Book #311 – The Art of War by Sun Tzu

Have you ever had a book on your shelves for years and you keep telling yourself “I’ll read it eventually”? The book somehow survives several moves and purges of your library, and you can’t even remember when you got it, but you refuse to get rid of it because “it’s a classic!”. Well, I have about a dozen of those, but this is probably the oldest of that collection. To my credit, I spent near a month in China when I was 16, and have been mildly obsessed with Asian cultures ever since.

The Art of War was published roughly 500 BC, though it’s sort of uncertain the exact date, or even if Sun Tzu was the only author. However, the text, in various versions has been used for centuries to train and guide troops, both in Eastern and Western armies. The text has become standard reading for various military organizations and has inspired other works, such as Mao Tse-Tung’s On Guerrilla Warfare and T.E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Not only has the book been quotes to leading certain entities to victory in battle, it’s been used for the strategy of business, sports, and law. In fact, it has even impacted electronic sports (eSports) as pointed out by MIT grad David Sirlin in his book “Play to Win”.

Book #397 – Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier

Alright, took a month, but I’ve finally finished my selected book for North Carolina. I can hear the question now “Wait, North Carolina? But all of Nicholas Sparks’ books are more or less set in North Carolina. Why didn’t you choose one of those?” Funny story. I had originally planned Cold Mountain to be my Virginia book, but found that most of the story actually took place in the Blue Ridge Mountain range on the North Carolina / Tennessee border. And while the Blue Ridge Mountains do taper off into Virginia and Maryland, the only stationary location in the book is in North Carolina. I also started Cold Mountain before I started The Kitchen House, so I bumped it into the North Carolina spot. I will eventually get to Nicholas Sparks and his dozen or so books that are on the list.

“Cold Mountain is that movie with Nicole Kidman, right?” Yes. I knew about the movie well before I found out it was a book. Seems a lot of my list is like that, actually. Cold Mountain is tag-lined “An American Odyssey” and is the twin tales of Inman, a deserter of the Civil War, and Ada, a recently orphaned woman struggling to handle her father’s farm. While the book does remind me of the tales of Odysseus and his wife Penelope, I couldn’t help comparing the book to “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” in the Odyssey storytelling department.

Book #64 – Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

Originally published in 1961, Catch-22 gives a rather harsh, but hilariously convoluted adventures of the  256th Bombardment Squadron. The book mostly follows John Yossarian as he tries to keep from doing combat missions as a bombardier, but does switch to the various commanding officers and staff that affect and are affected by Yossarian. I should warn that the book enjoys being non-linear at times, and likes to jump around with the timeline for several chapters at a time.

The novel’s depictions of war, military incompetence, and general insanity have made it one of the most known anti-war novels along with Hemingway and Vonnegut, among others. While it depicts the European front of WWII, Heller stated the anti-war was sentiment was due to the Korean War and McCarthyism. Joseph Heller simply used his experiences as a bombardier in WWII as a basis for his statement.