Jason’s Comments (group member since Jul 01, 2014)

Jason’s comments from the Advance After Combat group.

As an update, Pleiku is awesome. Highly recommend.

I also read The Sorrow of War, which is a novel about an NVA veteran written by an NVA veteran. It's a good companion piece to The Things They Carried.

EggSalad wrote: "I was about to buy an ebook copy of OpTale, but fucking pdf format, srsly? Grrr. Is there a way to get an epub or mobi format? -- these convert well in calibre. pdf format is shi..."

It's something I've thought about doing, I just kind of forgot about the book for a while.

In fact I just looked through an old hard drive and it doesn't look like I even have the final version in word anymore. I'll have to try to recover it from the PDF to convert it.

Mitchell wrote: "http://www.lulu.com/shop/jason-young/..."
That's the one. I bought quite a few, but gave them all away. I'll get more.

Mitchell wrote: "We could always read: OpTale

Can you send me a signed copy? Apparently, it's not available anywhere."
I would have to buy some. I don't even have a finished copy myself. I should get on that.

I'd be up for that. I'm reading Matterhorn right now which is good but war novels always kind of just make me wish I was reading a memoir instead. I see the value of them, but I'm distracted by trying to parse out what actually happened.

My votes:
History: If I Die in a Combat Zone: Box Me Up and Ship Me Home if a novel counts. If not: Homage to Catalonia

Sci-fi: Leviathan Wakes
Grab bag: A Sport and a Pastime

We could always read: OpTale

I'm trying to remember how Windrow presented it. I think he probably did spend time talking about caches, but he also spends a lot of time talking about how far off Fall's estimations were. I feel like he spent more time on the ordinance expended that what was still in reserve.

I don't think new evidence should really change the way we think about how the siege ended, the French weren't still there counting shells and just trying to wait until what they thought the cache was was expended. In some ways maybe it shows that the Viet Minh did a better job than anyone has given them credit up to now.

This does highlight a big gap that I've been aware of, and trying to fill, in that I haven't read anything from the VM/NLF/PAVN perspective (unless you count Fire in the Lake [ :O) ]) from either war. I have a couple on my wish list, and will some day finish Infinite Jest and get back to my non-fiction reading.

I haven't, but I will now. Right up my alley.

Social media is dead.

I'm still reading Infinite Jest, so I haven't had anything to say.

I'm reading Infinite Jest. It's probably going to take me the rest of the year.