>>16022258Chickenhawk by Robert Mason. Pretty much all I've read so far have been memoirs, mostly war ones, and that's the most memorable one for me, out of all of them so far.
There's not much to touch on why, because, I kind of read them for a thrill and as food for the imagination, rather than to get much actual knowledge out of it by the end of it, or have it make me look at things differently. I think because after the first couple or so that you go through, you get the point that pretty much all of them ultimately make. Which is that war is bad. What I actually find interesting about them is the brain damage people acquire from their time with war and the kind of things that transpire, whether insanely unfair and cruel or just heartening in a way. For example, even going into war, your brain already gets messed up forever. Once their training is complete, a soldier can't look at a hill and see the hill for what it is. They can only scan for positions and little slopes where they can duck in for cover. They literally lose the capability to appreciate the scenery of the world, because their brain is conditioned to only look for ways to survive within it. And that happens before even getting into deployed war, after that is another story.
So, learning about all the little things like that is just compelling for me. I mean, these are pretty much the worst things that humanity has been through, and it's a miracle that the people writing the book have made it out at all. I think it's definitely interesting to read their personal views and descriptions of the whole ordeal. I feel that after a point it's the closest you'll be getting to being inside a warzone, without actually being in one.
I like to say that it just feels like watching your favorite war movie for the first time again every time when reading through one, lol, it's just simply a nice experience. I'd vouch for it.
Although I still can't speak for much, because I don't read a lot, at all. Char lim.