(Audio)Books I've actually finished lately: 131

Eighty-one hours! Unbelievable.

But fascinating.

Books I've actually finished lately: 130

Books I've actually finished lately: 121

I push the cause of the mullet because he is a low-class fish. He is simple. He is honest. He moves around in great formations or columns. He does damn near all the work. But he is also noble. He is like another noble thing I once loved, called 'soldier'.

- Col. Mike Malone

(This is, for better or worse, why there are no Brit warrior poets in the Iraqistan era.)

Books I've actually finished lately: 116

We have to start sometime to turn the end of war into peace.

- Ajith Boyagoda

Against my ruins

Two extracts from the Lonely Planet's Sri Lanka: a travel survival kit (3rd ed. 1987; security updates c.1990):

If you like ruins you'll find your fill in the ancient cities of Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa.

- 'Introduction' [first full page of text]

There are no places of interest unless you are interested in photographing ruins.

- STOP PRESS [last full page of text]

Books I've actually finished lately: 111

I am trying to convey that Saint-Exupéry, by the very nature of his conception of literature, is not essentially a man of letters. He is a man of action for whom action is not enough, because he has realized that action in itself means nothing; a technician who thinks as much of the dangers as of the uses of technology; a warrior who is not convinced of the value of courage or obedience. Still less is he a littérateur. His profession demands great care, rigor and vigilance; it entails a commitment that goes beyond mere words and involves the whole person.

- Charles-Henri Favrod

InDefinition - 80

adjutantrum, n, when a not-particularly-high-ranking officer spazzes out at those beneath her, in the interests of her own career advancement.

The worst poem I have ever seen

(Audio)Books I've actually (re-)finished lately: 90

(Audio)Books I've actually finished lately: 87

Although I do have to say it doesn't sound a lot like Dan Stevens...

Books I've actually (re-)finished lately: 82

I had reached that stage in life where I identified with cynical villains in a book.

- Michael Ondaatje

Books I've actually finished lately: 80

Because if you haven't read Tristram Shandy, you are not yet born.

'Needless to say, ...'

an attempt to instrumentalise or "weaponise" poetry for the purposes of fighting "the cultural war" is probably not something the US military should be engaged in.

- Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn, Poetry of the Taliban

Books I've actually finished lately: 77

Surely not...?!

The heirs of Bomber Harris are not squeamish about the far end of a bomb site...

- Simon Jenkins, in The Spectator

This Week's Literary Hero

Robert Herrick.

And other things never overheard at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst*

As a Marine* lieutenant, I had always been told in times of uncertainty to go to the library.

- David J Morris, The Evil Hours: a Biography of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

--
* don't bother.

Greatest line ever dropped casually into a curriculum vitae

I continued my education as an infantryman in Vietnam.

- Oliver Stone's Untold History of the United States

War literature - what is it good for? (2)

Recently, I had [the] experience [of] listening to Major General John Borling (USAF, retired), a former fighter pilot and six-year Vietnam POW. When asked to name the most important courses he took as an Academy cadet, Borling immediately responded: “Humanities courses—art history, music appreciation, literature, introductory philosophy.”

- Thomas G McGuire, in War, Literature, & the Arts

War literature - what is it good for?

What are the humanities about if not the cultivation of an informed conscience, a habit of reflection in which the flow of thoughtless action and means-end calculation is interrupted by a consideration of historical contexts and ethical considerations, by an imaginative awareness of the character and consequences of action, by a deep investment in the human condition and its possibilities? If those with such knowledge and such capacities do not assume some kind of responsibility for worldly action, including the management of violence, then that responsibility passes to the Kilgores, and the Kurtzes, of the world. 

- Geoffrey Galt Harpham, The Humanities and the Dream of America