Dan Murphy's Blog

In attempts not to confuse myself with books that are similar, I decided to pick a book that was very different than the last one.  This is a non-fiction WWII story, which is the first non-fiction story I have read.  Usually I like the historical fiction which is about 80% real and 20% fake for a story line.  This book is all real, no story line, it is just about battle after battle after battle.  What makes it even more interesting is the main character in the story is about 23 which you forget about 90% of the time except when he mentions something about age. Basically he is the only one to survive multiple battles and is always inheriting new recruits and new officers.  He said the green officers would be dead in a matter of minutes because they didn’t have any war sense and would die doing something stupid.  There are also multiple instances of friendly fire or some other accident that ended up killing the Allies not the Germans.  In one case because someone incorrectly read their map, they had a bunch of bombs dropped on them.  Also the author talks a lot about medics, and how amazing they were because they were in the fight without a gun and would just run out there to help someone only to typically be killed by the other side.

Crazyness to think people were going through something so intense at a young age.  There is no glorification of war in this book, it’s just about people killing each other and how pointless it can seem and is.  I would suggest this book as it does give some very good accounts of all the battles this person was in from Normandy to Battle of the Buldge.  A lot of the stories I have read take place in the Pacific not Europe so it was interesting to hear about what went on there.  The book isn’t too graphic, but he does a good job of balancing the line of too much information and enough to really make you think about what is happening.  War is a horrible thing, and hopefully with things like this book we can really remember how disruptive it is to life and civilization.

So I needed a new book and a new author and this one was suggested to me by Amazon.  The story sounded interesting the only thing was that it was way too similar to the last book that I read that I kept getting them confused.  It was a super fast read and mildly interesting. I might have liked it more if I spaced it better from my last book as I kept mixing the two story lines together.  This story is about the story of David and Goliath.  It starts off back in the 1700′s during an exploration that was returning back to Europe when it hit a storm and everything found during the exploration was lost at sea.  One of the things lost was from the biblical story David and Goliath and brings in a few interesting ideas about humans breading with aliens long ago.

The main character in the story, Dane, is brought in by his old commanding officer’s daughter who says that her Dad was killed because of what he was researching as far as what was on that ship when it went down.  So they trace down where the ship sank as well as where everything off of it went to and end up finding a temple where Goliath is buried along with some other little interesting finds. As to be expected there is a secret society that is trying to keep the lost items of the ship lost forever and are hot on their trail.

Wasn’t really expecting the turn it took but it was still interesting and would probably read another book in the series as I liked the characters and the style of writing. I did learn one important thing do not read two books back to back that are similar!

So I chose this book because it was in the top 25 of the Kindle Lending Library and it was free.  The description sounded up my ally so figured why not.  The story here is about the group Skull & Bones trying to run the USA again.  Here they are doing it by trying to find a submarine that sank in WWII with some important documents on board.  The main characters here are a retired Marine named Riley and a ship/treasure hunter named Cole.  Riley is on vacation trying to forget her crazy life back home in the States while Cole has been searching for this submarine for a few years using the old diaries his dad left as he was looking for the sub too.  The plot was alright but I did find it was a little hard to finish the book and I kept falling asleep, so I think that says something about the book.  It was a little predictable but for the price that I paid I am alright with it and would suggest it for anyone else who is out of books to read.  There are a ton of shipping/nautical terms in this book that I do not know so when they were describing certain parts of the boats I had no idea what they were talking about!

So I finished this a while ago I just didn’t have a chance to post this.  So looks like I missed a book in the series but this picks up with our special forces crew and Scarecrow.  This takes place on an island near the Antarctica, and we discover there is an old, but closely watched, Soviet era base.  A little more research turns up that this base contains a special weapon that could light the entire Northern Hemisphere on fire and destroy everything.  It was a last ditch effort if USSR lost the Cold War.  Well it seems that someone has taken over the island and started up the machine and wants to ignite the world.  The only crew that is close enough to help is Scarecrow who is in the Antarctic doing some cold weather testing of new equipment.

This was a good action filled book, but very very hard to believe.  Just when you think every option is out there is always some crazy new one that pops up and works.  It did make for a quick mindless read and was entertaining but very far fetched.

So who would have guessed in a 1000 years that I ended up reading this book.  After visiting my mom in Florida and going to the Sarasota Ringling Museum I have to say I was more than interested in reading about this story.  The great news is that it was a Kindle Lending Library Book, so that makes it free so double bonus.  This was a great story told about the circus from a crazy old man in a retirement home.  He details his story about running away and joining the circus and talks about all the crazy hierarchies that existed back then.  He ends up falling for one of the performers and they make a run for it eventually.  I really liked the authors style of writing and almost fell over when I read an interview with her.  I guess that she spent about 2 years putting the book together, although it’s fiction it is a mash-up of about 4 different stories she was able to find.  Also I found it amazing that she is a technical writer for SQL Server and things like that.  Reading this book you would have no idea that was her background.  I really enjoyed this book and it was a little sad, funny, interesting, creepy and a fast read.  I am glad I read this before seeing the movie which will be making my redbox queue the next time I am there

So continuing on with my WWII theme I decided to read this book.  It was a lot heavier than the last one I read but still nothing too crazy.  This is a story about WWII told from the German point of view as a regular citizen.  The main character in this story ends up working for a furnace company in Germany that ends up winning a contract to make the crematoriums at Auschwitz Poland.  I like this story because you get an idea of what it was like on the German side of things and you can understand how Hitler came into power.  It is also interesting how about 95% of Germany, even some of the people at the camp, didn’t really know what was going on during this time.  There is some great back story on Auschwitz and in the end the author mentions what is real and what is made up.  Nobody really knows too much about Auschwitz as it was totally destroyed by the Germans before the Russians took the land back.  Sometimes while you are reading this book you keep telling yourself ‘this cannot really be true’ a very interesting way to bring history to life and give it some context of what really happened during WWII.