It's good and bad.

Good: I finished "The Glorious Cause" by Jeff Shaara. Great book about the American Revolution. I didn't love it in the way that I loved "The Killer Angels", written by his father, Michael Shaara, but it was a wonderful way of making a really important true story interesting. Names that I've heard - Knox, Lafeyette, Greene - are now known as individuals. I cheated a bit: this is the second in a two-part historical fiction series on the American Revolutionary War, and I didn't read the first book. I picked it up at the point when they started having maps to show the battles. Like Hannah's Cowpens.

And now for a quick diversion before we get back to the "Bad" part. A friend and former colleague had a brother who served aboard the USS Cowpens (CG 93), an Aegis guided missile cruiser of the Ticonderoga class. The Cowpens (and her predecessor) were named after the battle of Hannah's Cowpens in South Carolina where Daniel Morgan and his experienced yet untrained militia with 300 hundred Colonial Army soldiers engaged and defeated the stronger, better trained force of British Army regulars under Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton.

The USS Cowpens nickname is "The Mighty Moo". Her slogan is "Watch Your Step."

Bad: I finished "The Glorious Cause" by Jeff Shaara. I know, I know. It's not like the outcome of the book was in question, yet I was still riveted, especially by the personal interaction and politics. I feel like I have said goodbye to a friend, as I don't have another "can't put it down" book.

[Yet.]

SAVE YOUR CORKS!!

[Only 7,190 more needed for our wine cellar wall.]

Quote du jour:

"A classic is a book that has never
finished saying what it has to say."

Italo Calvino (1923 - 1985) Italian journalist.

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