NIGHTLY READING THREAD: Welcome to Edition #73 of #GMGReads. Every night through this weird time, I'm tweeting out a list of my five favorite books around a general theme—and a link to an indie bookstore where you can order them online....
Tonight, continuing this week's Memorial Day theme of books on modern wars and following up on last night's novels of Iraq/Afghanistan, here are my favorite first-person memoirs of fighting in those wars, all available from Iowa's @prairie_lights:
One aside, it's not a book, but if you've never seen @AlexHortonTX's essay "Reading ‘Slaughterhouse-Five’ in Baghdad," take the time and read it now: washingtonpost.com/arts-entertain…
1) Nate Fick's (@ncfick) ONE BULLET AWAY, about being a Recon Marine, is probably the closest we have to a genuine "classic" of Iraq/Afghanistan memoirs: prairielightsbooks.com/book/978061877…
2) John Crawford's THE LAST TRUE STORY I'LL EVER TELL follows how one National Guardsman unexpectedly found himself on active duty, invading Iraq, and then patrolling Baghdad for a year: prairielightsbooks.com/book/978159448…
3) Craig M. Mullaney's UNFORGIVING MINUTE mixes the perspective of Army training for firefights in Afghanistan with Mullaney's return to teaching new officers at the Naval Academy: prairielightsbooks.com/book/978014311…
PS: Two memoirs I've not read but that have been highly recommended are Kayla Williams' LOVE MY RIFLE MORE THAN YOU, prairielightsbooks.com/book/978039332… Jess Goodell's SHADE IT BLACK, about her time with a Marine mortuary affairs unit in Iraq. prairielightsbooks.com/book/978161200…
4) I'm biased since he's a friend, but Jason Whiteley's FATHER OF MONEY is a powerful first-person narrative of a superpower lost in the mess of Iraq: prairielightsbooks.com/book/978159797…
5) The start of the war in Iraq feels like a 1000 years ago, but it came as blogs first took off, and two of the most original voices to emerge were "mil-bloggers," Colby Buzzell, who wrote MY WAR prairielightsbooks.com/book/978042521… Matt Gallagher, who wrote KABOOM. prairielightsbooks.com/book/978030681…
Those are tonight's #GMGReads. What are your favorite memoirs of war? Share! #avidreadersunite
