Puttering in the Study

Pacific Thunder: The US Navy's Central Pacific Campaign, August 1943–October 1944 - Thomas McKelvey Cleaver

This book focuses on the U.S. Navy's Central Pacific drive from August 1943 to October 1944.  It really begins ten months earlier with the last of the 1942 carrier battles, Santa Cruz, which left the U.S. with only one damaged carrier, Enterprise, in the South Pacific to face the entire Japanese navy.  It contrasts that with the picture only 24 months later, when after the Battle of Leyte Gulf the U.S. had nine light and nine heavy CVs, with another three working up and twelve more in the pipeline, and the Japanese navy was virtually destroyed as a fighting unit.

Unfortunately, my practice of reading every book on this subject that I can on the Kindle and several at the same time means I don't recall much about each particular book.  So while I don't have anything negative to say about the book, it just didn't make much of an impression.  

Models Update: Arizona, Hood, and a lot on the LUT

After several weeks off I finally got a day in the model workshop yesterday, which extended late into the night and several more hours this afternoon.

While I made some progress on the Hood (I count progress in number of parts added in this 432-part model - in this case 22 parts) I made more progress on the Arizona, where I cleaned up the deck tan paint from my mid-build color change, and added a few more pieces of photoetch.

But the giant leap, to borrow a phrase, was on the Saturn V LUT (launch umbilical tower) where I got several things done:

• finished the exterior pipe framework
• finished the internal ladders (well, 4 1/2 out of 5) 
• designed, built, painted & installed the bracket for the service arms.
• added detail and detail painted the crane (including the "Colby Crane logo)

One of the things that really helped was using Super Glue for the parts like ladders instead of normal plastic cement.  I could assemble, paint and install multiple sections without waiting to dry.

Service arm bracket

I was particularly pleased with the service arm bracket.  That's the girder attached to the front of the LUT that in turn has all the service arms attached to it.  It consists of two parts, which gave me a chance to try out the design on a smaller piece before tackling the 14" long version. 

I sized the parts from photos and pieced it together from angle, rod and strip plastic, then test-fitted the bracket after assembly but before all the detail pieces were added, and it was painted.

 

The LUT looks terrific in the display case now, and with the
annoying things like structure and ladders out of the way, and the service arm bracket in place, I can move to the final two parts of the tower - the massive external piping, and the service arms.

 

Apollo: The Race to the Moon - Murray, Charles & Cox, Catherine Bly

This book was recommended by Tom Tamlyn, who said it was his favorite of the many books he’s looked at on the Apollo program. After reading it I have to agree.  It is the engineers’ story of the development of the technology for the Apollo program, and it is riveting.

Most books leave me with a few key understandings that I didn’t have before.  For this book, it was that the Apollo program was not an evolution of Mercury and Gemini, but rather was developed by itself in parallel to what those programs were doing.  In other words, NASA was designing and building the Apollo spacecraft, the Saturn booster and the enormous facilities for supporting them while it was still learning how to successfully launch and recovery the first Mercury capsules. 

Of course they benefited from the techniques and experience that the earlier programs provided as they took place, but Apollo was not, as I’d often thought, just a drastically enlarged Gemini with different functions.

Again, Tom was right - this is my favorite Apollo book now, followed by Jonathan Ward's Rocket Ranch and Countdown to a Moon Launch about the activity at KSC - the first is about the technology at KSC, and the second is about the people.  Not that the astronaut biographies, most notably Andrew Chaikin’s book, aren’t great, but I’d rather approach the story of the program from the engineering perspective.

The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945 – John Toland

Boy, did this take forever - over 41 hours.  The narrator’s stentorian tone and the tone of many of the interpersonal communications in the case made it seem longer, though.  For the completist on the Pacific War it’s probably necessary, and I did find the negotiations and internal politics of the actual surrender negotiations interesting, but otherwise, it’s one I wish I’d gotten in paper so I could  have skimmed it a little more.

First Man - the annotated screenplay - Josh Singer

I picked this up to see what decisions they made making the movie - how much was strictly accurate, how much was moved around or modified, and what was admittedly created for the movie. And I absolutely loved it.

As you’d expect, the book reveals the movie that was written, the movie that was filmed, and almost all of the movie as it was edited - the book wrapped four weeks before the film did so some final cuts aren’t reflected.  

First Man soundtrack - Justin Hurwitz

After watching First Man the second time, I realized that I really enjoyed the soundtrack and picked it up.  It’s somewhat non traditional, with theramin and Moog synthesizers to evoke a midecentury feel, and even the symphonic music is re-recorded to break it down a bit.  But the themes are great, and I am really enjoying it.

My favorites cuts are Houston, the launch sequence and the landing, but the end credits are getting to be a favorite as well.

The Perfect Pass: American Genius and the Reinvention of Football - S. C. Gwynne

I finished this book some time ago, and really enjoyed it.  It tells the story of Hal Mumme, the football coach that made the forward pass more dangerous, and takes him through his career at Texas high school football, then college, and explains how the offense - best known through the “Run and Shoot” of his assistant Mike Leach when he ran it at Texas Tech.

I heard the author speak on this book at the recent EDTX bench/bar and to my surprise got to spend some time talking with him afterwards.  Unfortunately I forgot to bring my copy to get it signed!

The Reading Stack Routine

I think I finally figured out how I have to read most books.  A few I still sit down and devour start to finish (mostly on the Kindle), but many paper books that I want to read I just can't spend extended periods with - my attention span is just too short.  A few years back I started keeping all the ones I'd started stacked by my chair in the study, thinking that would help, but I'd pick one and read it till I got bored with it and then, burned out on reading for the evening, quit.

A few nights ago I decided that I wanted to make a little progress on each, and read a section of each one.  In some it was a whole chapter, in others a section within a chapter, and damn you Stephen Hawking, I can only do a couple of pages of you before I have to switch to something I understand.

The results have been terrific.  I have enjoyed each of these books that I had previously dreaded, I don't feel guilty setting them down when I get to a stopping point - it's now a sense of accomplishment - and I'm actually making progress on all of them.  I finished the Annotated Frankenstein the other night and I'm getting close on a couple of others.

It's exactly the opposite of the reading "zone" I remember back in junior high where I'd get immersed in First Men in the Moon or Alan Dean Foster's Star Trek Log books, but ... I'm not the same person I was then, either.

My routine is also settled - I set the stereo to iPhone input and the iPhone to focus@will - usually Spa, but sometimes Cinematic, turn on the fire, tell Alexa to turn off the desk and table lights, and start.  As someone who should have more appreciation for good music I do feel guilty listening to focus@will for entertainment, as opposed to just concentration, but as noted above, I'm making compromises where appropriate these days.

After I'm done with these, most evenings I read the books I'm more interested in on the Kindle in bed upstairs, but I usually just pick one, and I'm not too badly backlogged there. 

But don't get me started on the horror show that is my Audible account.  I don't know if there's such a thing as an Audible hoarder, but I may be one.