What book are you reading?

[Joe Shearer]

Harappa civilization discovery. The lady won the Infosys Prize for her work.

I'll put it down on my wish list. Trouble is I am unlikely to save enough money to buy all - half - a quarter on the wish list.

 

[Shanlung]

I will be spending an hour tomorrow just studying this map. It genuinely makes me feel like I am a privateer who is planning a raid on Matanceros. A true military enthusiast like you would get even more excited about this stuff. Can you recommend me any fiction or non-fiction books involving naval raids and proper military strategies?

@Joe Shearer @Nilgiri @Aesculapian @Shanlung I am sure that you gentlemen must have at least one such recommendation in mind.

And if you like tales where fair winds and prayers bring the ships and sailors about,
Of Aubrey, captain in the Royal Navy, and Dr. Stephen Maturin
The best books by far will be the series written by Patrick O'Brian.

Patrick O’Brian wrote them and at his death in 2000, there were 20 and one unfinished. The series follows Aubrey and his friend, Stephen Maturin, a physician, naturalist and spy, through the Napoleonic wars and up the ranks of the Royal Navy.

O’Brian wrote a whole intricate world, a comprehensive picture of 18th- and early 19th-century naval warfare, laced with intrigue and adventure.

Lucky Jack, bluff and belligerent, an old-school Tory but a man of parts too. Maturin’s duality, a man of science and enlightenment by turns enchanted, exasperated and appalled by his friend. After the battle, they play violin and cello together, playing their ship into the sunset.

You be spell bound. And your life will consist of getting one after another of that series.

And I managed to get them all, but now sadly scattered in different countries that I lived in.

And another book that should be on your reading list.

A book that should be read by any sailor that needed fair winds and worthy of his salt

Two Years Before the Mast - Wikipedia​

en.wikipedia.org

Two Years Before the Mast is a memoir by the American author Richard Henry Dana Jr., published in 1840, having been written after a two-year sea voyage from Boston to California on a merchant ship starting in 1834. A film adaptation under the same name was released in 1946.

The journey[edit]​

Outbound[edit]​

In the book, which takes place between 1834 and 1836, Dana gives a vivid account of "the life of a common sailor at sea as it really is." He sails from Boston to South America and around Cape Horn to California. Dana's ship was on a voyage to trade goods from the United States for the Mexican colonial Californian California missions' and ranchos' cow hides. They traded at the ports in San Diego Bay, San Pedro Bay, Santa Barbara Channel, Monterey Bay, and San Francisco Bay. The provenance of this history is well supported by records showing the company of Sprague and James building and launching a ship named Pilgrim in 1825 in Medford, Massachusetts.

California[edit]​

California hide trade: droughing (carrying) hides from an Alta California shore to boat, for export
See also: California hide trade
Dana arrived in Alta California when it was a province of Mexico, and no longer Spanish colonial Las Californias. He gives descriptions of landing at each of the ports up and down the California coast as they existed then. The ports served (south to north) the Mission San Diego de Alcalá, Mission San Juan Capistrano, Pueblo de Los Angeles (and Mission San Gabriel Arcángel), Mission Santa Barbara (and Presidio of Santa Barbara), Presidio of Monterey, and Presidio of San Francisco with their very small settlements and surrounding large Mexican land grant ranchos. He also describes the coastal indigenous peoples, the Mexican Californios culture, and the immigrants' and traders' influences from other locales.

The headland bluffs near Mission San Juan Capistrano presented an obstacle to taking the cow hides to the beach for subsequent loading onto the ship. So Dana, along with others of the Pilgrim's and later Alert's crews, tosses the hides from the bluffs, which he compared to flying a kite without a string. Some hides get stuck part way down the cliff and Dana is lowered with ropes to retrieve them. The headlands, along with the adjacent present day city, took on Dana's name as Dana Point.

Dana learned Spanish from the Californian Mexicans and became an interpreter for his ship. He befriended Kanaka (native people of the Sandwich Islands—Hawaiian Islands) sailors in the ports, one of whose lives Dana would save when his captain would as soon see him die. He was a witness to two floggings of Pilgrim crew members by Captain Thompson, which he believed to be undeserved and unjustified, but was powerless to do anything about them, as the captain was the law aboard ship. He spent a season on the San Diego shore preparing hides for shipment to Boston, and his journey home. Dana also makes a tellingly accurate prediction of San Francisco's future growth and significance.

