A compelling story from World War Two's U-boat war

My friend Lucy and I have been exchanging reading material over our summer birthdays for maybe 20 years. This year the top of my list was this one:

It focuses on the Wrens, a group of young women tasked with figuring out a strategy to keep German U-Boats from starving Britain into submission.

A quote from the book:

In December 1939, researchers from the University of Cambridge had tested whether Britain could survive with only domestic food production if U-boats forced an end to all imports. After subjecting themselves to a tough regime of work and a minimal diet, the researchers and their volunteers found  that they could survive, while  noting a 'remarkable' increase in flatulence ..

Fuel and clothing were worse .... rationed by 1941.

The solution: a game. The idea was to give sea captains the same look at the battle space they might get at the helm of their ships:

The game helped Britain come up with anti-U-boat tactics that turned the tide and kept the essential convoy goods coming throughout the war.

This is my favorite nonfiction read of 2020 so far. Five stars!

Audiobooks Vs. Podcasts: two extremes

There has been an explosion in good podcasts recently; there are enough out that they tend to make my Audible subscription recede into the background when I don't have a super-compelling audiobook at the top of the stack.

A recent pair of examples:

It took me a while to get into this one ... it's a very somber war story. It's based in some future where there is faster-than-light travel and some part of humanity has splintered off and become "savages" with different/greater capabilities and who think it's their duty to wipe out the previous version of humanity.

OK ... I gave this enough time to get to the moderately-compelling last part of the book: "Colonel Marx" is revealed to be ... well, I won't spoil the story by giving this one but overall ... well, 3 stars. I paused every time I had a marginally compelling podcast to listen to.

A vivid contrast:

This is the end of a trilogy that starts with The Collapsing Empire ... the first two of these are compelling enough, but not a blockbuster like this one. I stopped most podcast listening and even stayed up later than usual to listen to the end of this one ... one of the most fun endings of a novel I've experienced in a long time! (Even better than Scalzi's Android's Dream!)  Five stars!

Since I finished this two nights ago I have been catching up on podcasts, notably Marketplace, Freakonomics and Radiolab ...

I started "rereading" (via audiobook) the first of the trilogy to see if the first two were more fabulous than I remembered ... not so far. I wouldn't be surprised if everything was to set up the fabulous third book, sneaky and talented Scalzi!