Inspired (plagiarizing?) by the AceofSpadesHQ Sunday Morning book thread, I thought that from now on I would include some photos and information of awesome personal libraries from around the world in my book related posts.

Today’s picture is of George Lucas’s research library at the Skywalker Ranch. The library has a full-time staff, and an inventory of over 27,ooo titles! Gad, I’m green with envy. For more details, check it out here: https://www.architecturaldigest.com/gallery/george-lucas-skywalker-ranch-tour.

Review of “This Fierce People” by Alan Pell Crawford

I found ‘This Fierce People’, by Alan Pell Crawford, to be an enjoyable and informative read. In my last post I explained why I was interested in this book, so I won’t go into detail in regards to that. This history of the Revolutionary War Southern Campaign accomplished what I had hoped it would do. It filled in a lot of gaps in my knowledge of this conflict.

Admittedly, I have read more in-depth histories regarding Nathaniel Greene’s “winning by losing but not being destroyed” guerilla war. But Mr. Crawford goes in-depth detailing the trials and tribulations that Greene trying to create an army from scratch in the Southern states. He also provides some good biographies for the main players on both sides.

For example, I learned quite a bit about the rebel leaders Daniel Morgan and Francis Marion, a.k.a The Swamp Fox, that I didn’t know before. I even learned quite a bit about the hated (by the Americans) British cavalry officer Banastre Tarleton. Tarleton was the inspiration for the brutal Colonel William Tavington in the movie ‘The Patriot’.

Surprisingly, the author doesn’t tell us much about the British generals Cornwallis and Clinton. I guess he figured that they have been covered in great depth elsewhere. Interestingly, he is also much more sympathetic to the disgraced American general Horatio Gates than other authors I have read.

However, there are some nits to need to be picked about this book. For one, the author devotes a whole chapter on Thomas Jefferson and his complex relationship with slavery. I feel that there is nothing wrong with pointing out the hypocrisy of how the writer of the Declaration of Independence owned slaves. Jefferson himself was fully cognizant of his own duplicity, never manumitted (freed) his own slaves.

My problem here is that Jefferson had practically no affect on the outcome of the Southern Campaign. I can’t tell if the author is gratuitously castigating Jefferson, or trying to provide a nuanced view of the man for the audience, or attempting to give an insight into the mindset of the Southern gentry. Regardless, in my opinion, the chapter is pointless padding.

Especially, since in the very the next chapter, we are informed of what little impact that he actually had regarding the Campaign. He was, briefly, the governor of Virginia during the latter stages of the War. He freely admitted that he was an ineffective wartime statesman. Even though Virginia was the richest of the 13 colonies, his administration was barely able to provide food and war materials to the rebels. His impact on the battlefield could have been summed up in one or two paragraphs.

Another glaring problem with this book is in the editing/proofreading. There is no question that the editing process in the publishing world has deteriorated over the past 20 years or so. The editing in the book is not the worst I’ve ever read, but there are several flaws in the book that really stood out to me. The most egregious mistake is in the chapter on the Battle of Cowpens. Numerous times throughout the chapter, the author mistakenly refers to Nathanial Green as the commander officer of the American forces. Daniel Morgan was the commanding officer. Green was miles away from the battle. Inexcusable.

For all that, I would still recommend this book if you are at all interested in the American Revolution, especially dealing with the Southern Campaign.

Intermission

What’s on my nightstand

Well lookee here, finally a book that I had on my autumn reading list!

When J.R.R. Tolkien published his Lord of the Rings novels, he changed the landscape fantasy writing forever. Before LoTR, fantasy novels were a diverse lot. You had “sword and sorcery” stories in the vein of Robert Howard’s ‘Conan’ serials. In a completly different approach, you had books like L. Sprague de Camp’s ‘The Incomplete Enchanter‘. The Enchanter books featured a scientist from our world who was able to use mathematics as a form of magic. This “magic” allowed him to travel to other fantastical worlds.

But fantasy stories after Tolkien’s LoTR became a bit hackneyed for years, if not decades. Practially all post-LoTR novels were set in a medieval European culture. You had the requisite kings & knights, castle & dragons, damsels-in-distress and of course an evil sorcerer plotting to take over the world. I’ve long lost interest in such stories. That is why I am always on the lookout for fantasy stories set in different settings and cultures. Larry Correia’s Graveyard of Demons fits the bill.

Graveyard of Demons is book 5 of the Saga of the Forgotten Warrior. This epic is set in a realm and culture similar to the Mughal Empire of India. While this series is certainly not equal to Tolkien’s works, it is still a very enjoyable saga. This series includes fully developed characters, fantastic worldbuilding, and enough court intrigue balanced by exciting battles to satisfy almost any fantasy reader. I’m truly geeked to start this book.

The only fly in the ointment is that this was supposed to be the finale of the series. Apparently, there is to be yet one more book that I will be forced to wait on. *Sigh*. The curse of First World problems.

Avast mateys, there be treasure in this here book!

About six weeks ago I posted my autumn reading list. You can see it here: https://www.mrvintageman.com/mrvintagemans-autumn-reading-list-for-2024. One of the books on list, called Enemies of All, was about pirates. I had this book in my Amazon shopping cart and was all ready to pay for it, but I hesitated. A nagging voice in the back of my brain was adamant that this book sounded very familiar. I knew I had not purchased this book, because it had just been released in May of this year. My memory may not be what it once was, but I am fairly certain I would remember purchasing a book if it was that recent.

