Need Book(s) Suggestions

Me | 3/31/22 | Me

[HartleyMBaldwin]

Passage at Arms leads into the Starfishers trilogy, also very good. Glen Cook’s Black Company books are military fantasy, worth a read.

The Garrett P. I. series are (very) loosely derived from Nero Wolfe, and a lot of fun.

[pa_dweller]

Brown on Resolution

Island in the Sea of Time

[The Louiswu]

Bookmarked. Thanks

[Mama Shawna]

Some convoy members drove to Fauci’s neighborhood and distributed copies to his neighbors.

That's awesome! I finished the book a couple weeks ago. All his neighbors should read this so they know what lives amongst them. He's a monster who needs to be done away with.

[The Louiswu]

I like time shift stories. Thanks

[Sans-Culotte]

While they do not have a lot of battle sequences, the MASTERS OF ROME series by Colleen McCullough is quite good. Newt Gringrich (who is also a history professor) called them a "work of genius". The books cover the period from 110 BC though 27 BC, but the main focus of the books is the life and career of Julius Caesar. While they are novels, they are not historical fiction in which fictional exploits play out against a historical backdrop. All the characters and events of the series are depictions of actual events. She does take liberties in filling in some gaps (e.g. Sulla's rise to power), but most of the books depict actual events.

[nonliberal]

The Way of Men and Becoming a Barbarian both by Jack Donovan.

[Do_Tar]

I liked David Weber, Honor Harrington series.
Also his SafeHold series.

[agere_contra]

Agreed - don't try to read the Patrick O'Brian novels.

Listen to them on Audiobook (Audible), read by Ric Jerrom.

They are the very best 'wooden wall' novels ever written, and you might as well enjoy them at their very best.

[Antoninus]

You and I are on the same wavelength. I read all the Hornblower books a few years back and am now on my second run-through of the Aubrey/Maturin series by O'Brian. Loved 'em!

Here are a couple other historical fiction books that I absolutely loved:







Give 'em a shot!

[HartleyMBaldwin]

John Ringo’s Posleen War series, also his zombie-plague books (I forget what the series is called). Hell, John Ringo anything, and Baen Books in general for that matter.

Or how about Larry Correia’s Monster Hunter series?

I’ll quit now. You’ve got a few years’ worth of recommendations from FR readers.

[agere_contra]

Embedded by Dan Abnett.

Sci-fi, military fiction, excellently written.

[Kartographer]

Brian Kilmeade

Sam Houston & the Alamo Avengers
Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates
Andrew Jackson and the Miracle of New Orleans

[nutmeg]

.

[jonascord]

Try the Otto Prohaska series, by John Biggens.

A naval officer in the Austro-Hungarian Navy, during WW1. Good reading.

[BlueLancer]

Oh, I almost forgot my all-time favorite series ...

George MacDonald Fraser - The "Flashman" series (12 books) ... extremely funny (and not but a little risque) ...

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

You have good taste.

[Captain Walker]

The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors by James D. Hornfischer

[BDParrish]

Interesting that you liked the movie. Going now to the book you will be wowed. Going from the book to the movie is often a dissappointment.
* I liked the “Hornblower” Series starring Ioan Gruffudd. Books were much better though.
*The Sherlock Holmes Series starring Jeremy Brett was faithful to the originals in every detail even taking dialogue from the stories themselves. For example in one scene, Holmes’ heroin needle can be seen on a table in the background! It is never pointed out and only a true Baker Street Irregular would even know why it was there.
*Suzanne Collins helped write the screenplay for Hunger Games, very faithful to the books as she made sure of it.
*”The Lord of the Rings” starring Elijah Wood is also very faithful to the books.
*David O Selznick’s “Gone With the Wind” is famous for being the best adaptation ever, the most faithful to its 1017 page source, although if he had dared change a line of it, Margaret Mitchell’s fans would have burned Atlanta in retaliation!
*The most unfaithful of all is the “sequel” “Scarlett” starring Timothy Dalton, which proved that Mitchell was right in refusing to allow a sequel to be made all her life. It was at the end of her life when her family told her all the money money money she was stealing out of their pockets by her refusal, so of course she relented. May God forgive them all. It turned out to be a service to mankind as we are no longer subjected to the “acting” of T. Dalton:-)

I have a Sabatini Collection on my Nook Reader now. There are 17 novels and dozens of stories included for a coupla dollars I paid. I am reading again “Mistress Wilding” even now.

[Rockingham]

I assume that you have an interest in military fiction and military history.

Nott just Mater and Commander, but the entire Patrick O'Brian Aubrey-Maturin series of novels of the Napoleonic era British Navy is superb for historical accuracy and quality writing. Reading them in their entirety -- a little over twenty books -- will take some weeks.

Years ago, Ballantine Books published numerous WW II memoirs and battle histories in paperback that are likely out of print now but can probably be found for the cheap on the Internet. The memoirs of fighter aces and submarine combat are especially engaging. The combination of existential stakes and first person narrative did much to divert me from the usual angst of being a teen and of a major health crisis in middle age.

E.B. Sledge's "With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa" is a superb memoir of combat as a Marine in WW II. William Manchester's "Goodbye Darkness" treat the same subject matter on a more extended basis as a hybrid memoir and history.

Some of the best recent military histories are by historians John Keegan and Victor Davis Hanson.

You may enjoy hard-boiled detective fiction. The Philip Marlowe novels of Raymond Chandler set in 1930s and 40s LA defined the genre and inspired the creation of TV's James Rockford. Ross McDonald's Lew Archer novels set in the California of the 1960s and 70s are quite good and a close updating of Chandler's Marlowe.