Homebound[edit]​

Of the return trip around Cape Horn, on his new ship the Alert, but with the same Captain Thompson, in the middle of the Antarctic winter, Dana gives the classic account. He describes terrifying storms and incredible beauty, giving vivid descriptions of icebergs, which he calls incomparable. The most incredible part perhaps is the weeks and weeks it took to negotiate passage against winds and storms—all the while having to race up and down the ice-covered rigging to furl and unfurl sails. At one point he has an infected tooth, and his face swells up so that he is unable to work for several days, despite the need for all hands. Upon reaching Staten Island (known today as Isla de los Estados), they know they have nearly come around the Horn. After the Horn has been rounded he describes the scurvy that afflicts members of the crew. There is another flogging by the captain, this time of the steward, for fighting and threatening to spill blood, but Dana seems to believe it was more justified than the previous incident in California. In White-Jacket, Herman Melville wrote, "But if you want the best idea of Cape Horn, get my friend Dana's unmatchable Two Years Before the Mast. But you can read, and so you must have read it. His chapters describing Cape Horn must have been written with an icicle."[1] In his Concluding Chapter, Dana discusses his thoughts on the captain's use of corporal punishment, the possibility of laws to limit the captain's power, contrasting with the necessity of the captain to have complete authority and control of the ship, the rights of seamen, contrasting with their general reputation as a class, and aspects of any legal recourse they might have in bringing an abusive captain to justice. He also advances his ideas of promoting more religious instruction among seamen, Sunday religious observance by captains, and the benefits to be derived by more compassionate captains and religiously disciplined seamen, in bringing the men to more willingness to obey orders, which he believed would greatly reduce the necessity and incidence of punishment.

@RescueRanger I highly appreciate maps like this for such novels. It makes it so much easier to visualize the geography of a place. This wasn't on the pirated PDF copy of the book that I was using earlier. I had to draw sketches of Matanceros to analyze the geography of the island and its defences and assess how it could be invaded or how I would defend it if I were responsible for its safety based on the descriptions that I was reading. I wish there were more maps in the book.

View attachment 9177

 

[Shanlung]

@RescueRanger I received the book today. The book is in excellent condition. Even Rs 1000 is a bargain for this level of quality and I bought this is Rs 269 + delivery charges.

View attachment 9087
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Its scent and printing quality are excellent.

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The artwork is also excellent.

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If you are currently in Pakistan then I will strongly recommend buying this book from Readings.

I like Crichton books . I must have missed this in the past.

But I booked (reserved) this in my National Library Board

 

[Shanlung]

Rafael Sabatini - the Captain Blood (original) book
C S Forester - Hornblower - about eight books, stirring.
John Buchan - a bit preposterous, imperialist as hell
G A Henty - makes Kipling sound like a Labour Party hack, the most brilliant adventures. No maps. [Actually need to look again - there ARE maps - ed.]

Might amuse you that I read the first 2.

I have not heard of the 3rd and 4th.

But going to my backburner to be settled after I make my genuflections and prostrations to my sweet Goddess Procrastinatia

 

[Joe Shearer]

Might amuse you that I read the first 2.

I have not heard of the 3rd and 4th.

But going to my backburner to be settled after I make my genuflections and prostrations to my sweet Goddess Procrastinatia

John Buchan's best was The ThirtyNine Steps. It reads to me like the kind of build-up from easy-going normal life to heart-stopping tension that occurred (many decades later, in terms of authorship) in the opening chapters of LOTR, where Frodo makes his escape from the Shire to Rivendell, pursued by the black horsemen.

 

[Shanlung]

John Buchan's best was The ThirtyNine Steps. It reads to me like the kind of build-up from easy-going normal life to heart-stopping tension that occurred (many decades later, in terms of authorship) in the opening chapters of LOTR, where Frodo makes his escape from the Shire to Rivendell, pursued by the black horsemen.

I read 39 steps in early 60.

When I first explored the world outside Enid Blyton.

I was just getting into the teen world then.