So I closed out of Amazon, and wandered into the Vintage library. I perused every shelve thoroughly. And sure enough, I found a book on pirates that I had purchased at the Whydah Pirate Museum in West Yarmouth, Massachusetts (https://www.discoverpirates.com/).

Under the Black Flag, by David Cordingly, apparently covers much of the same ground the Enemies of All does. While both books do go into some detail of pirates of other eras and locations, their main focus is primarily on the so-called “Golden Age” of piracy. Since I had a book on pirates already, I decided to read it and not the one on my reading list.

I thoroughly enjoyed Under the Black Flag. It is a very concise and readable historical tale about the pirates who preyed on merchant ships in the Atlantic, Caribbean and Indian oceans. Mr. Cordingly in unsparing in the realities of piracy in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Contrary to how it is portrayed in the movies, the life of a pirate back then was usually short and brutal. However, it was an improvement of the life of being a sailor on a merchant ship at the time. Merchantmen were at the mercy of tyrannical ship captains and hard driving ship owners. They had no recourse whatsoever if they ran afoul of the powers that be. The life of a merchant marine was worse than even than that of a sailor on a British or French warship.

Which was a big part of the appeal of the pirate lifestyle. Before sailing, the crew chose their captain, set up the rules and regulations binding the crew while they were shipboard in writing, and determined how the spoils of their raids would be doled out, all before they set sail. A thoroughly democratic society in a world ruled by monarchies.

The only thing I found off-putting about this book is some of the non-sequiturs sprinkled throughout the book. The author is talking about a certain subject, but then suddenly wanders off on a entirely different tangent. For example, in the chapter “Into Action Under The Pirate Flag”, Mr. Cordingly goes delves into the strategies and tactics pirates used to hunt and capture their prey. Then he suddenly shifts into how ship battles have been portrayed by film and television, and closes out the chapter on the various actors and actresses who have portrayed pirates through the years! A worthy subject, but should have been a chapter of its own.

Still, a very delightful read. Highly recommend.

Interlude

What’s on my nightstand

The next book I am going to start reading also wasn’t on my autumn reading list. Refer to the cartoon above as to why. While I was preparing to purchase Enemies of All, The-Great-Big-Amazon-Corporation was kind enough to recommend the book This Fierce People to me. This Fierce People is a historical account of the battles and intrigues that occurred in the southern colonies during the Revolutionary War.

The southern portion of the Revolutionary War tends to get short shrift by most historians. Just about all Americans know about the major events in the Northern colonies. The “Sons of Liberty ” agitating for independence, the Boston Tea Party, the battles of Lexington and Concord, the battle at Bunker Hill, and Washington’s miraculous victory at Trenton on Christmas Day 1776, are events quite well known. Then a six year gap appears in our memory banks, until boom! The Continental Army and the French defeat the British at Yorktown 1783.

Which is too bad. Because some of the most important events in the War happened in the South during those six years. After 1778, the British, who were stymied in the North, shifted to a Southern strategy. They felt that there was a stronger loyalist faction in the Southern states who would be more sympathetic to Brits. They also figured that if they could conquer the southern colonies, the northern colonies would be isolated and eventually surrender. They misjudged the situation.

The American resistance to the Southern strategy started off badly for the Americans. From the loss of Charles Town (Charleston) and Savannah to British forces, and the disgraceful flight of the American General Horatio Gates, the fate of the Revolution were looking grim for the Americans. But things began to look up when the brilliant Quaker General, Nathaniel Greene, took command of the American forces in the South. The victories (or at least draws) at the Battle of Cowpens and the Battle of Guilford Courthouse, and Greene’s brilliant guerilla strategy in the Carolinas, all led to the final battle at Yorktown.

I think there are several reason’s for America’s amnesia about the Southern part of the War. A big one of course is slavery. A little hard to root for the states that insisted on independence, but also insisted on keep humans as chattel.

There was also the fact that there were indeed a lot of Loyalists in the South during the war. Because of that, the Southern campaign wasn’t just a Revolutionary War, is was also a sort of Civil War. Brother fought brother, and father fought son. It was a particularly bloody and viscous campaign.

My knowledge of the Southern campaign is spotty, so I am eager to crack open Alan Pell Crawford’s This Fierce People. I’ll let you know if it is any good.

NaNoWriMo

We are about a third of the way through the National Novel Writing Month (https://nanowrimo.org/). The idea is that during the month of November, aspiring writers set a personal goal to write a certain amount of words every day of the month. By the end of the month, the author has a very rough draft of a book. Admittedly, not a very good book, because writers are not supposed to concern themselves with spelling, punctuation or grammar while writing. The idea is to just get the book written, and worry about proofreading and editing later.

As Hemingway so elegantly stated, “the first draft of anything is shit”.

Of course, you can do this exercise any month of the year. The NaNoWriMo non-profit that spearheads this activity chose November. I’m sure they had their reasons, but it’s not important enough for me to look it up as to why.

I myself have contemplated trying to write a novel during NaNoWriMo, but the thought of it intimidates me. For some people writing comes easily. Not for me. While I am a reasonably decent writer, I find the activity of writing hard. Even writing simple blog posts can take me days. Hell, this post alone has taken me almost a week to complete.

Has anybody out there ever tried this challenge? If so, how did it go? Did you find it arduous, or was it a breeze? Were you happy with the results? I would really like to hear about your experience. Perhaps one day I will attempt the challenge myself. Should I ever do so, I will let you know how it went.

Finis

So, what book have you got your nose stuck into right now?

Christmas is rapidly approaching. Assuming you have been good boys and girls, what books are you going to ask Santa to leave under your Christmas tree?