If YOU like books, this blog is for YOU!

My purpose in writing this blog is to tell you of some great books that I've often found by accident, read and really enjoyed. If I do this properly, I will enable you to find and enjoy these books a lot sooner than I did.
What kind of books will they be?
Some will be fiction, but most will be what in today's jargon might be called "reality," but is in "reality" history. I hesitate to use that term because so many people get turned off by it.
I don't really know why because if you understand the purpose of history and all that goes into it, you realize it is not just names and dates. It is about people, people who probably were very much like you or me but who because of unusual circumstances found themselves required to act in ways they'd never have imagined.
Most recently, by the way, in reading a long book about some delicate negotiations, which could impact the lives of thousands of people, one of the principals stated how what they were making history on a world-wide stage. They were and how interesting that the realized it.
Even some of the novels I present in this blog are like history in that they, like history deal with or attempt to deal with truth. I quote here from one of my favorite novels by one of my favorite authors on this point. In the introduction to his best novel, he writes:
“Above all, it is a true story because that is the only story worth telling.”
That conveniently brings me to my first book recommendation.
It is “The Cruel Sea,” by Nicholas Monsarrat. The title is very British in that it is understated, but do not let the understatement fool you. This is a novel about the British war ships that escorted convoys of merchant ships between the United States and Great Britain during World War II, but it is so much more. It is one of the most powerful novels on the sea you will ever read. It is one of the most powerful novels on war on the high seas you will ever read.
The story becomes so real that when you finish, you will feel some of the exhaustion, physical and mental, that the men who sailed those ships must have felt because you will have been with them trying to protect those convoys on dozens of voyages over the "Cruel Sea."
What else is there to say about “The Cruel Sea?” Read it.
Oh, and I should add, this book as well as many others on this blog are no longer in print. But, you can find many of them at your library. Or, if you are like me, buy them off the Internet for just a few dollars. That way you will have them to read and re-read favorite passages as I do.