Problem is I do not have much time left after the mandatory 3 - 4 hours zombieing myself over 64 squares and slavery to Vorna the grey and Mimi the kitty.

https://www.facebook.com/shanlung/posts/pfbid022ogwGE1oVTfo7sA8nGK9fVvJxkKZFCgdfWPFTkLk3yLX9DsZ57nRmSkqFNR6Dxqql

And the 50 to 70 postings I making daily on WhatsApp to about 20 groups.

And there is still the genuflections and prostrations to make to my sweet Goddess Procrastinatia for her ineffable wisdom and guidance to me as to what I can do tomorrow instead of yesterday

 

[RescueRanger]

Not now. The following books are on my bought_but_sitting_unread list:

• The Indians: History of a Civilisation
• The India-China Border: A Reappraisal
• Mediaeval India: From Sultanat to the Mughals
  Part One: The Delhi Sultanat 1206 - 1526
• Somanatha: The Many Voices of a History
• On Ancient Central Asian Tracks
• Guelphs and Ghibellines
• Travels of Fah-Hian and Sung-Yun from China to India
• Ancient and Mediaeval History of Andhra Pradesh
• India's Long Walk Home
• The Ocean of Mirth
• MSS Golwalkar, The RSS and India
• The Language of History: Sanskrit Narratives of Muslim Pasts

This is one mighty impressive collection, some of which I may need to add to mine own.

 

[Joe Shearer]

Might amuse you that I read the first 2.

I have not heard of the 3rd and 4th.

But going to my backburner to be settled after I make my genuflections and prostrations to my sweet Goddess Procrastinatia

Henty? Umm, where do I even start? OK, here's a brief list (NOT a complete one):

This is one mighty impressive collection, some of which I may need to add to mine own.

This is NOT my collection.
These are the books I have to read first time, or I have to re-read.

You do understand that being an Indian and seeing what those creatures do in public is a humiliating experience.
I would rather study for and finish my promised essay on The Partition of Bangladesh.
Imagine dealing with gutter scum out of a sense of duty, when these books remain to be read.
I bitterly regret having joined. This is real public shame.

 

[Shanlung]

I copied this over here. As to the books I read in much younger days after Enid Blyton and Beano and Dandy.

But photos I lifted from the now defunct PDF remained in the defunct PDF

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

• https://defencepk.com/forums/threads/gaza-israel-conflict-dec-2023.272/post-13614
• Add bookmark
• #1,364

I used to be such a fan of USA and believed whole heartedly in goodness of USA and her sacrifice to defend freedom and all is good in the world.

Scales fallen from my eyes in revelations America was actually behind almost all the atrocities.

NON OF THE SENTIMENTS EXPRESSED IN NOV 2020 I HAD THEN FOR USA EXIST ANY MORE NOW.
I SEE America AS THE EPITOME OF EVIL AND AVARICE AND CRUELTY AND MEALY MOUTHING UNTRUSTWORTHY COCKROACHES NOT WORTH THE INK PENNED ON AGREEMENTS

I am not anti American at all​

You might have read a bit of what I been writing. I am not anti American at all The two countries I love the most are China and USA , and not necessary in that order. I grew up in an English speaking environment at home and in school and with friends. From very young, I was reading books by...
pdf.defence.pk

• Nov 5, 2020

You might have read a bit of what I been writing.

I am not anti American at all

The two countries I love the most are China and USA , and not necessary in that order.

I grew up in an English speaking environment at home and in school and with friends. From very young, I was reading books by Mark Twain, John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, Henry Thoreau, Harold Robbins, Jack London , Louis L’Amour and the likes. Enough to develop a strong liking for USA and Americanism.

Even now, many of my favourite authors are American such as John Sanford, Baldacci, Lee Child, Vince Flynn and the likes which I enjoy.

And which you can recognise I can hardly read if I do not like USA.

Only when I was 40++ , when I was posted to Taiwan that I got to speak Chinese and discovered my Chinese roots, hidden away from me by my very Westernised education. And recently 4 years or so ago, at age of 65, learned on my own to read Chinese and enjoy reading Chinese and got to know even more of my roots and a love for things Chinese. And a history and background that I never got to learn about in my earlier school days. And access into Chinese publications on military matters, even if much of what I used here in Quora came from Pentagon and Western military think tanks.

I also read many books on war, such as by Ian W. Toll and Hornfischer , David Halberstam to know Americans can fight very well. And books by Neil Sheehan eg “A bright shining lie “ to know Americans fought heroically in Vietnam in a fight they should not have been fighting but for the stupidity of their politicians.

Wuming Chan's answer to What happened during the Vietnam War that nobody talks about today?

Only when I got into Quora recently that I discovered such a upwelling of hatred and bad mouthing and mocking of China and things Chinese that I felt compelled to step in to try to balance the very unbalanced view points being preached here such as the existence of this question and similar chest thumping and goose stepping questions.

That China is a fucking walkover , and will be a pushover any time for USA.

Which terrified me as that will be a sure way to a very bad and damaging war for USA and China, that I love both very much. And the world we lived in. The hatred and ill feelings that will be generated from a war between USA and China regardless of the Pyrrhic victories/defeats meant a series of further wars infinitum.

Provided no nukes are used, in which case, the end of us all and no more worries of Global warming and plastic pollutions and balance of payments.

And so as said by me many times.

Please do not have war with China.

Young men and women of both countries and all countries should smell roses, make love and drink and dine and laugh and go enjoy sunrises and sunsets and play with their kids and children.

Please do not have war with China.

There are so many better and worthwhile things we all can do together and with our lives.

I have greatest respect for fighting men(and women) regardless of the flag they fought under.


Just as I salute all that lied in the fields of Flanders where the poppies blow and gave my respect to all of them when I visited the place that they all dwell remaining forever young.

Young men and women of both countries and all countries should smell roses, make love and drink and dine and laugh and go enjoy sunrises and sunsets and play with their kids and children.

And not make war and die or make others to die for their countries.

ISIS and their likes the only exceptions and should be send on to remain forever young.

As said, I gave honour and respect to all of them when I was there.

Divided in life, and now united and remaining young forever .

Perhaps if you read the books I read in my childhood days, you might feel a bit different. Those books left behind a very lasting impression on my views of American (at least as represented in those books).

And to show I did not lift the earlier photos from other folks, here are some of me when I was there a few years ago in pilgrimage to the stupidity of mankind.

With real poppies in the Field of Flanders blowing behind me and over my head.

And yet another twist.

There is a third country (or place) that I love even more than those two I mentioned.
With many great friends and where I spend many of the happiest years of my life in.
Not for no reason why those two flags are flying proudly above

That is Taiwan. My mind screwed and heart torned apart each time China rattled her missiles or Taiwan trying to distant herself and seeing 'Muricans jumping in
to make hay while the sun shines for them. China should be left in peace to sort out the differences between siblings as those two know best how to settle family quarrels.

I was last in Taiwan in June & November 2019, to be with my Tinkerbell that I had to leave behind in 2004. http://shanlung.com/

C19 meant I did not go to Taiwan again in April this year as I yearned to. Uncertain when I be able to see Tinkerbell again.

Best explained in

https://www.facebook.com/shanlung/posts/pfbid036RNYDMr2NSREQaemXrevzUjCwY129wP23N7XWFRXgaGec5vjEM82VXL53VXN3vngl

with the many many visits I taken to be with her.

And I will be back again with her a couple weeks later.

Those are the subjects I much prefer to write about that will add to your happiness.
Than what you folks seen me writing about here .

 

[_NOBODY_]

I like Crichton books . I must have missed this in the past.

But I booked (reserved) this in my National Library Board

View attachment 9369

In three days, I have finished 19 chapters finished by the grace of God. This includes the entirety of both part 1(Port Royal) and part 2(The Black Ship) of the book. I believe that the later part of part 2 of the book was rushed because:

Spoiler: Spoiler Alert!

Sanson killed 10 guards but the novel only showed how he killed the first one and skipped the killing of all the other guards. This was incredibly disappointing for me as I found Sanson quite cool and it would have been a treat to read about how he killed each of these 10 guards like a silent assassin that he is.

Other than this, part 2 of the book was great.

@Joe Shearer @RescueRanger

 

[Nilgiri]

Have you Brave New World by Aldous Huxley? If not then please give it a shot. I can confidently state that you will love that book.

We should likely start here IMO....as I have invested a huge amount of debate/analysis on this book (especially in deeper philosophy and anthropology) over a fairly long time ever since first studying it in English class in junior high school.

