Suggested Books for Library

[osteodoc08]

I'm a fairly younger guy, but enjoy reading when I have a chance. I would like to imagine myself in my retirement years being able to enjoy my time sitting in my recliner with my trusty lab at my feet as I read my books on gun lore and adventure in addition to the typical stuff of course. I have several books that I inherited from my late father including Raurk, Capstick, Keith, Hemmingway, etc. With all the book threads lately, I was hoping others could share some of their favorites so that I could keep a look out for them and continue to grow my library and perhaps become aware of some that I never would have given a cursory glance at initially.

[Scharfschuetze]

Given my career path, military history is a favorite of mine. Here are some of the better books on my book shelf. Some of these books date back to my youth and some to just a few years ago.

Sherlock Holmes (complete) by Connan Doyle
Custer's Luck by Stewart
Forty Miles a Day on Beans and Hay by Ricky
Frontier Regulars by Utley
Shots Fired in Anger by LTC George
A Rifleman Went to War by McBride
The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman
No Man's Land by John Toland
With British Snipers to the Reich by Captain C. Shore
Band of Brothers by Stephan Ambrose
Rifles and Shotguns by Jack O'Connor
The Modern Rifle by Jim Carmichal
The Story of the Gun by Ian V. Hogg

[StrawHat]

If older books and hunting stories are interesting to you, anything by Sir Samuel White Baker is a good read. His books were written in the late 1800s, phasing and sentence structure may be odd for the first couple of pages until you get used to it.

The Rifle and Hound in Ceylon and others are available on line.

https://archive.org/details/riflehoundinceyl00inbake

Keith is another favorite as is the McGivern book, Fast and Fancy Revolver Shooting.

The Hornblower series was a favorite of mine and recently reread.

[gnoahhh]

Wow! So many books, so little time.

I would start with a few by Jack O'Connor and Elmer Kieth. Read them and channel their rivalry, and perhaps deduce that the truth lies somewhere in between them.

To kiss the soul of hunting/fishing (and get a chuckle at the same time), try one of the volumes of reprints of Corey Ford's "Lower Forty" stories that appeared in Field and Stream a couple generations ago. Any man who can read "The Road to Tinkhamtown" with a perfectly dry eye is a lost cause, IMO!

Ed Zern's columns have been collected into volumes too. A witty-er fellow never lived- his wit and humor being the venue by which he leads you to see the essence of what we love to do.

On the serious side, I can't reccomend to highly the "Bullets Flight" by Dr. Franklin Mann. Published a little over 100 years ago (and available as an eBook today), it covers a multitude of issues concerning cast bullet accuracy, and the investigating/solving of problems we face today- in a very scientific and thorough manner. If everybody was required to read this book before being allowed to melt his first pound of lead, some of these forums would be ghost towns from the lack of people asking questions about challenges met and solved in 1909. 'Nuff said!

I got my kick-off into the world of serious riflery and handloading by reading Phil Sharpe's two books- "The Rifle in America" and "Complete Guide to Handloading". The info in them dated, assuredly, but still valid today.

If you have any interest at all in the world of custom gunmaking in the period between 1900-1940, or even just like looking at great photos of the coolest rifles ever built, try the late Michael Petrov's two books titled "Custom Gunmakers of the 20th Century", volumes I and II.

I could go on and on for hours. It's best I let someone else chime in too!