Guns and Guts

Reading List

October 2nd, 2008

I am a pretty voracious reader and have been throughout most of my life. There, unfortunately has not been a lot of reason behind my choices of reading, and I feel like some order would not be a bad thing. My choices have always been for entertainment, or to acquire knowledge on a specific subject. So basically I want to broaden my horizons a bit. This line of thought has brought me to the conclusion that reading a Top 100 novel list sounds like fun. After searching through several lists, I have decided on the one at this blog.

Best Books of All Time

It is not a perfect list, as it is heavily weighed to the last century, and the English language, but it looks like a good start for me. I have ordered the bottom two books on the list, and will be starting on them after I finish reading The Chronicles of Narnia again, which should be in a couple of weeks. Incidentally The Chronicles have been fun to read again, as it has been twenty years since I last read the collection.

Anyway, here is the list:

THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald
ULYSSES by James Joyce
1984 by George Orwell
THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger
ON THE ROAD by Jack Kerouac
THE GRAPES OF WRATH by John Steinbeck
CATCH-22 by Joseph Heller
LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov - Purchased
BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley
BRIDESHEAD REVISITED by Evelyn Waugh
THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William Faulkner
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD by Harper Lee
THE LORD OF THE RINGS by J.R.R. Tolkien
A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by James Joyce
ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell
TO THE LIGHTHOUSE by Virginia Woolf
INVISIBLE MAN by Ralph Ellison
A CLOCKWORK ORANGE by Anthony Burgess
GONE WITH THE WIND by Margaret Mitchell
AS I LAY DYING by William Faulkner
A FAREWELL TO ARMS by Ernest Hemingway - Completed - Review
A PASSAGE TO INDIA by E.M. Forster - Purchased
LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding
THE CALL OF THE WILD by Jack London
DAVID COPPERFIELD by Charles Dickens
EMMA by Jane Austen
TESS Of The D’URBERVILLES, Thomas Hardy
THE SCARLET LETTER by Nathaniel Hawthorne
WUTHERING HEIGHTS by Emily Bronte
THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER by Carson McCullers
SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut - Purchased
JANE EYRE by Charlotte Bronte
BELOVED by Toni Morrison
ANNA KAREINA by Leo Tolstoy
THE SUN ALSO RISES by Ernest Hemingway
NATIVE SON by Richard Wright
ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
NOSTROMO by Joseph Conrad
HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad
UNDER THE VOLCANO by Malcolm Lowry
THE GOOD SOLDIER by Ford Madox Ford
HERZOG by Saul Bellow
THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS by Kenneth Grahame
U.S.A. (trilogy) by John Dos Passos
FINNEGANS WAKE by James Joyce
AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY by Theodore Dreiser
WOMEN IN LOVE by D.H. Lawrence
THE AGE OF INNOCENCE by Edith Wharton
THE WOMAN IN WHITE by Wilkie Collins
THINGS FALL APART by Chinua Achebe
TROPIC OF CANCER by Henry Miller
MY ANTONIA by Willa Cather
LIGHT IN AUGUST by William Faulkner
THE MAGUS by John Fowles
THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP by John Irving
DON QUIXOTE by Miguel de Cervantes
TOM JONES by Henry Fielding - Purchased
WAR AND PEACE by Leo Tolstoy
MOBY-DICK by Herman Melville - Purchased
MADAME BOVARY by Gustave Flaubert
WINNIE THE POOH by A(lan) A(lexander) Milne
GREAT EXPECTATIONS by Charles Dickens
THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV by Feodor Dostoevsky
TRISTAM SHANDY by Laurence Sterne
LITTLE WOMEN by Louisa M. Alcott
VANITY FAIR by William Makepeace Thackeray
PRIDE AND PREJUDICE by Jane Austen - Purchased
IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME by Marcel Proust
THE AMBASSADORS by Henry James
THE FOUNTAINHEAD by Ayn Rand
GRAVITY’S RAINBOW by Thomas Pynchon
THE AWAKENING by Kate Chopin (1851-1904)
DUNE by Frank Herbert
A TOWN LIKE ALICE by Nevil Shute
ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND by Lewis Carroll
CLARISSA by Samuel Richardson
THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY by Douglas Adams
A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY by John Irving
THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO by Alexandre Dumas
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY by Henry James
OF MICE AND MEN by John Steinbeck
ALL THE KING’S MEN by Robert Penn Warren
GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN by James Baldwin
CHARLOTE’S WEB by E. B. White
ROBINSON CRUSOE by Daniel Defoe
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT by Feodor Dostoevsky
THE STAND by Stephen King - Purchased
REBECCA by Daphne du Maurier
I, CLAUDIUS by Robert Graves
HOWARDS END by E.M. Forster
TENDER IS THE NIGHT by F. Scott Fitzgerald
THE RAINBOW by D.H. Lawrence
BLEAK HOUSE by Charles Dickens
ATLAS SHRUGGED by Ayn Rand - Purchased
ABSALOM, ABSALOM! by William Faulkner
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE by Henry James
AUSTERLITZ by W. G. Sebald - Purchased
THE TRIAL by Franz Kafka - Completed - Review
WISE BLOOD by Flannery O’Connor - Completed - Review
FRANKENSTEIN by Mary Shelley - Completed - Review
~ Compiled by Leisa L. Watkins

