Thursday, November 11, 2010

Booking Through Thursday: War


This week at Booking Through Thursday the topic is war. It is November 11th, known int he US as Veteran's Day (formerly Armistice Day to remember the end of WWI but expanded to honor all veterans who have fought for their country), so....

Do you read war stories? Fictional ones? Histories?

I don't read a lot of war stories. But I do pick them up occasionally. My all-time favorite fictional account is Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels (the basis for the movie Gettysburg). I have also enjoyed Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five. The best nonficitional account that I have read is Through Blood & Fire: Selected Civil War Papers of Major General Joshua Chamberlain. I took a Civil War class in high school from an awesome teacher who made the Civil War come alive and I first got interested in Joshua Chamberlain in that class. It was fascinating reading the actual papers of this Civil War hero.

And, I can't forget to mention the books I've read about Vera Brittain's experiences in WWI: Testament of Youth
and Letters from a Lost Generation: First World War Letters of Vera Brittain and Four Friends. These are absolutely fascinating and heartbreaking, very intense books. But I loved them.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for stopping by my BTT post. :)

http://wp.me/pFyoG-o3

Anonymous said...

I only read fictional ones. The White Queen, The Red Queen, and some Civil War books.

Stephen said...

Seeing everyone's lists make me remember the ones I've forgotten, like Slaughterhouse-Five!

Very interested in the collection of letters. There's a book, "The Great War in Modern Memory", which you may be interested in.