Flags of Our Fathers

 Flags of Our Fathers - James Bradley with Ron Powers - Three Stars ☆☆☆

Three Stars ☆☆☆ - I might read it again.

This is the very emotional story of US Marine Company E (Easy), 2nd Battalion, 28th Regiment, 5th Division, and some of their contributions to the WW2 assault and capture of Iwo Jima, including both raisings of the US flag on Mount Suribachi. Additionally, it is the author's attempt to understand his father through the father's actions during the battle on Iwo Jima.

Per the author during the battle for Iwo Jima, Easy Company's total force comprised 310 men, including replacements, who at the end of the battle, counted 50 survivors. The total force of the 2nd Battalion, including replacements, was 1,688. The number of killed or wounded during the action was 1.511. 177 walked off the island, 91 of whom had been previously wounded and returned to combat.

George W. Parker

Planet Gor Series

Tarnsman of Gor - John Frederick Lange Jr. as John Norman - Two Star ☆☆
Priest-Kings of Gor - Two Star ☆☆
Slave Girl of Gor - Two Star ☆☆
Kajira of Gor - Two Star ☆☆

Two Stars - I read them but I don't think I will ever reread them.

There are 37 titles in John Norman's Gor Series. I've listed these four together as I feel they all work at the same level. And I figure all thirty-seven titles would fit in this category. There's a thin overarching interplanetary plot in each title. Then an individual protagonist plot provides the grist of the title. There are large areas of Gorian factoids (How the boats are designed. Where the metal in the slave's collar was obtained. What letters in the Gorian language mean. And on and on and on.) And then there are the female slaves and how they find their freedom in their slavery. 

I found the interplanetary plot interesting. Mostly the individual protagonist was fun and action-oriented. My eyes glazed over while reading the Gorian factoids until I just started skimming them. What should I say about the female slaves? (Have you seen the Megan Fox SI swimsuit photographs? All her poses look like they were lifted from the pleasure slaves of Gor.) Sex sells. That's why there are 37 titles in the series.

George W. Parker

Armies of the Night

Armies of the Night - Norman Mailer - Five Stars ☆☆☆☆☆*

Wait. What? Five stars?

I have read Armies of the Night at least three times and will probably read it again. By my rating system that makes it a five star book. There is an asterisk up there though. 

I have only read the "History as a Novel" section once. Now, after my initial reading, when I pick up the book, I go to the "The Novel as History" section. I enjoy it a lot. What Mailer was trying to do as a writer in providing two distinct views of the Pentagon March is interesting. I just don't equally enjoy both views. Does that make it a two-and-a-half-star book? Maybe. But then again, when I reread Moby Dick I now skip over the "Is a whale a fish?" discussions and stay with the meat of the story. Does that lessen Moby Dick? I don't think so.

George W. Parker

Doctor Zhivago

 Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak - One Star ☆ 

Yeah, yeah, I know... won the Nobel Prize and the Soviet Union would not let Pasternak leave the country to accept his award. But I didn't find it an interesting enough read to finish. One Star.

It's just another windswept Russian steppe story withering in the summer heat, freezing in the winter cold with a war to supply some action. Isn't that a Russian genre? Tolstoy did that. Solzhenitsyn did that.

I'm not saying it isn't a good read. I am saying I didn't finish it.

Oh, and the movie is too long also.

George W. Parker

Books vs ebooks

I can't begin to estimate the tonnage of paper I have moved from house to house in my lifetime. So I have finally broken down and accepted ebooks as my standard reading method. Lying on the couch or sitting at the kitchen table my phone is just easier to use. From John Norman to Norman Mailer, H.R. McMaster to Edward Snowden the books are out there.

But, like many old LPs when you are trying to find them on CD, you may not find some books out there. That is why I still have two bookcases of "real" books waiting to be boxed up for my next move.

George W. Parker

A New Effort

Once again I am taking a stab at "Socializing" and "Connecting." (I wonder what the over and under is on the number of days this will last?)

I have updated my website - https://www.georgewparker.com

and consolidated my blogs into one so it is the same on:

Blogger - https://georgewparkertalking.blogspot.com/

Goodreads - https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4784146.George_W_Parker/blog

Website - https://www.georgewparker.com/blog

From 2021 - KISS

If you write, you probably want to be read. This is not Tolstoy's Russia, all snowed in with nothing else to do and nowhere else to go. People have so many other options (distractions) today: TV, Movies, Video consoles, Pokemon Go, and if nothing else they can solitaire on their phones. I think when you write it's important to follow the KISS method (Keep It Simple Stupid.) Make your story accessible. Keep it moving. Make it about something. Be entertaining!

George W. Parker

From 2021 - Work

Writing is work. Thinking is a chargeable operation. Aside from actually stringing works together there's research, plotting out the story, character development, editing, making time to write, and a thousand other things to do before you even get to the selling your product stage; which I find is the hardest of all work. 

Writing has been the one constant in my life for over fifty years. I have set it on a shelf for extended periods while I tried to make a living and raise a family. But it was up there on the shelf staring down at me at all times. I always knew it was waiting.

It's work. It's fun and exciting. It's humbling and frustrating. It is what I do.

George W. Parker

From 2021 - New Year Media Clean-up

 I have spent the last three days updating my customer-facing author internet points. I have bounced around from Amazon to Google to Apple to Barnes and Noble to Smashwords to Facebook to Instagram to YouTube to Goodreads and to a bunch of other web places. Thirty-eight specific spots where I verified access, checked links, and standardized my written content, fonts, images, and color schemes. And I haven't even started checking my gaggle of email addresses!

I still need to link this blog to my Amazon Author page, my personal website, (Which looks good in a browser and good on a phone; but I ported it over to my Facebook business page and the covers are all over the place. Give me a break! And I'm not sure it's a viable presence hidden below four other tabs anyway.) edited my favicon and who knows what else. 

I don't think I am doing anything special having all these access points. I think we all do everything we can to sell a book. There seems to be a new platform popping up every day. That can lead to a haphazard look and approach. Like me, keep refining that "Look." If you had a "Look" before you ever uploaded a file to Kindle, maybe you are a Marketer.

George W. Parker