Vanity: looking for book recomendations

[Hugin]

Hi everyone,

Recently I've found myself with a lot of spare time on my hands, so I've been doing a lot of reading, and I'm looking for recommendations. I'm not looking for anything heavy, but basically escapist fiction, with my favorite genre being historical fiction. I've read everything by most of my favorite authors; Bernard Cornwell (Sharpe's Rifles, Saxon Tales, etc.), Conn Igulden (Emperor, Genghis series), Stephen Pressfield (Gates of Fire, Afghan Campaign, etc.), and also Michael Crichton. So I'm looking for recommendations and who better to ask than Freepers?

[2ndDivisionVet]

[Big Red Clay]

I just started the Jack Reacher series by Lee Child. First book is “Killing Floor”. I am about half way through book 2. They are very entertaining.
You also can’t go wrong with the series by-
Vince Flynn
Brad Thor
Alex Berenson

All are good thrillers based on the CIA type stuff.

[reagandemocrat]

Citizen Soldiers. (Killer Angels was already mentioned)

[verga]

Lucifer’s Hammer(Niven & Pournelle). Last of the Breed (l’Amour). Both excellent choices.

[BenLurkin]

If you’re looking for a complete change of pace, a friend recommended this: http://www.amazon.com/Puccinis-Road-ebook/dp/B0082TQOWO/ref=sr_1_2/189-3578645-8360900?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1380309801&sr=1-2&keywords=puccini%27s+road

[Obama_Is_Sabotaging_America]

No one’s said the ‘Bible’????

[Night Hides Not]

John Jakes: I read his Bicentennial Series, "The Kent Family Chronicles", in the mid-70s, and he's written many more since then.

I also recommend "Once an Eagle" by Anton Myrer.

[Hegewisch Dupa]

I second the Patrick O’Brian suggestion - will keep you happy and busy for a long, long time. And when someone brings up ‘mizzen mast’ in conversation, you’ll be all over it....

[Obama_Is_Sabotaging_America]

Oooops. I just realized you wanted fiction. My apologies. Why bother with fiction though?

[Obama_Is_Sabotaging_America]

Barack 0bama’s “Audacity of Hope” or “Dreams From My Father”. THAT’S fiction.

[oh8eleven]

Excellent book - I own a copy. But the Freeper said he was looking for escapist fiction.

[SMARTY]

If you want to have some real fun, read the accounts, bio’s, memoirs, histories, journals... etc. of the 26 fire brands and absolute wild men (albeit world-class soldiers) who made up the officers of the Legion of Honor appointed by Napoleon I.

You will not be able to put down anything written about/by them. It is too fantastic and all based on fact.

Others(officers and lower ranks) not themselves Marshals of the Empire, also wrote their accounts... and that stuff is positively dynamite!

The personalities are on fire and live again on every page!They soldiered for decades all over Europe, Russia, Spain, Dominican Repubublic, etc. There are some real outstanding people and events there.

I guess Spielberg is making a ‘Napoleon’ movie... I will see how far from the fcts he goes.

[Mears]

“Why bother with fiction though?”

---

Oooh,a reading elitist.

.

[robowombat]

“Ashes of Honor” is a well written and interesting book. Unfortunately only about the first 25% recounts the writers experiences in the Charlemagne Division of the Waffen SS. The rest deals with his trial as a war criminal and experiences in the French penal system (not very harsh considering he was former SS). It is interesting but doesn't quite deliver on the ‘Frenchman in the Waffen SS’ theme. A better read and apparently not faker is Peter Neuman “Black march’. Neuman was an enthusiastic young Nazi who went from HJ to NAPOLA to SS officer school to the 5th Waffen SS Division “Vikings’ and served until being captured at Vienna in April ‘45. How he made it out of the Soviet's hands is not told. I understand he escaped from a big poorly controlled pow pen before his unit identity was found out. (He switched tunics with a dead Whermact soldier) and then hid out in Alpenland and Bavaria for a couple years. His home was in the Soviet Zone so it was a long while before he linked up with his older sister. It is an interesting book. The first part obviously based on a detailed diary which Neuman gave to some family member who kept it. The second part on some sort of diary like impressionistic letters again held by someone back in Germany.

[Stonewall Jackson]

Harold Coyle's Civil War duology, "Look Away" and "Until the End", is an excellent read.

P.T. Deutermann has a number of excellent mysteries on the market, but his two latest works are historical fiction dealing with the Second World War. In "Pacific Glory" he tells the story of two friends, one a naval aviator and the other a destroyer officer, from Guadalcanal through Leyte Gulf. The most recent is "Ghosts of Bungo Suido", which deals with submarine warfare against Japan and also the ordeal that Allied POW's faced at the hands of the Japanese. Mr. Deutermann takes actual historical events and weaves them into some wonderful books that are hard to put down once you get started.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

I’ll second Flashman. Reasonably good history, bawdy, and featuring a top of the line anti-hero.

For really light fare, you can’t go wrong with the Horatio Hornblower series by C. S. Forester. Napoleonic era swashbuckling.

If you want more of the same, but the very grown up version, the Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O’Brian had fans in the Naval War College and Charlton Heston.

One great novel that few today know about is The Long Ships, by the Swedish writer Frans G. Bengtsson. Total Viking-era romance, and a hypnotically good read.

[Amigo04]

Ender Wiggin series by Orson Scott Card....fun and easy read, have read several times :D

[Renegade]

“Turner Diaries”—Andrew Macdonald

[Monterrosa-24]

Perhaps you can lay your hands on an old pulp fiction paperback called PORTRAIT OF A MOBSTER about Dutch Schultz by Harry Grey.

The author was something of a mobster himself and has a gift for lively prose. Even his descriptions of saxophone players in Speakeasies and cleaning a little pearl-handled 38 with three-in-one oil are somehow interesting and memorable. Some of the book is scurrilous eroticism but not without a certain amount of quality.

[SMARTY]

True... but I couldn’t put the thing down!

It’s very absorbing.