Ghost Soldiers by Hampton Sides: April Book of the Month
 

Here it is, the first Book of the Month!


I have my copy ordered, do you?


If anyone is going to post a message with spoilers, mention it first please!

Some folks mentioned the idea of waiting until everyone has finished reading the book before allowing discussions. I think we would lose too much momentum that way. Just everyone be considerate of those that might not be as far into the book as you are, don't spoil the suprises. If this way doesn't work this month, we can change things for next month.

(Buy the way, the Allies win WWII.)

Wooooo Hoooooo!! Just went to the library and found an unabridged audioCasette copy!! I'm in the car for over an hour a day and I listen to audio books as an alternative to right wing koolaid so this is going to work out great!

I floated the idea of waiting until month two to discuss book one but hereby withdraw the suggestion. But, I think the Spoiler warning is a good idea.

Thank goodness it ended up Ghost Soldiers. I ordered from amazon.com used before the official close of voting. Hopefully will receive sometime today.

(and I'm already mulling my potential picks, although I don't know where I'll fall in the rotation. I'm pretty sure on two of the three, still trying to settle on a third choice. And you may end up being surprised at what I offer ...)

yeah, what about that, slarti? what was the rest of the list. you DID pick the whoel order didn;t you? You wouldn't have been so lazy as to JUST pick the first chooser, would you?

please post the entire list in the initial thread.


Or were you just going to go in the order that the final list of participants was in, begining with mr noodle?

:D

What I was thinking was to have a drawing every month, just to keep a little excitement. It would stink for me to know right now that I was due to pick books some time in 2006. This way, everyone can hope it will be themselves doing the choosing next month, and everyone is equally likely to come up for next month. And if you don't get chosen next month, you can always hope for the following month.

But okay, if I get enough votes to post a whole list, I'll go and roll it up and post the results.

Please post opinions in the other thread, let's keep this one for Ghost

Yeah I have some good ideas for picks too! Now, to narrow them down....

I like the pick every month idea ... that does sound fun, not knowing ...

just so long as people that have already picked are removed from the remaining pool.

Don't worry, no repeats until everyone has a turn

I love it so far. But why were the Phillipine islands such a hotly contested battle ground to begin with?

I haven't gotten the book yet, and outside of the Manhattan Project, my primary interest in WWII was the european theater, but I'm guessing that there was high strategic importance as far as being able to place airbases and naval supply stations in the Phillipines.

I do know, for example, that the longest runway in the Pacific Theater was on Tinian Island ... in the Marianas island chain, which is to the East of the Philippines.

You can command a lot of Pacific real estate if you hold the Phillipines.

So, Friday night (Sat morn) around 2:00 am I'm channel surfing before crashing and on the History Channel is a show about crucial Japanese battles of WWII and damned if they don't do a whole show about the the very subject of the book. There was so much footage of battles/soldiers, the landscape and even McArthur. I had read a good size chunk of the book by last night and it was so cool to see actual footage of the people and events!! I think I'll be checking in on the History Channel more often.

I read about this annual event memorializing the Death March in the local paper in NM last week.

I believe that the control of the Philippines meant that you controlled a large supply of the oil that made the Japanese airplanes fly.

I go to sleep to the History Channel a lot. I just wish they didn't switch over to infomercials at around 3 or 4AM ... it is VERY annoying to try to drift off to sleep to be jarred awake by that freak Billy Mayes and his latest "Oxy Clean" miracle.

Bastards.

If they could enthuse somewhat more quietly, perhaps??