A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway: Classic story of a solider in WWI.
Once an Eagle, Anton Myrer: Saga of a career military man beginning in WWI and ending in Vietnam.
Flight of the Intruder, Stephen Coonts: Adrenaline fiction based in Vietnam.
The Caine Mutiny, Herman Wouk: The story of a young man who grudgingly joins the Navy during WWII only to deal with an incompetent ship captain.
Catch-22, Joseph Heller: Stream of consciousness novel following a reluctant solider at the end of WWII.
Killer Angels, Michael Shaara: Civil War fiction at it’s finest. His son, Jeff Shaara, wrote a prequel and a sequel for it, as well as a number of other war-themed novels covering various military conflicts.
Tim O’Brien has several excellent novels capturing the Vietnam era, including Going After Cacciato, In the Lake of the Woods, and The Things They Carried.
Dog Company Six, Edwin H.Simmons: Follows a Marine in the early days of the Korean War.
James Jones’s From Here to Eternity, Some Came Running, The Thin Red Line may only be familiar to some as their movie versions, but they were hard-hitting WWII novels, first.
The Good Shepherd, C.S. Lewis: Nautical fiction about a Navy captain in WWII.
Battle Cry, Leon Uris: Follows a group of young men who enlist in the Marines during WWII.
You could also just pull your shelf of WEB Griffin off and put it on display…
Military fiction isn’t all just adrenaline and soldiers, however. I feel the need to give a nod to Miss Harper Can Do It, by Jane Berentson, as well. Elementary school teacher Annie Harper deals with her boyfriend David’s is deployment to Iraq in this smart and touching story. And, there are a number of series romances out there featuring soldiers and their loved ones, such as Debbie Macomber’s Navy Series, and Susanne Brockmann’s Troubleshooters or Tall, Dark & Dangerous series.
ALA also gives out an award for best military fiction, the W.Y. Boyd Literary Award.
"
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment