Welcome to the Book Nook! The weekly thread for all book nerds on The Avocado. This is the place to talk about books you’re currently reading, discuss genres, ask for recommendations, and post serious literary criticism.

This week’s prompt: War. With all its attendant horrors of death, destruction, suffering and injustice, there is one thing we can all agree upon about war: It makes for some damn good reading. What are your favorite fiction or nonfiction books, stories, essays, plays or poems about war and its aftermath?

This has come up a couple of times, so to be clear, comments about graphic novels, trade collections or comic books in general are absolutely welcome here. Feel free to crosspost with the comic book threads.

Today’s literary birthdays (all information courtesy of Wikipedia):
Jacques Auguste de Thou (1553), French historian and book collector (RIP 1617)
Yechezkel Landau (1713), Polish rabbi and author of books on Jewish law (RIP 1793)
William John Swainson (1789), English ornithologist, conchologist, entomologist, author and illustrator of books on natural history, several species of birds are named after him (RIP 1855)

Harriet Taylor Mills (1807), English philosopher and women’s rights activist (RIP 1858)

John D. Batten (1860), English painter and illustrator (RIP 1932)

Marina Tsvetaeva (1892), Russian poet (RIP 1941)

Richard Sharpe Shaver (1907), writer and illustrator of pseudoscience, often published under the guise of fiction (RIP 1975)

Walter Lord (1917), American popular historian, best known for his book about the Titanic, A Night to Remember (RIP 2002)
Frank Herbert (1920), American science fiction writer known for Dune and its sequels, Hugo and Nebula award winner (RIP 1986)
Thirunalloor Karunakaran (1924), Indian poet (RIP 2006)
William Corlett (1938), English playwright and children’s books author (RIP 2005)
Harvey Pekar (1939), American comic book writer, member of the Eisner Award Hall of Fame (RIP 2010)

Shane Stevens (1941), American author of crime novels (RIP 2007)
Bel Mooney (1946), English journalist and author of nonfiction and children’s books
Benjamin Cheever (1948), American novelist and nonfiction writer
Blake Morrison (1950), English poet, novelist, critic and memoirist
Jakob Arjouni (1964), German crime novelist (RIP 2013)
Kari Korhonen (1973), Finnish cartoonist and illustrator
Feel free to comment about any of these folks, and/or let us know if I missed somebody.

Posting pictures is fine as long as they are book related, but I would like this thread to continue to be a NO GIF/YouTube/social media embed zone as much as possible. Thanks, and happy commenting!

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