[Milsurplus] More on novels

[Hue Miller]

Novels: some respondents mentioned examples such as
"Fahrenheit 451" or "Slaughterhouse Five". Okay, i haven't
thought out my argument fully....science fiction is clearly
another subcategory and cannot be held to authenticity
standards....and may actually inspire some thinking, some
insight...i suppose i meant, reading "historical novels"
is not a good resource for understanding the actual
experience. Even "Empire of the Sun" which i liked a whole 
lot ( and lissened to the audiobook version over the BBC,
on a BC-348 ), only gets roundaboutly at the truth, and is
foggy or muddled in some aspects. As for the run of the 
mill crime novel, terrorist novel, western novel, what useless
crap. Consider the actual category of "beach novel" or
"vacation reading" novel: who'd want to waste their precious
life hours filling their head with such garbage? Junk food,
junk reading. 
My thinking on this is still evolving. Thinking of "Stalingrad"
by Theodore Pliever: this really brings home a huge part of
the besieged soldiers' experience - but you may detect some
historical lies therein - favoring author's Russian sponsors -
or "Last Soldier" by Guy Sajer - valuable for the East Front
experience but still, i can detect some innacuracies - apparently
for the sake of a good story - therein.  -Hue Miller