Author Archives: smellincoffee

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About smellincoffee

Citizen, librarian, reader with a boundless wonder for the world and a curiosity about all the beings inside it.

The Rape of Nanking

Posted on November 27, 2015 by smellincoffee

The Rape of Nanking© 1997 Iris Chang290 pages Long before bombs fell on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese were at war in China.  ‘War’ is not quite the word to describe  the aftermath of their invasion of Nanking, however.  There the … Continue reading →

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Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol

Posted on November 23, 2015 by smellincoffee

Another week gone, another entry from the 2015 reading challenge: earlier I received “Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol” and couldn’t help reading it waaaay too early. It didn’t take long, being a fifty-page play that’s essentially a retelling of “A Christmas … Continue reading →

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The Horse in the City

Posted on November 21, 2015 by smellincoffee

The Horse in the City© 2007 Clay McShane, Joel A. Tarr242 pages To the American imagination, horses are the stuff of country dreams, of farms and cowboys. This is a recent conceit, however, as for most of American history humans … Continue reading →

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Blitzkrieg

Posted on November 21, 2015 by smellincoffee

Blitzkrieg© 1979 Robert Warnick200 pages As much as I’d hoped to read Len Deighton’s Blitzkrieg, it’s weeks overdue at the library and I’m ready to close out the first stage of this WW2 reading set.  This volume of the Time-Life … Continue reading →

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Convoy

Posted on November 18, 2015 by smellincoffee

Convoy: The Greatest U-Boat Battle of the War© 1976 Martin Middlebrook384 pages In his memoirs,  Winston Churchill admitted that nothing worried him quite so much as the U-boat menace. Britain could stand alone against a continental menace, but not without … Continue reading →

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The Foxes of the Desert

Posted on November 18, 2015 by smellincoffee

The Foxes of the Desert© 1960 Paul Carell370 pages When Erwin Rommel was dispatched to Africa to rescue his nation’s ailing ally against the small-but-feisty English Eighth Army, he earned the lasting respect and dread of those commanders tasked with … Continue reading →

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War, spam, and more war

Posted on November 14, 2015 by smellincoffee

Today I finished Spam Nation, a journalistic takedown of the spam industry which is centered in Russia. The book is a strange collection of memoir and journalism on criminal relationships so entangled that I felt like I was reading about … Continue reading →

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That Was Then, This is Now

Posted on November 13, 2015 by smellincoffee

That Was Then, This is Now© 1971160 pages Mark and Byron were more than best friends; they were brothers. They grew up half-feral, raised by a struggling mom and struck by violence at an early age. Their fond childhood memories … Continue reading →

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Battles for Scandinavia

Posted on November 11, 2015 by smellincoffee

Battles for Scandinavia© 1981 John Elton203 pagesTime-Life History of WW2 In Battles for Scandinavia, John Elton takes readers into the three nations who had the distinct bad luck to lay between the warring powers of World War 2.  Norway, Sweden, … Continue reading →

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