doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion Classic & Custom Single Barreled Sporting Rifles @ doublegunshop.com A Book Thread?

I just took your advice Steven and this book "Earth Abides by George R. Stewart 1949" (~$8.00) is now on my Kindle app for the phone. I don't read fiction much and it usually takes me a month or so to read a book because I only read a page or 2 at night to relax the eyes.
Now I can easily fall a sleep at the docs office or waiting somewhere by reading my phone. (Probably not a good idea while driving) Might need to get a lanyard so I don't drop it. LOL

History? It's 150 years for the Civil War. How about Shelby Foote's series on the American Civil War. I read Freeman's "Lee's Lieutenants" when in high school and it's time to read it again. Daniel Ford's "Flying Tigers" is a wonderful history of the American Volunteer Group in Burma and China. This one is particularly close as Gen Chennault is from around here (Louisiana) and retired here. I even know his grandchildren very well. McCullough's "Path Between the Seas" about the building of the Panama Canal is excellent. I like Toland's WWII writings, especially "The Rising Son" and his biography of Hitler. Guy Sajer's book, "The Forgotten Soldier" is a chilling read about the Eastern Front in WW II. There is some controversy about it but, having read it, I think he was really there. Fantasy and Science Fiction haven't been mentioned. Asimov and Heinlein wrote several books worth a read. Who hasn't heard the quote, "an armed society is a polite society" from "Beyond this Horizon." "The Lord of the Rings" is still very much worth reading and rereading. Robert Jordan's "The Wheel of Time" series has been going for 20 years with the 14th and final book due out in November. I'll be sorry to see it end. For just escape from the ordinary I've been enjoying SF by David Weber, S. M. Stirling, Eric Flint, Tom Kratman, and others. No particularly deep insights into our souls from them but a lot of fun. How about biography?

Jerry Liles

I retired from a nuclear power plant after a career counting and arranging and assembling beans, IOW I filled various engineering positions including determining/massaging the total number and unit cost of some of the beans. You as a design engineer may not generate much paper but I can ASSURE you that all those FAX machines and copiers out there are still churning along merrily, 24-7 in many cases.

Kinda reminds me of things like perpetual motion, fusion, world peace & interplanetary travel; sounds like a wonderful and even doable idea at first, but somehow in practice it just doesn't seem to work out quite like the planners wished. Sorry, 'Paperless Office' still sounds like an oxymoron to me.

Here are 2 more to add to the list, both by Kent Anderson: Sympathy for the Devil and Night Dogs. Kent has obviously been there and done that, and it shows. I wish he'd write some more!

Last year I reread (3rd time) C.S.Forester's Single-Handed, published in the US as Brown On Resolution. One particular paragraph in the book is a classicly cogent description of the awesome power of a determined man with a rifle; indeed the entire book is a tribute to this theme but this particular paragraph will stick in my mind forever. You'll hafta read the book to find out what it says though (grin).
Regards, Joe

Further question; can anyone recommend a particular book or other account of Alvin York's feat, as being especially entertaining or enlightening?
Regards, Joe

C.S. Forester wrote two novellas, "Rifleman Dodd" and "The Gun". Both are about the Napoleonic Peninsular Campaign and are worthwhile reads.

Early in his career, Frederick Forsyth wrote a novella "The Shepherd". Another good read.

Here are the quotes:

Quotes:
I bought books instead of guns in the early years.

I see that I even have the book on Samworth books by Brian R. Smith. When you start buying books about books you can figure you're hooked.

When I was a kid, our public library had a wealth of books about firearms.

I love the books as much as the guns that I have collected, and without them I wouldn't have learned much about the guns that I have collected.

Too bad more of the old gunsmiths didn't put their thoughts to paper.

So I hope SDH will come out with his next book on rifles and shotguns soon. I need it as an antidote.

Keith was a blowhard, but his experience is still valuable and interesting (one blowhard to another, my wife would say....).

public librarians tell me that gun books are the "most stolen" of any category of library book.

Nice "book cave" er, library, Steve! A treasure house for sure.

"Only showing the 'clean' books, eh?"

My most prized books are the ones that were gifts from friends and the ones signed by the authors.

I am driving my wife crazy with searching through boxes for a particular reloading tool or that one book I want to read again.

I can see you cleaned things up for the photos, just like I did...

I am going to enjoy curling up this winter in my recliner with an old classic book and a Brittany spaniel in my lap and a nice fire in the stove.

I read more fiction for pleasure these days.

Anything new by James Lee Burke will cause me to call in sick and spend the day under a shade tree with a cooler full of cold drinks.

