Since finishing "Preston Katt," I've read "All the Light You Cannot See" and "The Nightingale" by Kristin Hannah. Both were excellent.
Recently, for the first time in my rememberable life, I've been getting to spots where reading isn't fun. I guess I get wrapped up in research, which is work, not fun. And maybe, just maybe, I know a little more about writing and I too readily see that the plot is Master Plot number 14 of 20, and the characters are Master Characters nos. 11 and 37 of 45. Maybe. But I found the two titles I mentioned above to be fun to read, for the goodness of the stories, the artistic mastery of the craft by the authors, and the depiction of WW II from female perspectives. There've been a boatload of other gender perspectives. Still, especially "Nightingale" gives a pretty hard look at some of the ugliest parts of the occupier vs. occupied scene. It wasn't all that way according to some other things I've read. See John Keegan's "Six Armies in Normandy" for instance. In the foreword he writes how some of the Normans felt like they had figured out how to get along with the Germans, and not from a collaborator approach, but a survivor approach, and they weren't too happy to have their towns blown to hell and all their cows killed in bombing raids. But then, neither book intended to be a horizon to horizon view of WW II in France. They were intended, I think, to give a prosciutto thin slice of it but truly rendered.
If you haven't read these books, I recommend them for your to read pile.
Recently, for the first time in my rememberable life, I've been getting to spots where reading isn't fun. I guess I get wrapped up in research, which is work, not fun. And maybe, just maybe, I know a little more about writing and I too readily see that the plot is Master Plot number 14 of 20, and the characters are Master Characters nos. 11 and 37 of 45. Maybe. But I found the two titles I mentioned above to be fun to read, for the goodness of the stories, the artistic mastery of the craft by the authors, and the depiction of WW II from female perspectives. There've been a boatload of other gender perspectives. Still, especially "Nightingale" gives a pretty hard look at some of the ugliest parts of the occupier vs. occupied scene. It wasn't all that way according to some other things I've read. See John Keegan's "Six Armies in Normandy" for instance. In the foreword he writes how some of the Normans felt like they had figured out how to get along with the Germans, and not from a collaborator approach, but a survivor approach, and they weren't too happy to have their towns blown to hell and all their cows killed in bombing raids. But then, neither book intended to be a horizon to horizon view of WW II in France. They were intended, I think, to give a prosciutto thin slice of it but truly rendered.
If you haven't read these books, I recommend them for your to read pile.