Books

The Inimitable Jeeves

PG Wodehouse stitches a bunch of inane short stories into an insufferable novel. 

Quoting from my contemporaneous review:

“Just the worst. If you’re the type of person who laughs by turning down the corners of your mouth, lifting your chin, and pushing small chuckles from deep in your throat out of your nose, you might find something to like here. No likable or interesting characters, no development, no unifying story. Just more or less detached episodes of obnoxious people getting into silly, boring situations. The writing is nowhere near as good as its reputation suggests.”

I stand by that. I will add as additional flavor that this was the end of my run of mining Paul Graham’s book recommendations. 

Not good, not funny, not worth reading.

Infantry Attacks

Erwin Rommel recounts his WWI experience in minute detail. 

The man went on to be one of the greatest forces for evil in the 20th century, but in WWI he was just an aggressive lieutenant with a strong memory. 

This is a military history deep cut. It’s rare to see the level of tactical detail that he provides, which is incredible if you’re into that kind of thing, but it’s not for casual readers. 

If you’ve read We Were Soldiers Once, and you want to get the level of detail about WWI that you got about Ia Drang, this is a great pick. Otherwise, you can safely skip it.