Latest book received

[Vladimir]

Just picked up a copy of...



... on fleaBay!

My first 'foray' into the Hyborian age and hopefully some inspiration for my Barbarians.

[Mainly28s]

I received "Italy's Sorrow: A Year of War 1944-45" yesterday. I'll post a review once I'm done, but for now, the burb should do...



Today Italy is a land of beauty and prosperity but in 1944-45 it had become a place of nightmares, a land of violence, war, and destruction. James Holland's ground-breaking account expertly documents the German advance and a segment of Italian history that has been largely neglected. The war in Italy was the most destructive campaign in the west as the Allies and Germans fought a long, bitter and highly attritional conflict up the mountainous leg of Italy during the last twelve months of the Second World War. For front-line troops, casualties rates at Cassino and then along the notorious Gothic Line were as high as they had been along the Western Front in the First World War. There were further similarities too: blasted landscapes, rain and mud. For the men who fought there, Italy really was the hardest campaign. And while the Allies and Germans were slogging it out through the mountains, the Italians were fighting their own battles, one where Partisans and Fascists were pitted against each other in a bloody civil war.Around them, civilians tried to live through the carnage, terror and anarchy while, in the wake of the Allied advance, beleaguered and impoverished Italians were forced to pick their way through the ruins of their homes and country and often forced into making terrible and heart-rending decisions in order to survive. 'Italy's Sorrow' is the first account of the war in that most beautiful of countries to tell the story from all sides and to include the experiences of soldiers and civilians alike. Offering extensive new research, it weaves together the drama and tragedy of a terrible year of war with new perspectives and material on some of the most debated episodes to have emerged from the Second World War. It is a magnificent achievement by one of our finest young military historians.

[Le matou rouge]

I just get the first 2 volumes of a a french comic serie entitled "Comando Colonial" by Apollo & Brüno (Dargaud) : the story of two french chaps sent in the colonies to rally them to the Free French Governement.
In the first volume "Operation Ironclad" ,they are in Madagascar just before the start of this campaign. And at the beginning of the second "Le loup gris de la Désolation" (the gray wolf of desolation) they try to leave the island.
It's both fun and historically accurate, and I think the drawing is great :



Of course, it's in french but what I think very interesting in the volume 2 is that the authors let the characters speak their own langage, without any translations ; for example, there are several pages in german :



more pages on the author's blog :

http://bruno.thielleux.free.fr/blog/index.php?Commando-colonial

meow,
Matt     

[Poiter50]

Scandinavian Sideshow
Belenheim Squadrons of WW2
Allied Aces of the Far East
All Osprey/Del prado

[twrchtrwyth]

Triumph and Tragedy
TAC-Arc of Fire
Zulu Wars Rules by will McNally

[Poiter50]

All Osprey - Nicopolis, Templars and Armies of the Crusades.

[Mancha]

I just finished reading The Affinity Bridge by George Mann.  This book is a murder mystery, the first of many, apparently, to be solved by the team of dashing Sir Maurice Newbury and daring Miss Veronica Hobbes, set in a proudly steampunk Victorian England.  Miss Hobbes is influenced by the suffragette movement of the time, seeking greater abilities for women, although she knows better than to insist on equal rights when to do so would be unseemly.  Sir Maurice is a spiritualist, eager to apply his interest in the arcane and science to solve modern mysteries.  With his decidedly advantageous appearance, ample financial means, and obvious physical prowess, he’s cast more as a James Bond than a Sherlock Holmes.



This was a pretty enjoyable read.  My occasional problem with steampunk, however, is that I expect more…um…creativity—wait, that’s not fair—more inventiveness, more “fantasy” from it, and have to remind myself that it’s just historical fiction with gadgets.  And because it’s the gadgets that I like so much in VSF miniatures, and because a book can hardly focus on gadgets and alternative technology (but must rather focus on pesky things like plot and character development), steampunk sometimes leaves me feeling a little let down.  Mind you, there are some fun gadgets (and evil creatures, and good creatures, and ideas, and conveyances – Pappa Midnight take note) in the book, but with relatively little editing one could easily turn this into your basic Victorian whodunit.  For my part, I liked The Peshawar Lancers better, because not only did it include gadgets, but it included an entire new mythos as well. 

[Bako]

Raided a local used book store I'd not been to yet, and only had time to nose through the Science Fiction section ( ):

Robert A Heinlein
-Stranger in a Strange Land
-JOB: a Comedy of Justice
-To Sail Beyond the Sunset
-Friday

Isaac Asimov
-The Tragedy of the Moon
-Foundation and Empire
-The Left Hand of the Electron
-Through a Glass, Cleary
-Second Foundation
-Utopias

Ray Bradbury
-The Martian Chronicles
-Classic Stories 1

Frank Herbert (should have nabbed the Butlerian Jihad too)
-The Dragon in the Sea
-God Emperor of Dune
-The Jesus Incident
-Man of Two Worlds
-Dune*

Michael Crichton
-Jurassic Park*

JRR Tolkien
-The Hobbit**

And even then, I didn't buy every book that crossed my eye. Which is a good thing in the eyes of my mum who had offered to buy one book for me, and I gave her the largest (and therefore most expensive) to pay for. Evil yes, but she set herself up for daring to take me to such a place. All very high quality used books, but for such low prices! I'll be returning probably next week and will ransack the other book categories .

*It is unfortunate to say that some of my books had suffered damage from my lesser knowledgeable siblings leaving large portions of these books unreadable, meaning I needed to replace them. They're not worthwhile for giving off, but it seems so wrong to throw them away... So they will continue to take up space for the remainder of my possession over them!

**Some dolt had the nerve to steal my original copy of the Hobbit!

[elysium64]

This caught my eye, only 40 pages in and I'm hooked brilliantly written.

Now I just have to avoid the BEF miniatures site or I will be spending more money

[Helen]

[Helen]

Arrived from Lebanon today which took less than a week.



A very beautiful book and well illustrated with numerous converted gun trucks.

[JollyBob]

Claimed as a birthday present during the recent £10 offer.

On reading it, I was surprised how much I already knew but still found it very useful to have stuff written down in case of old age and alcohol damage. The colour charts and horse painting guides are damn useful too.

If nothing else, I can (and do) just sit and look at the pretty pictures for hours on end. 

[Bako]

Very interesting, Le matou rouge. I don't think I've ever seen a comic do that before.

[white knight]

From Foundry's book offer:




Already regretting I couldn't afford a couple more. 

[traveller]

Foundry Armies of the 19th century Asia/China book £15 post free on their current booksale