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Reading and Taking Care of Family
By Lt Col P
I've been silent most of this week, but not without good reason. I've been busy at work-- QDR season, you know-- and for the last few days I've been taking care of Honorable Sons One and Two (4 years and 1 year, respectively) while Most Honorable Wife is out of town. Wow-- That's a job and a half. We've been having fun, but it's tiring. I've managed to make progress on several little projects, but only by stealing a few minutes here and there, mostly in the early morning.
I've also been diving into books, in preparation for the upcoming deployment. Having been obsessed with Central Asia for most of my life, I had what I thought was a decent grounding of the basic scheme of things. I didn't know what I didn't know! On the advice of friends I quickly read The Kite Runner and A Thousand Spendid Suns, two books that I never would have read but for where I'm going, but I'm glad I did. Neither is particularly uplifting-- Kite Runner is like an Afghan Deliverance, just without the funny parts-- but they illustrate effectively what a grinder Afghan society has been through for 30 years.
Much more positive is Three Cups of Tea. I can see why it's becoming mandatory reading.
I also picked up a handful of books I've had for some time. The first was To The Frontier. That and another, Every Rock, Every Hill, provide two fascinating time capsules of Afghanistan and the Northwest Frontier, since they were both written in the early 1980s. It's interesting to read what we knew then, versus what we know today. Frontier has several earmarked pages, showing that I've read it before but curiously it didn't make much of an impression on me and it was as if I had never seen it.
Another perennial favorite, read and re-read more times than I can count is A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush. Brilliant, uproarious, and much, much more interesting when read in a new light. And a useful source of Dari phrases in action. (References to Short Walk appear in both Frontier and Every Rock.)
I'll also grab The Road to Oxiana off the shelf, which I read a few years ago and which made only a dim impression. Perhaps, like some of the foregoing, it'll be more direct and pertinent now.
Ghost Wars has been a difficult read, not because it's not well done, but because it's painful to see, laid out before us, the trail of negligence, neglect, missed opportunities and blunders that led us to 9/11.
Finally, I'm well into The Places In Between, and enjoying every word and every step. This too, in its own way, shows what catastrophes have befallen Afghanistan since the late 1970s.
Any other suggestions? My time is short, but if you have a must-read, let me know.
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Comments
Lt Col P Go to this link http://blog.stevenpressfield.com/ good stuff on afghanistan.
BR LtCol P,
The Bear Went Over the Mountain edited by Grau is a good book of the Russian and muj tactics and key terrain.
My dear wife insisted that I read the Bookseller of Kabul, but I am sure you have better things than that to read.
I was suprised to read somewhere that Hindu Kush translates into HINDU DEATH after the many bloody british escapes into this region.
Hope to see you there
Hey Lt. Col. P,
I sent you an email on Saturday but it was returned undeliverable..
Can you please email me when you get a chance?
Excellent post!
thanks so much
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I just finished "Taliban" by Ahmed Rashid which was recommended by Peter Blaber in "The Men The Mission and Me". Great background on Central Asia.
If you havent already Wired for War by PW Singer. Revolutionary comes to mind. Maybe a little off topic and always have to be prepared for technology failing but think how fast technology has changed things in the past 5 years and how fast they will change in the next 5.