Allotments 4 All

I love to read and open up a book at every opportunity but I'd like a few recommendations from other people to spice up my reading life!

I like true stories, I'm not a girly flouncy reader (ie Mills & Boon, Catherine Cookson or lovey dovey type books) I like comedy a la Sue Townsend (but I've never liked the Adrian Mole series) I've read The Queen & I (so funny) and I've put Queen Camilla on my Christmas list.  I also like horror but in a more true crime sense.  Most of all I read books on war.  Mostly the First, Second and Vietnam Wars (although I'm very open to suggestions on other periods of history) I'd like to read some true stories of British soldiers serving in the first and second world war and I'd also like to read the same of German/Italian/Japanese etc etc soldiers but I'm having a little trouble tracking down what I'm after, can anybody help with some suggestions, please?  I have started a search on Amazon using their menu breakdowns and although I've found 5-6 books, I was hoping for more - although there's over a million military books listed on there, I might need a flask and sandwiches.

Thank you :)

I bought OH The Last Fighting Tommy. The life of Harry Patch. The only surviving veteran of the trenches. He hasn't read it yet but it looks good.
Lynne Macdonald wrote books about the first world war. OH has read some of those & says they were brilliant.  A lot of her books contain accounts by individual soldiers.
Janet.

Spike Milligan's "Hitler - My Part in his Downfall" is poignant and informative as well as funny in parts.

George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, about the Spanish civil war?

Not a story of combat, but of an Englishwoman in Berlin during the 2nd World War: "The Past is Myself", by Christabel Bielenberg. It does recount some of the resistance activities there, and also involves the July 20th plot against Hitler, in which her husband was implicated. Really excellently told, and an unusual viewpoint of the war.

Not a story of war at all, but one you might enjoy, as it covers the period of both wars: 'Wild Herb Soup', by Emilie Carles. It's a very vivid account of her life, growing up in the French Alps at the start of the 20th Century in dreadful hardship, and her struggle to become a teacher. She was a radical thinker and also lead the campaign to have her valley made a national park, when faced with destruction from a road building project. Gives a sobering view of peasant life, not at all Thomas Hardy! Her family faced an astonishing number of tragedies, but she remained positive and unbeaten. So the book is a lot less depressing than it sounds!

Winston Churchill wrote loads about WW2 and you can probably also get his wartime speeches. Then there's the WW1 poetry - Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg, Siegfried Sassoon et al!

How about any of these?

http://www.lovereading.co.uk/genre/ww1/Armistice_-_90_years.html

As I'm interested in aviation I've read, and really enjoyed, Bomber Boys and I'll be buying Aces Falling.

Memory's beginning to work better now: Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy , gruelling but good and Sebastian Faulks' Birdsong - all novels but clear and graphic. Charles de Gaule's war memoirs give another view of the war. All quiet on the western front by Erich Maria Remarque. Dinner's ready so no more right now.

Recommended reading.   Lynn MacDonalds -   'Somme 'and  'They called it Passchendaele'  good reading about 1st WW.  also Leo Coopers  Chavasse Double VC by Ann Clayton  is excellent reading.

Many more in our library!!!!

;)

If it's Vietnam  then it has to be  Michael Herr- Dispatches.
I will second Birdsong but I found the first bit 'slushy'.

Super, thanks everyone! :) I shall definitely be looking up all of these suggestions and making some additions to my Christmas list  ;D ;)

Hopalong, I have indeed read Milligan's Hitler's My Part ....

Markfield, I bought Dispatches about 18 months ago after reading some terrific reviews but I just could not get into it no matter how hard I tried so I re-sold it on eBay.  Same thing happened with a couple of Primo Levi books regarding Auschwitz, I felt bogged down by his style of writing and gave up on those too.  My favourite book re Vietnam so far is Robert Mason's Chickenhawk.  Superb. 

Last night I finished reading Watch for Me by Moonlight - A British Agent with the French Resistance by Evelyn Le Chene.

"No time for Goodbye" by Linwood Barclay was the winner of Richard and Judy's summer read.  This is what it says about it on the Book Club site:

A page turning thriller, in which, a teenaged girl wakes up one morning to discover her family have vanished without a trace. 25 years later, after a TV appeal, she begins to learn the truth behind their sudden disappearance.

The book goes straight into the action right from the beginning.  I couldn't put the book down and was awake in the early hours reading it. 

Sorry I couldn't put a link to it on here as it stretched the page too much but a Google search will bring it up straight away if you put in "richard judy book club" then look under best sellers.