What are you reading?

[Val Keating]

Interesting you say that, as I was reading it I was thinking exactly that - this is a book I could read multiple times.

Have added Bloodlands to my list!

Yes I can imagine, that book must have left you with many thoughts. I’m guessing it left you pondering over what they were discussing.

Bloodlands is a grim brutal read and drew both praise and criticism from historians.

But honestly, the things described in that book, if the accounts are accurate, are extremely horrible. Some of the worst things I’ve ever read.

 

[Val Keating]

I’ve just been consuming Historical Fiction at the moment. Needed a break from all the heavy stuff and trying to educate myself.

I kind of missed The Last Kingdom series because I watched the TV show. I know the books are always better so I’ll probably give it a go at some point, but I prefer to read the book first and then if a tv show or movie comes out then I’ll watch it.

So instead I just finished The Viking Blood and Blade Saga. Pretty solid, got a bit repetitive…probably because I consumed the series one after the other, but still enjoyed it.

 

[CharlieMortdecai]

Yes I can imagine, that book must have left you with many thoughts. I’m guessing it left you pondering over what they were discussing.

Bloodlands is a grim brutal read and drew both praise and criticism from historians.

But honestly, the things described in that book, if the accounts are accurate, are extremely horrible. Some of the worst things I’ve ever read.

Just finished Bloodlands mate, thought it was excellent. I see no reason to doubt the accuracy - he clearly has excellent knowledge of the sources, and he's transparent about them and their reliability. He also claims to have erred conservatively on his numbers, again with a transparent account of how he arrived at them.

Have you read Christopher Browning's Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland? I haven't myself but I'm thinking it might be what I read next.

 

[Val Keating]

Just finished Bloodlands mate, thought it was excellent. I see no reason to doubt the accuracy - he clearly has excellent knowledge of the sources, and he's transparent about them and their reliability. He also claims to have erred conservatively on his numbers, again with a transparent account of how he arrived at them.

Have you read Christopher Browning's Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland? I haven't myself but I'm thinking it might be what I read next.

it’s brutal hey.

No I haven’t read that. Maybe I’ll let you read it first and let me know what you think.

 

[CharlieMortdecai]

it’s brutal hey.

No I haven’t read that. Maybe I’ll let you read it first and let me know what you think.

It's excellent. I thoroughly recommend it - if you can do PDFs, there's a link in the references to the Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_Police_Battalion_101.

I think it's a great companion to Bloodlands. Snyder gives an overview of mass murder under Hitler and Stalin from 1932-1950, but he is also at pains to point out all his massive numbers are "a million times one". He's a good writer and historian, and I think one of the strengths of Bloodlands is that he is able to provide meaningful anecdotal colour to remind the reader of the individual lives cut short.

Ordinary Men is the reverse - it gives the detailed picture of how a bunch of middle aged, lower-middle class, men from Hamburg, along with others who signed up to the police to avoid army conscription, would become mass murderers with very, very few exceptions once Hitler had decided that extermination was to be the Final Solution. Like Snyder, Browning is also a good writer and historian, and lucidly places these mass killings within the wider context of the war and German society.

It is very sobering - men remember with vivid detail the first murders they committed in July 1942, but the details of a six-week campaign of extermination in Polish villages in November are not remembered in any detail and Browning has to rely on Jewish histories of the killings to sequence events from the men's garbled memories (the primary source for the book is the prosecution of the men in the late 1960s).

There were a handful of men who avoided killing - which was easy to do if you could bear the scorn of (some of) your comrades; apparently no evidence has ever been produced that demonstrates a German official suffered any sanctions for refusing to participate in the Holocaust. But on the other hand, there is the story of the German entertainment unit that was in a Polish village during one mass killing action, about 40 musicians and performers, who successfully begged to be allowed to join in the "Jew hunt" the following day.

Interestingly, the entertainers were in the village in the first place because the German authorities recognised the deep psychological trauma the mass murder was placing on their men. That was one reason nobody ever suffered a sanction for refusing to participate in the mass killings - you were just deemed mentally weak. Apart from music and comedy, it seems their only other panacea for the trauma was copious amounts of alcohol.

Anyway, all in all a very good read.

 

[Val Keating]

It's excellent. I thoroughly recommend it - if you can do PDFs, there's a link in the references to the Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_Police_Battalion_101.

