1/01/12

HAVE A HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!!


WELCOME 2012!!!!!




We brought in the New Year at my house in a rather boring fashion, going to bed a little after midnight and still kind of under the weather, especially since I infected Adam and he will now spend his long weekend recovering, poor thing.
But, that being said, its nice to have some down time.  I started my exercising again, a little and have been eating more than I should, but I am sick so oh well...


You know, when I get to a book of the day that I really like, I get overwhelmingly excited.  So, when I looked up on the shelf and saw this title as my next selection, I smiled.  

One of the best books I've read

To continue my obsession with the Great War, I will add yet another memoir about a soldier's experience in the midst of the chaos.  Good-Bye to All That by Robert Graves is a beautiful and haunting book.  Unlike the book I featured yesterday by Junger, this book was written by a writer and his language adds some horrific depth to the war experience.  I will admit, the WWI class I took in college allowed me to read some of the most amazing books of my life and I cannot thank that professor enough, I do not know if anyone else who took those classes with me loved the books as much as I did, perhaps its my fascination with WWI itself, but this book, along with so many others I read during that class have crept into my top 25 list, I must say.  

"London seemed unreally itself.  Despite the number of uniforms in the streets, the general indifference to, and ignorance about, the War surprised me.  Enlistment still remained 

voluntary.  The universal catch-word was 'Business as usual.'"  -p 142

Good-Bye to All That

By: Robert Graves

Published: 1929

One of the places that Adam and I insisted on visiting when we went to England in May of last year was the Imperial War Museum.  It was an amazing experience and we both enjoyed it because Adam and I both have a hankering for history, if you guys didn't already know.  One of the most awesome (even if it was a bit cheesy) was the walk through the trenches display.  

One of the best parts of the exhibit was the fact that the entire place smelled like gas lol.  It was dark and loud and lights would flash out of nowhere... so it was rather creepy, nothing like the horrific reality of the millions of soldiers who found an early grave within them.  

When the world is red and reeking,
And the shrapnel shells are shrieking,
And your blood is slowly leaking,
Carry on.

When the broken battered trenches,
Are like the bloody butchers' benches,
And the air is thick with stenches,
Carry on.

Since I post in the blog daily (usually) and I read the same book on the nook for days at a time, I am just going to start to do with my digital library what I do with my physical library and feature a book and tell you about it and how to get it if you are so inclined to do so....

This was one of the books I purchased with my Christmas money, and I have read about fifty pages of it.  I have a fascination with the Crusades and the motivations and the ongoing struggle between the east and the west.  

Title:  The Crusades: The Authoritative history of the War for the Holy Land

By: Thomas Asbridge

Published: 2010    Price: 9.99 nook book

This Day in History

1808 – The importation of slaves into the United States is banned.