Category Archives: Reviews

Book reviews, as well as Reads to Reels

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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We Who Dared Say No to War

Posted on November 11, 2015 by smellincoffee

We Who Dared Say No to War: American Antiwar Writing from 1812 to Now© 2008 Murray Polner, Tom Woods368 pages The image of anti-war protesters in America is of the left, especially the student left, haranguing the government for overseas … Continue reading →

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