I think it's a great companion to Bloodlands. Snyder gives an overview of mass murder under Hitler and Stalin from 1932-1950, but he is also at pains to point out all his massive numbers are "a million times one". He's a good writer and historian, and I think one of the strengths of Bloodlands is that he is able to provide meaningful anecdotal colour to remind the reader of the individual lives cut short.

Ordinary Men is the reverse - it gives the detailed picture of how a bunch of middle aged, lower-middle class, men from Hamburg, along with others who signed up to the police to avoid army conscription, would become mass murderers with very, very few exceptions once Hitler had decided that extermination was to be the Final Solution. Like Snyder, Browning is also a good writer and historian, and lucidly places these mass killings within the wider context of the war and German society.

It is very sobering - men remember with vivid detail the first murders they committed in July 1942, but the details of a six-week campaign of extermination in Polish villages in November are not remembered in any detail and Browning has to rely on Jewish histories of the killings to sequence events from the men's garbled memories (the primary source for the book is the prosecution of the men in the late 1960s).

There were a handful of men who avoided killing - which was easy to do if you could bear the scorn of (some of) your comrades; apparently no evidence has ever been produced that demonstrates a German official suffered any sanctions for refusing to participate in the Holocaust. But on the other hand, there is the story of the German entertainment unit that was in a Polish village during one mass killing action, about 40 musicians and performers, who successfully begged to be allowed to join in the "Jew hunt" the following day.

Interestingly, the entertainers were in the village in the first place because the German authorities recognised the deep psychological trauma the mass murder was placing on their men. That was one reason nobody ever suffered a sanction for refusing to participate in the mass killings - you were just deemed mentally weak. Apart from music and comedy, it seems their only other panacea for the trauma was copious amounts of alcohol.

Anyway, all in all a very good read.

I’ll have to check it out.

 

[CharlieMortdecai]

Well after two very grim reads on mass murder by the state, I changed tack and am reading Run the Song by Ben Ratliff. Makeshift Park ? You might like this.
I've only read half a dozen chapters, but already it's inspired me to go out and get some running headphones. I do have some very old cheap ones, but I am the opposite of this guy. For me running is completely social. I never run with headphones because I always run with people. It's part of my routine - I run Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday mornings. I run with different people every day, although there is considerable overlap. Ratliff dislikes the idea of running with others, doesn't want to be beholden to them, or them to him.
In one sense Ratliff and I are the same, running is at once an ordinary and important part of the routine of our lives. But Ratliff bristles at the idea of training his body, he hardly ever runs in "races", which I take to be any organised event. I run a handful of events every year, but where possible I run those in the company of other people too, so they aren't really races as such.
But I have gone through periods where I have run solo with music, and this book reminds me of the joy in that. I don't think about music like Ratliff does, I'm no music critic, but his way of thinking about music and running is relatable - by running the song he means "to engage with the music's forward patterns, its implications, its potential, its intention, and even its desire". Also relatable is his angst about loving music, with its ever-present risk of being the snob, bore or nostalgist. In what I have read so far he avoids that risk. And the beauty of streaming services is you can listen to just about everything he writes about.
I am now left with the issue of adding a Friday, Sunday or Monday run for listening purposes, but it will be much appreciated by the dog!
BTW I came across it from this review, but I only read a few paragraphs before deciding I would read the book first: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/a-communion-with-music/

 

[koshari]

" how to covertly assassinate a list manager"
paperback edition.

 

[Episode IV]

In the last week:

"The Rise and Fall of the Welfare State"
- Asbjorn Wahl

"The Middle Kingdoms - A New History of Central Europe"
- Martin Rady

Just started on "The Economic Weapon"
- Nicholas Mulder

 

[Val Keating]

I went on a historical fiction binge. Listened to all 21 of Simon Scarrow’s ‘eagles of the empire’ and I enjoyed them, though they’re quite predictable, and Peter Gibbons ‘The Viking Blood & blade’.

I’m ready to jump back into some non fiction. I really liked ‘Say Nothing’ by Patrick Radden Keith & ‘Kilo’ by Paul Williams. I’ve listened to books by historians for example, ‘Powers and Thrones’ by Dan Jones, but they don’t really correlate well to audio, they’re often dry and I really think I need to literally read them to absorb them.

Anyway, any recommendations?