honorable traditions of Germany's pre-Nazi Navy. It's refreshing to see balance that doesn't pander and an author who identifies good and bad with confidence.

The best popular history books read like novels, see Stephen E. Ambrose or David McCullough. While Kennedy's effort falls short of that standard, he does, at times, tell the tale in an engaging and spirited manner that almost approaches a novel.

Kennedy, though, having been a BBC reporter for decades, includes more facts, names and details than can be absorbed casually, but he smartly writes in a way that allows you to let some of those details flow by without causing you to lose the bigger story.

That bigger story, of course, is the British Navy's hunt, chase and sinking of the Bismarck. The Bismarck was the fleeting pride of the German Navy, until the humongous and formidable battleship went down on its maiden voyage.

After a very quick telling of Bismarck's construction and launch, Kennedy moves on to the ship's maiden voyage, which necessitated a "break out" to the Atlantic where its mission was to sink merchant vessels bound for England.

England's Navy knew immediately that Bismarck was trying to "break out," making this a cat-and-mouse story from the start. The heart of Kennedy's tale is England's immense effort, employing tens of ships and its vast Naval intelligence, to track the Bismarck.

It's a gripping tale because the era's technology combined new but not fully deployed radar with old-style reconnaissance flights, plotting, triangulation, inference and a lot of steaming about. It was the right historical moment for a nail-biting hunt and chase at sea.

Without going deep into their personal histories, Kennedy profiles the major British and German officers involved in key decisions throughout the pursuit. One takeaway, command is hard even with perfect information and, here, nobody had perfect information.

Despite Pursuit being more of an overview, Kennedy recognizes good anecdotes and details, such as the incredible tale of an antiquated bi-plane, against all odds, being launched from a British carrier and dropping the torpedo that crippled the Bismarck.

Heavily footnoted the way even popular historical accounts like this used to be, the impression is that Kennedy did his homework. Plus, there's almost something charming to the fuzzy, not-digitally-enhanced and poorly captioned pictures grouped throughout.

There are Bismarck books with more up-to-date information, but for a good, quick and traditional telling of the sinking of the Bismarck, not burdened with our preening modern pieties, Pursuit is still a valuable and entertaining read.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

^ Spot take Fast. Never read this but any Second War fare is open for discussion though usually it's a land
tale and not a sea yarn. Codes are part of my past martial hitch and I know Enigma cracked a Bismark key pad
or two and I saw the film, so this looks the Ladisla Farago yarn ripe for the telling.
Enigma's cracking is fully captured in The Imitation Game caught on Netflex.

 

[Fading Fast]

^ Spot take Fast. Never read this but any Second War fare is open for discussion though usually it's a land
tale and not a sea yarn. Codes are part of my past martial hitch and I know Enigma cracked a Bismark key pad
or two and I saw the film, so this looks the Ladisla Farago yarn ripe for the telling.
Enigma's cracking is fully captured in The Imitation Game caught on Netflex.

I loved "The Imitation Game" when it first came out on cable (or maybe streaming, I don't remember anymore, but now I want to see it again). Because of you, I'm going to add "Enigma" to my comments. Thank you.