I've consumed fiction at an alarming rate for most of my life. I'm not sure if it's a curse or a gift

"every time you buy a gun, buy a book"

Nice to know I'm not the only one who would sometimes rather read a good novel than go to work...

When I moved into town twenty years ago my friends came and helped unload the van, when they were done they told me next time to loose their number.

I'm a fiction addict also, my sister is a librarian and my cousin is the editor of the Barnes & Noble Review so I get some good recommendations, historical fiction being my favorite.

but an electronic copy Ludwig Olsen's Mauser book or SDH's books wouldn't fly with me.

I had no plans to buy a Kindle but a friend who had a windfall bought all her friends Kindles. Once I've used it I have seen the light or words as it may be. A complete download of a book just takes seconds. You can store books at Amazon and the device has it's own wireless network.

I am still enjoying this thread very much. So many writers & books that I have never before encountered. I shall make a list and head off to the library in Eureka.

SDH,If you decide to start putting your books out in electronic format I suppose I'll finally have to get one.

thinking about Kindling is a long way from doing it,

"We can get fancy after we get good."

My wife introduced me to John D. MacDonald

Can you just get the digitized version of your book from your publisher and sell the file in pdf. format? Perhaps just burn it onto disc?

It looks to me like a sample could be used as a preview. When the potiental customer sees something he likes, he could instantly download the pdf and recieve the hard copy by mail.

Books have been my refuge all my life. To gaze upon my book cases gives me a profound sense of comfort,

Terrific thread.

don't think it will ever come to one or the other. The Kindle will not replace books as TV did not replace the radio. Years ago I drove 150 miles, one-way, to Anchorage to spend time sitting at the Patent library here in Anchorage, now just a click on the name or number and I have a copy of the patent.

This is the here and now. I am an engineer for Honeywell and I may and I mean may print a piece of paper once a day. I don't even have a filing cabinet in the traditional form anymore. All our correspondence and designs are electronic in one form or another. The majority being ProE files, PDF's and email. I check my surface mail box once a week maybe, usually empty.
I do not own a Kindle and do not intend to buy one until the second generation of this type device start to appear. I do have the app on my phone. No books yet cause haven't seen anything I need.
I have a fairly large library of books here at home that I have gathered over my life like many others and if they were all converted to electronic enhanced versions I would sell them in a heart beat because instead of the library being on the shelves it would be in my pocket and instantly avaiable for research. Instantly search able for that word, phrase or name that I know is in there but can't remember what page.

One thing a Kindle is good for and that's traveling. I can't sleep without reading a few pages, and airplanes REQUIRE a book, preferably a long, good one.

ON THE RETURN OF A BOOK
LEANT TO A FRIEND


Christopher Morley

I GIVE humble and hearty thanks for the safe return
of this book which having endured the perils of my
friend�s bookcase, and the bookcases of my friend�s
friends, now returns to me in reasonably good con-
dition.

I GIVE humble and hearty thanks that my friend did
not see fit to give this book to his infant as a play-
thing, nor use it as an ash-tray for his burning cigar,
nor as a teething-ring for his mastiff.

WHEN I lent this book I deemed it as lost: I was re-
signed to the bitterness of the long parting: I never
thought to look upon its pages again,

BUT NOW that my book is come back to me, I re-
joice and am exceeding glad! Bring hither the fatted
morocco and let us rebind the volume and set it on
the shelf of honor: for this my book was lent, and
is returned again.

PRESENTLY, therefore, I may return some of the
books that I myself have borrowed.

On the subject of borrowing no one has said it better then Henry David Thoreau in "Walden",
"Near the end of 1845, I borrowed an axe and went down to the woods by Walden Pond, nearest where I intended to build my house, and began to cut down some tall, arrowy white pines, still in their youth, for timber. It is difficult to begin without borrowing, but perhaps it is the most generous course thus to permit your fellow-men to have an interest in your enterprise. The owner of the axe, as he released his hold on it, said that it was the apple of his eye; but I returned it sharper than I received it."

The only York book I have is Sergent York and His People by Sam K. Cowan, 1922 Funk & Wagnalls. It's been years since I read it but remember it was well written.


http://shop.ebay.com/i.html?_from=R40&am...-All-Categories

Me too Michael. Cowan goes into some detail about York's insistence upon telling the story his own way, apparently with little elaboration about the events themselves and only to Cowan himself, no other journalist. The movie is good but almost certainly false in its details.

I'm interested primarily in the actual ground positions, his tactics and his mindset. This was arguably the greatest individual feat of arms in the entire history of the world and it'a a shame that we don't know more about it!
Regards, Joe