Andy Mcnab
Forum
Pages: 1 ... 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 ... 297
Name: Ninjawoman
Rank : Mother
D.O.B : 17-12
Serial # : 0978574366324
Speciality: Deep cover operations, the ultimate "grey" woman. Looks like a civilian, works as pro.
Weakness: Books from McNab, Andy and chocolate.
NW
>>By Ninjawoman (Saturday, 10 Apr 2004 22:51)
Happy Easter all.
Several new names I noticed, hello to all, and hallo to NW.
To NW I'd like to add, chocolate as a weakness - I agree, but it's in these territories definitely no weakness to like McNab's books ;o)
Vrolijk Pasen!
>>By Lynn (Sunday, 11 Apr 2004 08:29)
Hey all,
Happy easter, hope you are all having fun!
My fave Andy Mcnab book is Last Light, ive only read it once id like to read it agian! Ive read all his books although I only own 3 of them :( and am awaiting the new one I noticed on amazon.co.uk, I pre-ordered it yesterday :) hhmm well thats pretty much all I can think of to say, so be nice!
>>By girl with a broken smile (Sunday, 11 Apr 2004 17:10)
Hi everyone!
I've been away for a week. Got to finish Crisis Four while working though... Very good read, although there were minor things that I think didn't quite add up.
But I do believe it's a very good groundwork for a movie-production (given the right actors, producer and director).
>>By ortlieb (Monday, 12 Apr 2004 01:22)
Welcome on board girls! McNab and chocolate, I don't know if it's a weakness but it's an addiction in my case.
I don't know if you've talked about this one before: "Modern man as action man?";
observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/
0,6903,1130368,00.html
It's not off topic as AM and SAS are mentioned.
Am-i-binned... too bad!
>>By alice (Monday, 12 Apr 2004 01:29)
Mmmmmm.... yummmm....
Chocolate -- food of the gods!
Speaking of which, isn't it a staple in AM's/NS's diet? (vbg! vbw!)
Welcome, girl with a broken smile...
Nice to meet you; intriguing name. Only once so far for Last Light? (vbw!)
Great creds, Ninjawoman...
Very F Troop! :o)
Got me grinning, Alice... :o)
The "Nuts" magazine has been mentioned here, but no real discussion of its true readership demographics. Regardless of who's supposed to read it, what's important to me right now is how do I get my hands on that AM article?!?
Ooooh, O!
Missed U! Re: CF, shall we crack out the "spoilers" feature and get down to it? ;o)
Uh-oh, Lynn...
My dyslexia is flaring up again -- "Vrolijk Pasen!"... ?
>>By am-i-binned (Monday, 12 Apr 2004 16:42)
Gad... it's been some months I've been away, and now you guys & chicks *grins* have fertilized this site up till 160 PAGES?!!?
o_O
... uhm, perhaps I'll continue in the other chatting-yakking room.
:D
Bye, and Happy -belated- Easter to everyone, lurkers included! *grins*
>>By Deusrexmachina (Monday, 12 Apr 2004 17:55)
Hey, come back, Deusrexmachina! You've been MIA from this board for far too long... :o)
>>By am-i-binned (Monday, 12 Apr 2004 18:34)
Hope everbody's Easter was good, mine was great ! But andy and chocolate is a very good combo. Everytime he mentions a Mars bar in the books i am thining 'what a good idea' ! I only hope that NS will never switch to that yuch fake sh** that Chris Ryan seems to promote.
Am-i-binned ... ( great name btw) about the F-troop style of info, hey i did lurk a little before jumping in. After all, a good recce is vital.
( What do you mean, i am reading too much Andy ?)
Am i getting binned if i say that i didn't like Liberation Day that much? All that clicking .. it had me wonder off to my childhood ( are you that old? Yes appearently so) to atoy i had as a kid, a clicking frog. But the Big Bang in the end me smile, that's my man !!
What is your own all time favo book and why ?
And his.... um .. less work and why?
NW
>>By Ninjawoman (Monday, 12 Apr 2004 22:13)
Ninja:
Hi! Welcome to the board.
One immediate word of "caution": be careful with what you reveal regarding plots and events in books you've read. There's a "spoiler-feature" included here (am-i-binned referred to it a few posts ago). It's good feature to prevent accidental slip of the tongues, so to speak. (I've just finished Crisis Four, and continued on to Firewall).
Now, something about CF that didn't quite add up to me:
When AM described in so graphic detail how he dragged Sarah out of the house by the lake, I thought he would kill her off for sure. Obviously he didn't, but I would assume that being given such a rough treatment, Sarah would be on to Nick's game. So apparantly, there are two options:
1) AM "dropped a bollock", and never paid attention to the logical flaw of Sarah being oblivious to the fact that the rough treatment was a part of a T104.
2) Sarah was shrewd enough to "fake" her being oblivious (as she turned out to the bad guy in the end). Then also perhaps her flying off her handle when she discovered that Nick had turned on the freezer at the motel was another part of her clever scheming ploy.
Thoughts anyone?
</spolier>
>>By ortlieb (Monday, 12 Apr 2004 23:43)
don't know if this has been posted yet, but as i was checking out FHM's site, i stumbled upon an interview with CR.
link: www.fhm.com, then click on WEBTV and you'll get a new window open, there's some pictures on the top row where you can scroll. it's under section reporter, so it has a red dot by it.
sorry i couldn't be more specific on how to find it. i tried finding a direct link to it, but without avail.
>>By trident (Tuesday, 13 Apr 2004 16:48)
http://www.fhm.com/site/webtv/splash
/chrisryan2.html
for those that don't want to visit "boob-heaven" was it?
>>By trident (Tuesday, 13 Apr 2004 17:20)
Hello all from a lurker turned poster! I hope everyone had a nice Easter or Passover.
