[Seahawk]

Stand the **** by.

Incoming!

Originally Posted by MRM

Paul, anything you have left over will find a new home. I'm embarrassed to admit that I love spy novels and detective stories. John D. MacDonald and Travis McGee, Len Deighton and Bernard Sampson. Anything by Frederick Forsythe (did you know he was a real life freelance writer, and perhaps something more, in the Biafra war?) All of Nelson DeMille's stuff.

On top of that, I love biographies and autobiographies. Anyone who knows enough about someone to write a biography about him is worth my time and effort to read. Anyone who did enough to write a book about themselves has something that's worth me reading about to learn something.

Classic American literature, Poe, Robert Penn Warren, Mark Twain, Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby is the Great American Novel but All the King's Men is the Great Southern American Novel. All American comedy descends from Mark Twain and he invented the use of accurate local dialect. Brit Lit - Swift is the father of political satire. The Romantic poets, well words fail to describe. Words are meant to be insufficient when discussing the Romantics. Anything by Dickens or his descendants.

After that, histories and historical fiction. War histories and political tomes. Anything by Max Hastings, Ward Just, Bernard Fall, Churchill, really anyone who writes anything about war.

And finally, I have a soft spot for completely anachronistic books that are period pieces that are a perfect insight into the way things were but are completely bypassed by modern life. I grew up reading anything I could get my hands on. I inherited the books my grandmother held on to that my father and uncles read. The library was full of books that were relevant when written but are no more than time capsule curiosities now. One of my favorites was a young adult novel from the 1930s about the crew an American dirigible named the Goliath and its exploits against its heavier-than-air foes. But everything old is new again and some people are taking a second look at lighter than air craft.

So, basically anything downscale that you have will find a home with me!