I will mark these as I complete them, and offer short reviews of them as they are completed.

Categories: Books | Tags: novel, reading list | 3 Comments

Book Review: Trigger Men

August 11th, 2008

Trigger Men: Shadow Team, Spider-Man, the Magnificent Bastards, and the American Combat Sniper (Hardcover)
Author: Hans Halberstadt
Hardcover: 304 pages
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press; 1 edition (March 18, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0312354568
ISBN-13: 978-0312354565

Amazon Link

This book was purchased after reading a positive review from a member of the gunthing.com forums. I would post a link to his review, however that site unfortunately will be taken down soon.

Trigger Men is a book about killing people. It contains stories detailing the killing of insurgents mainly in Iraq, by Marine and Army snipers. This book is unapologetic about the subject matter it contains. There are graphic details about what bullets do to humans within this volume’s pages. If that is something you are not interested in reading about, this book is not for you.

This book does provide a no bullshit look at modern sniper training, tactics, weapons, and results. A majority of the book is taken directly from the shooter’s accounts of events themselves.

Trigger Men was a very quick read for me. I was very interested in the subject matter, of course, but it was also a very accessible and fairly entertaining read. The book contains a mix of first hand accounts, as well as background technical information about modern sniper warfare.

The first chapter is a walk through of sniper mission basics. It covers topics such as moral aspects of the sniper mission, the differences between police and military snipers, and a brief history of the art.

Chapter two is a short chapter based on a USMC sniper’s experiences. The third chapter talks about sniper selection and training. The rest of the book primarily deals with individual accounts from the battlefield. There are however sections on ballistics, and sniper weapons.

The flow of the book switching between technical detail and commentary is very good. A lot of the information presented in the documentary chapters is reinforced by the individual accounts. This unfortunately brings up the only thing I did not like about this book. It tends to repeat itself. Many of the snipers tell the same story about a particular weapon for example. This was not overly distracting at all though, and often I was able to glean more details about the particular event or implement from the different viewpoints. Several of the snipers were operating in and around Ramadi, so some of the things they experienced were very similar.

The book does provide a great insight into the sniper’s art, as it is being applied in Iraq, that I have not seen elsewhere. It’s technical detail, while limited, is a great primer. The stories told by the soldiers and marines were very interesting and really give you a glimpse into their world.

If this subject is interesting to you, I would urge you to purchase and read this one. You won’t be disappointed.

This review was originally posted on my old Blogger site, and can be found here. I mention this only because the author thanked me for the review in the comments section there.

Categories: Books | Tags: military, non-fiction, sniper, training | No Comments