Valkyrie - the book

As anyone who reads my movie review blog (FromZekesCouch), I watch movies from both Netflix and the library. At Netflix I have the 1 movie at a time plan. New releases come out on Tuesdays, but if you get your movie into the mail by Saturday before the mail lady gets the booty, Netflix will get your movie on Monday and send you a new release. Normally I get one new release every week. My second movie of the week is always something that's been decaying in the queue for a couple weeks. It is what it is, so I try to manage it wisely.

In addition to getting movies via Netflix, I also get movies from the library. The library also gets new releases, but there are about 8 copies, so, for example, when Gran Torino got released today there were already about 100 people who had put the movie on reserve. Sometimes I get lucky and I'm like 15th, meaning I should get the movie next week.

Recently the Tom Cruise movie Valkyrie was released. I normally would not patronize a Tom Cruise movie because he's an arrogant lunatic. But this movie is about the assassination attempt of Adolph Hitler, something that I had briefly read about and have seen on the History Channel, which was more commonly known as the Hitler Channel back when they actually showed history.

Not getting Valkyrie from Netflix the week it was released I quickly added it to my queue at the library. To my surprise I got notice that it was ready for me to pick up 2 days later. You should have seen the look on my face when I picked it up and I had not reserved the movie, but rather a book of the same name. So instead of Tom Cruise I got Philip Freiherr Von Boeselager, Florence Fehrenbach, Jerome Fehrenbach, and Steven Rendall.

Not wanting to look like a fool, I checked the book out from the library with deliberate actions. And since I was going to Dover for the race in a few days, I decided that I could take it with me and read some of it. Fortunately for.....the book, the wait in the parking lot was long and I completed the entire book in a matter of several hours.

I will admit that the book is not exactly what I was expecting. It was the story of 2 brothers who were a small part of the plot to assassinate Hitler. They were not the main conspirators, those in the cabin with Hitler on that fateful day. Nonetheless, the book was interesting and focused mostly on their battles through France and eventually to Russia and back.

The book was short, only 224 pages. And though it was a good book, it totally did not meet my expectations. I equate it to my wife hollering from upstairs that there's a little surprise in the bed for me, only to find out that someone spilled potato chips on the covers.

I would not recommend the book unless you are really interested in the minutia of war details. The conspirators in the assassination attempt were not well-known and it would not be like reading a familiar story. In the meantime, let's see if I can reserve movies correctly next time.