Summertime and the Readin' Is Easy

While I am currently plodding through Edmund Morris' Theodore Rex and savoring the preparations for the Defense of Britain in Churchill's Their Finest Hour, it struck me that it's high time to inject some new, lighter reading into the list. Thus, I am launching out on some new books by old favorites:

A Good Clean Fight, by Derek Robinson. This is the continued story of Hornet Squadron, last seen fighting off the Nazi Blitz in Piece of Cake, now sent to North Africa. I've been meaning to get this for quite some time, but was put off a bit after reading Robinson's Goshawk Squadron, a story about a WWI fighter squadron that I didn't think anywhere near as good as P of C. But I still have high hopes for this one.

Sharpe's Battle, by Bernard Cornwell. The only infuriating thing about Cornwell's Richard Sharpe series, set during the Napoleonic Wars, is trying to sort them out chronologically. Cornwell keeps writing new ones and sticking them in between older novels. I have Sharpe's Rifles, Sharpe's Company and Sharpe's Eagle and it seems as good a time as any to plunge back into the Wars.

Flying Colours, by C.S. Forester. The eighth in the Horatio Hornblower series. The last one I read was Ship of the Line, which immediately proceeds this chronologically. Forester can't possible match Patrick O'Brian for the richness of his writing, but he still cranks out ripping good sea stories nonetheless.

SUPER BONUS BOOK RECOMMENDATION

In Their Finest Hour, Winnie mentions the "riddle of the sands", i.e., the question of German naval activity among the sandbars and shifting channels of the Southern Baltic. What he is referring to is, in fact, this:

The Riddles of the Sands, by Erskine Childers. It is, essentially, a very early spy novel, and tracks the adventures of two Brits in a small sailboat poking about that stretch of water in the early 1900's, slowly realizing what the Kaiser is up to.... A very entertaining book with much fascinating material on the art of sailing.