Getting a bit chilly....

I've recently been reading alot on several blogs about reading challenges. It seems like a good idea if you need some motivation to get through their massive piles of books. For me, I dont think that I could do it, simply because I have a great deal of trouble keeping track of my books. I have enough trouble updating this because I tend to blast through books so quickly at times that I move on to the next one and its only the really outstanding books that stick in my brain.

I have developed a very bad habit of clearing my memory warehouse of things that I dont think I need to remember anymore in order to fit more in. 

Well with the sudden shift to super cold weather it made me think of Ken Folletts new book Winter of the World that came out last week. A very good friend had lent me the first in the trilogy; Fall of Giants a week before. Its a book nearly a thousand pages long and the first chapter seems to be about mining in Wales. I'll be honest that I did not think that I would get through it.

I have never been happier to be wrong.

It was a great book and then I was in luck that only three days later Winter of the World was released and so I rushed out and purchased it.

 The book follows the children of the characters from Fall of Giants and the challenges that they face.

The book starts in 1933 and shows how fascism rooted itself in Germany through fear and intimidation. The book quickly jumps through the 30's and introduces the reader to the fight against fascism in Britain and the clash of communism and fascism in the Spanish Civil War, finally leading to WWII, from the Blitz, to Pearl Harbour, D-Day and the Pacific conflict and how all of these things affected the individuals in the books story.

This is not a book about war, it is a book about people. The brilliant thing about Winter of the World is that because the book takes place over so many years, the characters that you are introduced to at the beginning go through so many changes throughout. So people who you might take an instant dislike to, by the end have matured and become characters that you deeply care about. And of course, characters that you may have liked at first have been shaped by their situations into very dark people.

I read a review of this book that says that Winter of the World could be read on its own. I agree to that book to a point as you can read it on its own and it becomes more about the historical events and how they are viewed from the different individuals perspective. However, if you have read Fall of Giants then it becomes more about the people and how you will look at the children of the characters that you loved in the first tale and want their descendants to do well, or badly in some cases.

Sadly it will probably be two years until the last instalment and I am very interested to see at what point within the 20th century it will be set. This book is a brilliant read and whilst the historical events (particularly the spy ring in Spain) may not be perfect, it is a very good portrayal of events and you will get very emotionally invested in the lives of the people in the book, which is what a good book should do.

When we owe so much to so few, which few are they?

I was recently walking through Waterstones to see if there was anything that took my fancy as I wasn't sure what kind of mood I was in. I looked on a stand that was advertising their "book of the month" and it is a book called Double Cross by Ben Macintyre.

I looked at the book and the premise was that the book is about the secret agents that helped to fool the Axis forces in the second world war with a focus on their actions in the lead up to D-Day.

I'm sure that the book is good, but I couldn't help but feel a little shocked that it seems to be near identical to a book that I bought and read a couple of weeks before called Operation Fortitude by Joshua Levine, which is about the exact same topic and even the covers are similar.

Basically at the end of the day, it simply means that you are spoilt for choice when it comes to books concerning the Double Cross system in WWII.

Operation Fortitude by Joshua Levine is a really good read, and one of the best parts about it is that although it is a non fiction work, it reads like a story making it very easy to plough through it.

Winston Churchill suggested that the best truths must be protected by a bodyguard of lies. That is the best way to sum up the Double Cross system that was developed by a man named Dudley Clarke.

Dudley Clarke is the man that masterminded the system for creating double agents in the war. I wish that Ken Follett had read this book before writing his book Winter of the World, which whilst amazing, is so very wrong when it discusses spies during the Spanish Civil War.

Operation Fortitude is a fascinating read that shows you how it was that a few individuals took it on themselves to spin a web of lies that the Germans would believe. In many of these cases, these men were Germans who knew that whilst their actions were traitorous they knew that Germany had to be rid of the horrors that Hitler had brought. In reading this you get to find out how it was the Germans sent so few spies to Britain because the double agents that were working in the country had created so many fake agents that the Weirmacht believed that they did not need more agents in Britain.

There are brilliant little tales such as how one agent took his money from the Weirmacht, put it down at a card table just to scare his handler, a certain Lieutenant Flemming, which would become the inspiration for Casino Royale. Or how Sir David Sterling when creating his SAS force, asked Dudley Clarke what he should call his new special forces unit. Clarke replied that he should call it the SAS as he had created a fake SAS unit to confuse the Germans in Africa and that if there was a real unit fitting the description of his fictional one, it would back up all the fake reports he was feeding the Germans. Lastly how both the camp and the board of people that regulated its activities were called Camp Twenty, as twenty in Roman numerals is XX. Shocking that the Germans never worked that one out. And of course, the rest is history.

One chapter of this book that wound me up is the over whelming evidence that Britain warned the United States that Pearl Harbour would be attacked for months before the attack but due to bungling idiot J Edgar Hoover (head of the FBI, famous for hating homosexuals and Jewish people, although himself a cross dresser and its STRONGLY hinted that he and his male assistant were overly friendly) the attacks went ahead. How no one stepped us to shoot that idiot I do not understand.

It is sad that although the people of Britain owe so much to such a few men, they have never really gained any recognition for their heroic actions. Because many of these eccentric men had to live in worlds of their own creation, they did not transition well back into normal life after the war and they also feared revenge from Germany.

A great read, I would say that it is certainly a holiday book for many.