Tuesday, November 11 2003

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

 John McCrae
      

Four years ago, I posted a reading list on Remembrance Day. I don't remember if I considered updating the list every year but if I did I haven't been very good about it.

This is the list from 1999 :

• The Proud Tower , Barbara Tuchman
• Johnny Got His Gun , Dalton Trumbo
• The Underpainter , Jane Urquhart
• The Third Republic , William Shirer
• Berlin Stories , Christopher Isherwood

Here is a list for 2003:

• The Guns of August , Barbara Tuchman
• Paris 1919 - Six Months That Changed the World , Margaret MacMillan
• Un dimanche à la piscine à Kigali , Gil Courtemanche
• We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families , Philip Gourevitch
• A Problem from Hell , Samantha Power
• Night , Elie Wiesel
• The Iliad , Homer

Maciej offered the following:

• Voyage au bout de la nuit , Celine
• The Magic Mountain , Thomas Mann
• All Quiet on the Western Front , Erich Maria Remarque
• The Good Solider Schweik , Jaroslav Hasek

David Tilley sent along these suggestions:

• Her Privates We , Frederick Manning is around and reprinted every now and again. It is the one of the best at conjuring the feeling of the thing.
• The Broken Years , Bill Gammage is a heartbreaking Australian account, mostly based on letters.
• Up the Line to Death , Brian Gardner remains one of the best poetry collections.
• Winged Victory , W.V.M. Yeats is cumulatively extraordinary. There's a heap of undergraduate philosophy which you can skim - but it has a hypnotic fascination once you realise this is how people thought their way through and to their own destruction.. Cumulatively it paints a picture of anomic horror that is unsurpassed.
• Goodbye to All That , Robert Graves is important. So is Memoirs of a Fox Hunting Man by Siegfried Sassoon.

I would also recommend both Joseph Heller's Catch-22 and William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich but not today.

I will try to find suitable links for the books throughout the day. It's easy enough to find them at one of the big online booksellers, but I'd recommend stopping by your local library instead.

If you've got a good link for one of the books mentioned or have suggestions of your own, please let me know .