What would be your main takeaways of greatest interest since you just read it recently? (I like initial perspectives quite a lot).

 

[Nilgiri]

@RescueRanger please consider pinning this thread.

@Joe Shearer funny you mention captain blood after I did elsewhere (though in movie format and its influence to Tamil movie lol), the larger convo there might be of interest to others here.

Errol Flynn was quite enjoyable in that and Robin Hood as well.

Military History Archiving and General Chat

It is noted with interest that these is a distinct nautical flavour to your posts. In view of the forthcoming simulations on CMO that we hope @Oscar will curate this is a welcome development. Its been that way a while ever since i became less of a landlubber in various ways/acquisitions...

defencepk.com

Also for all you other folks here (of the nautical bent), was wondering if anyone's read the Captain Nemo stuff by Jules Verne?

 

[Nilgiri]

John Buchan's best was The ThirtyNine Steps. It reads to me like the kind of build-up from easy-going normal life to heart-stopping tension that occurred (many decades later, in terms of authorship) in the opening chapters of LOTR, where Frodo makes his escape from the Shire to Rivendell, pursued by the black horsemen.

Frodo and the Nazgul pursuing him embodies a larger archetype found in the silmarillion (which Tolkien considered his magnus opus). Things were suitably sized up for the silmarillion though....instead of Frodo we have folks like Feanor, instead of the shire we have Valinor itself....instead of the nazgul.. Balrogs (yes plural) are sent by Morgoth (whom Sauron was a lieutenant for later) to pursue and deal with Feanor.

It takes 3 balrogs attacking Feanor at the same time to defeat him, crazy.... and this is why downstream (in LOTR) when the world is far less charged up....we see just 1 balrog posing so much of an issue to a whole race of dwarves and then the fellowship that trespassed there too much later.

Frodo though had a great character trait within him that Feanor did not (and Feanor had a trait that got him into the great problem and doom to begin with)....and this ultimately leads to him surviving and persevering so much against the odds.

 

[Joe Shearer]

@Joe Shearer funny you mention captain blood after I did elsewhere (though in movie format and its influence to Tamil movie lol), the larger convo there might be of interest to others here.

Sabatini is a great favourite of mine, Captain Blood being third or even lower in rating among his books, Bellarion the Fortunate being first, Scaramouche second. There's a whole mob striving for attention after these three. His accounts of the Guelf-Ghibelline rivalry in Italy, the rise and fall of condottiere, and the fascinating interplay between Italian realms - Milan, Firenze, Pisa, Genoa, Verona, Padua, the whole lot in Lombardy and Tuscany - is gripping. In Bellarion, he also describes, almost forgetfully, how the Swiss came and shook up the ritualistic, formalised world of the condottiere, and how the German landsknecht came to parallel the phlegmatic, brutal Swiss. What people don't realise, reading accounts of the death of the Swiss regiment at Versailles, or the defence to the end against visibly impossible odds of the Vatican and of Rome, is how these mercenaries destroyed the horse soldiers of mediaeval Europe perhaps even more effectively than the Welsh and English longbowmen, and how they came to dominate the battlefield until the Spanish came up with their tercio. The tercio, fittingly, was broken only by the Great Conde at Rocroi (his father was alive, he was still Duc d'Enghien).

That brings me back to books.

If you good people haven't read the Captain Alatriste novels of Arturo Perez-Reverte, stop whatever you are doing, do not stop even to brush your teeth, get into Amazon or run to Readings, and get a copy. I honestly don't know which to recommend; whichever I do, I will regret bitterly and be overcome by guilt. Therefore, I shall give in to my sentimental self and propose to all of you nautical types The Queen Of The South. Not an Alatriste novel.

 

[Shanlung]

If you good people haven't read the Captain Alatriste novels of Arturo Perez-Reverte, stop whatever you are doing, do not stop even to brush your teeth, get into Amazon or run to Readings, and get a copy. I honestly don't know which to recommend; whichever I do, I will regret bitterly and be overcome by guilt. Therefore, I shall give in to my sentimental self and propose to all of you nautical types The Queen Of The South. Not an Alatriste novel.

On backburner with 4 other books, but I finishing one other very soon today