jay hay-char
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Glad you enjoyed it.
Glad you enjoyed it.I have finished 'An Artist of the Floating World'. I'm finding it difficult to describe. It tells of our hero's reflections on his past and gently tells of his personal search (?) for understanding, perhaps enlightenment in his old age. The descriptions, though, not overly emphasised as with some authors, are at times beautiful and horrible but it is the machinations of the mind and the attitudes that the protagonist and those around him especially of the younger generation go through in what was and led to a terrible time in our history.
Informative, too. I had no idea that the Americans occupied Japan after the war or that an attempt was made to democratise the culture.
I did thoroughly enjoy this book and surprisingly, as soon as a description of the floating world was alluded toI understood completely.
Thank you for the recommendation.
If nobody minds me turning to a different category of book I have just finished reading D-Day through German Eyes, Book 1 and Book 2. My father served on board HMS Frobisher which was among the support ships on D-Day. Frobisher was moored alongside HMS Roberts as part of the mass of ships whose job was to pulverize the German defences for the Allied troops to land. These two books originated when a journalist interviewed a number of soldiers on the northern French coast, who were to be the defenders in the event of a landing by the Allies, for a German military magazine. The journalist, Dieter Eckhertz, didn't get the interviews published before that historic day, June 6, 1944. After the war he decided to track down the soldiers he had interviewed to ask them about their experiences on D-Day and in the days and following. He was able to find a good many of them and he got their stories down verbatim. Unfortunately, he died before he could carry the work out and the interviews eventually came into possession of his grandson, Holger Eckhertz, who edited them and linked them together into two books. These two volumes, as far as I know, are the first to give an account of the landings from the German soldiers' experiences.
If you've read The Longest Day or any of the other histories of that momentous event, you will have gained an insight into the mindsets of individual Allied soldiers, the planning and the decision making, but all of it from the Allied point of view. D-Day through German Eyes are books that are shattering in their rawness. The descriptions of new weapons developed by the Allies which I hadn't known were used that early are amazing in their effective but brutal way. One of them sounds like an early version of napalm. Another piece of information I gleaned from these pages was the sheer jaw dropping shock the German soldiers experienced as the early morning fog dispersed and they saw for the first time the thousands of ships moored off those Normandy beaches. One of them confesses that he realised the war was lost for them when he saw the immense numbers of ships and landing craft that had assembled without them knowing about it. They stretched from horizon to horizon as far as the eye could see.
For a different viewpoint on this turning point in World War II, these books are a must read - they certainly expanded my knowledge of D-Day.
These books can be downloaded or ordered in paperback format from Kindle.
Not "The Visitors", by any chance? If so, "It's OK" was my judgement as well.....Reading a novel based around Howard Carter and the opening of Tutunkamun's tomb. It's OK but my attention has been wandering so I'm finding it hard going
Not "The Visitors", by any chance? If so, "It's OK" was my judgement as well.....
Lamont - Dare I say that Band of Brothers was not taken from Beevor's book, but from Stephen E. Ambrose's work of the same name. Sorry if I sound a bit pedantic.I have read and seen numerous accounts of D Day.
My eldest brother was born on that day!
The best was the account by Antony Beevors. Which Band of Brothers was based on.
I have just noticed that it is a nice price on kindle. Might just have a read
Thanks.
Lamont - Dare I say that Band of Brothers was not taken from Beevor's book, but from Stephen E. Ambrose's work of the same name. Sorry if I sound a bit pedantic.
PS Thanks for your message.
Half way through ' The unusual second life of Thomas Weaver' by Shawn Inman.
Quite engaging and fun!
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