The Coastwatchers - Eric A. Feldt

FERDINAND (I have it in caps because the author had it in caps) is an operation that distributed men throughout the South Pacific with radios. Those men would then watch and report the locations and movements of Japanese troops. Often working with natives, the men had to be able to not only refute Japanese propaganda but know who to trust to survive.

Some natives were loyal and others helped the Japanese. There are a lot of close calls and fighting with the land. The jungle is not a place to be trapped unless you have an idea of how to live off the land. 

The author of the book was initially in charge of the operation. He was taken away from it later on due to a medical issue, but his history is pretty complete. Instead of hearing one point of view, this is more of an overview of FERDINAND as a whole. I read about many different people and what happened to most of them. These people were courageous and stories like this are too often overlooked and forgotten.

The book does have some pictures here and there, but there weren't that many. Also, I was kind of hoping there would be some statistics in there. As in, here's how many men were part of the operation, and here's how many were lost. It's not a huge deal, but it would have been nice to know.

This book is a good read, and I would recommend it to anyone who wants to learn about some truly heroic people. These men fought adversity, the enemy, people they believed to be friends and sometimes each other. They saved countless lives, but not all of them made it out alive. They should be remembered. Good Book!

The Time Machine - H. G. Wells

It's a classic. What else can I say?

Okay, so probably most people have read and/or seen this in some form. A man makes a machine and travels forward in time to the year "Eight Hundred and Two Thousand Seven Hundred and One." I was so confused every time I read that. Later I learned it was 802,701. After seeing it, I realize it makes me look like an idiot, but living in the 1900s and 2000s, I wasn't really expecting a book written in 1895 to go forward that far in time.

Anyway, back to the story. It was...interesting. The world has changed. The scientist comes across two different types of human, and neither is what he's expecting. He seems to change the environment (for the worse) and gets out before he's attacked. He goes forward in time a few more times before returning to where he started.

Overall, I thought it was okay. The pages-long paragraphs could be a little tedious, especially when they weren't really adding anything to the story. The book itself isn't that long to begin with, but even some of that could probably have been removed. I just kept imagining myself sitting there listening to a man telling this story, uninterrupted, for hours and staying interested. I'm not certain it would happen, even if I believed him. In that time (even now for that matter), it would be a hard tale to accept. Didn't really hold my interest the way I thought it would.

The Prison Memoirs of a Japanese Woman - Fumiko Kaneko

I don't remember where I originally heard about this young woman, but I found her memoirs online and decided to read them.

Fumiko was born to parents who didn't understand love. Her father abandons her, and her mother doesn't seem to care about her either. She gets passed from one uncaring relationship to another when all she wants to do is learn and find a place in the world.

This memoir is heartbreaking. You realize that in the beginning, because her fate is revealed before the memoir starts. Also, the narrative ends before anything related to her prison sentence is discussed, so there is nothing in the memoir about that.

There isn't any happy ending. Fumiko didn't really have much happiness in her life. In the end, she supposedly took her own life, and the whole thing is just sad. If you decide to read this, know ahead of time that you're dealing with some seriously depressing stuff, and there's not any relief from it throughout the book. I don't want to say it was a "good" book, the subject isn't good or happy in the least, but I'm glad that Fumiko was able to tell her story before her life was cut short.

The Old Mine's Secret - Edna Turpin

I will readily admit that I got sucked in by this cover. I was at gutenberg.org, and it immediately caught my eye. It reminded me of the old Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys covers, and I instantly knew I had to read it. Did I know a single thing about it? Nope.

This book is about the residents of a small town in Virginia as they cope with WWI. Young Dick stumbles upon a mine and wants to find some silver to buy a Liberty Bond, but he wants to do it on his own. The other children compete to find out who can grow the best Victory Garden, and everyone wonders why Dick is so cagey about what he' s up to. With the war going on, a bit of German paranoia affects the town, and some of the residents begin to suspect one another.

This is a tale of two halves. More than the first half felt like a detailed PSA about WWI. I did learn that cotton was so much more versatile than I thought! And then there's the woman who gives a passionate speech to the man who isn't rationing his food while her son may be starving as he fights for freedom. There is a lot of things related to the war going on, just not a lot of mine secrets.

In the second part, the espionage picked up, and the mine was important at the end. Only the very last part was Nancy Drew-ish, making it a bit of a letdown in that respect. My fault for having any kind of expectations, and I take responsibility for that. If I had only read the first half of this book, I wouldn't be that impressed, but the second half pulled its weight fairly well. That leaves me with something of a split decision on the book as a whole. And that doesn't have anything to do with my expectations. The first half was kind of strange any way I look at it.

A couple of my favorite quotes are: "The worst thing that could happen to this world, to us, would be to be infected by the germs of hate." "All the waste and woe of this World War will be worth while if they make people realize the horror and wickedness of war and out an end to it forever." And finally, "And what's a man's life for but to take in his two hands and put where it is needed?"

Overall, it's good and awkward. There were some real gems in there quote-wise, but it was also unbalanced. I'm just on the fence with this one.

The Most Dangerous Game - Richard Connell (short story)

This is going to be a short review, since I literally read this before I went to bed. It was so short that I plan on reading another fiction book before I switch back to a memoir. The reason I decided to read this was because I saw an old movie (1932) based on this book, and I wanted to see how this story inspired that movie.

I'm not going to say much about the story. You can find it and read it in a very short amount of time if it interests you. What I will say is that an avid hunter finds himself stranded on an island with a man who hunts some very unusual prey.

I liked the story. You don't have time for much character development, but you get enough to know who stands for what. You also have to pay attention at the end or you might not quite understand what happened. When I compared it to the movie, I like the story much better. I understand they had to pad the story to make it movie-length, but thank goodness I didn't have to read about a woman being dragged around in a life or death mental game. Because honestly, if the hunter was as good as he claimed to be he should have found her pretty quick. Anyway, the story is interesting, and I enjoyed it (minus the doggie death obviously). Good Story!

Propaganda: The Art of Persuasion: World War II - Anthony Rhodes

I'm fascinated by propaganda and its effect on people. I knew it was widely used during WWII, and I wanted to find a book about it. I specifically purchased a physical copy of this book. Some things you just need to be able to see, and on top of that, this book isn't available digitally.

This book covers the major powers: Germany, Italy, Great Britain, United States, the "New Order" (occupied areas), Soviet Union (as it was known at the time) and Japan. The author goes through who was in charge of the propaganda, their approach to it, and how effective it was. After that, there are examples of how each country used propaganda in posters, film, stamps and other media.

I thought this book was great. It really went in-depth to show what was going on in each country and how they dealt with feeding information to the public. Some countries were more straightforward than others. And I loved the description of America: "The American people, who have no objection to being prevailed upon to buy anything from toothpaste to a helicopter, balk at any attempt to influence them politically..." and "Before mid-1940, no government-sponored [sic] attempt to influence Americans about foreign affairs existed - for the very good reason that it would almost certainly have had the reverse of the effect intended." So true then and now, and I found it amusing.

Back to the book. It really was interesting, and I highly recommend it if you have any interest in how the various major countries used propaganda during the war. I saw a lot of similarities between the effects of the propaganda and the way social media can turn into an echo chamber with its algorithms. It's pretty easy to get your hands on an affordable used copy of this book, and it's pretty educational. Good Book!

Ghosts of the ETO - Jonathan Gawne

As I've researched more about WWII over the years, I heard about some of the deception tactics that were used. I knew going into this that I might struggle a bit, since it isn't a memoir, but I still wanted to know more about the subject, so I dove right in.

This book is comprehensive. You can really tell that the author did a lot of research on the topic. Many pictures are included, and I appreciated those. I discovered that a deception operation was a lot more detailed than I imagined, and these guys had to learn as they went. I admire them for that. I also appreciated how much attention to detail went into every operation, especially after they got their bearings and knew what they were doing.

The book itself gets pretty dry. With the amount of research the author did, it feels like he wanted to add everything he found. I understand adding in dates, but times and who was in charge of which position went in one ear and out the other for me. With the common tasks of some of the operations, the descriptions can also be a tad repetitive. I hope this doesn't get taken the wrong way, but I did fall asleep twice while reading this. That's never happened to me before.

Okay, so overall, I learned a lot, and I'm glad that I read the book. I feel like it would best be appreciated by someone who has some kind of connection to the unit. A descendant who wants to know more about their ancestor who couldn't talk about their war stories, or no one believed them. 

Side note for Kindle users: I read this on a Paperwhite. The included paperwork, some of the pictures and maps especially were hard to read (the maps were tiny). If you're interested in more of a general overview of what the unit did, you might want to look elsewhere. If you want more in-depth details, this is the book for you!

Richardson's First Case - Basil Thomson

I picked this book up because the author led a pretty interesting life, and it led me to want to see if he could write as well.

Two murders in the same night give Richardson the chance he wants to prove himself and become an inspector. It's not a solo endeavor, and the crime is not something that is straight forward or easy to solve.

The title is a bit misleading as it leads you to believe this book is about Richardson solving the mystery. He plays his part, of course, but so do others. There are quite a few scenes where Richardson doesn't appear at all, and he holds the title of constable for the entire case. Not a big deal. I even liked how everyone played their part like they would in a normal case. Most times, there's the one detective, and he gets all the glory.

Overall, this was a basic mystery, but it was also enjoyable. I thought it was well written and holds up nicely for being written in 1933. I do want to mention that the cover to this book is terrible, and I hate it. Poor Basil couldn't have had anything to do with it, but I wondered if maybe Richardson liked sunflower seeds. But nope (at least not in this case). It was just weird. I liked the book well enough, just hated the cover. Good Story! (Just not the cover!)