A bit of an introduction: I have been reading the McNab books for a few months now and I'm totally enthralled. Not my usual genre, but this is me devouring McNab's books. Started at the beginning with B20 and am now in the middle of Last Light. (Is it me, or is LL a bit slower than the previous fictions?) I'm very happy to see here that I can pre-order Deep Black.
In the hunt to satisfy my curiousity about McNab and his world, I came across this board -- it's quite impressive, I must say. Kudos to all who keep the conversations lively and civilized.
I'm a virgin messagge board poster, so please be kind! I have a habit of typing 'nad' for 'and' and it gets me in trouble sometimes.... And yes, I am another American woman. There seems to be a large number of women on this board -- curious, no?
So, I've found a few things in the books I've read so far -- little piddly Brit v. Amerc things -- that I thought I'd throw out for fun. Forgive me if they've been discussed already -- it would take a month to read the entire board script! I don't think I'm letting any spoilers loose, but if you haven't read Crisis Four or Firewall, you may want to skip the next three paragraphs.
(By the way, would someone mind instructing me offline how to unblock the spoiler panel?)
In Crisis Four, when Nick and Sarah are in the condo, Nick plugs in both the freezer and the kettle. Hmm. Do American friges have separate plugs for the freezer part? I've never noticed that, but I could be wrong. The kettle, however, is a giveaway of a British writer (or editor): I don't know any Amercs who own an electric kettle, and they're not big sellers in the stores. We do it the old fashioned way, with the kettle on the stove... unless you're like my Dad, who heats up one cup at a time in the microwave....
Also in CF -- and this is a really silly picky thing on my part -- Josh says "I'll phone in the morning." Semantics here, really: most Amercs use the verb " to call" instead of " to phone," and I would think someone who says "Yo!" all the time, as Josh does, wouldn't be saying "phone."
In one of the very early discussions on this board, the issue arose of the difference in character names among different international edits of the books. The question came up about the Wasp in Firewall. I have no theories as to why different editions would change the Wasp to something else, but I can explain the origination of Wasp in the first place. Nick first describes him as having a WASP-y New England accent. WASP = White Anglo Saxon Protestant. Stereotypically, this is the Old Money privileged set who settled in the US northeast a long time ago (well, long by the US timeline). WASPs tend to be viewed as rich, conservative, boorish and snobby. Think Boston upper-crust. Thus, Nick turned WASP into the Wasp, which happens to work on more than level (why an editor would want to change that is beyond me).
(That New England accent he often ascribes to Amercs, by the way, is a bit of a misnomer... my guess is he's really saying they have the middle-American news announcer accent, as a true New England accent is very distinctive and not common outside the New England region. (Think "pahk the cah in Hahvahd yahd".) Sorry for the dissertation -- dialects fascinate me! This is all my uneducated opinion, of course. Feel free to chime in.)
Ok, one last thing to mention: I have to say that throughout the series McNab's descriptions of DC and the area have been frighteningly accurate. Living and working in the area, I know it well, and his descriptions are dead on. And I've been to the Barnes & Noble and Bread & Chocolate he describes in CF many times... makes me want to keep my head up and eyes open! I wonder, are descriptions of other places (London, etc.) as accurately described?
So... I realize this is a really long post, especially for a newbie... thanks for indulging me!
Jiffer
>>By Jiffer (Tuesday, 13 Apr 2004 22:08)
Hey Jiffer, that's a great post! Welcome.
Thanx for the link Trident, it's exactly what I need tonight. I've just finished my first CR and I think I've found a new drug.
>>By alice (Tuesday, 13 Apr 2004 23:07)
Welcome Jiffer!
A fellow Washingtonian, eh? I agree, the locations are all for real. I lived in Tysons Corner for a while and have been to the army surplus store that he mentions in Remote Control. I also find myself wondering how many cars in the Dulles Airport parking lot are really stolen/abandoned every time I go there.
>>By Majorette (Tuesday, 13 Apr 2004 23:07)
Thank you for the kind welcome!
Nice to see another DCer, Majorette -- we should compare notes sometime. In CF (I think) McNab describes driving on Rte. 110 next to the Pentagon. This is part of my regular commute. CF was written before 9/11, though, so the stationed police cars and armed tanks don't figure into his descriptions....
It's interesting to me that sometimes it takes a work of fiction to make me step back and think about the world I actually live and breathe in. Huh.
Question: For those of you who've read both the McNab and Chris Ryan books, how do they compare (or not)? I'm curious about Ryan's books, both fiction and non-fiction, but I don't want it to taint the McNab world I know, know what I mean?
Another Question: Has everyone completely OD'd on chocolate yet? I think one more pink M&M might send me over the edge... but I'm happy to report that blue ones seem to be ok....
>>By Jiffer (Wednesday, 14 Apr 2004 00:40)
Jiffer:
Hi, and welcome to the board! It's great that you decided to step out of the lurking shadows and join in. Keep up the good posts. :)
It seems like we share the same fascination for linguistic oddities, so I just want to get this right, regarding the New England accent: from the way you describe it, it sounds like the same accent of John F. Kennedy and mayor Quimby from "The Simpsons". Am I on the right track here?
If you dare flipping through some of the previous pages (but as you're an ex-lurker, you might've seen it already), you'll notice that I've been commenting on American vs UK expression-"bloopers" in Remote Control. I found more of these in Crisis Four - the "kettle" and "phone"-bits being a few of them. As you say - perhaps this is splitting of insignificant hairs, but I tend to notice such things.
Oh yeah, before I forget: spoiler-feature instructions can be found at the board called "Text Formatting". Check it out!
Regarding the freezer: I think AM was referring to a large stand-alone freezer, rather than the freezer that's a secondary part on a regular refridgerator.
Why? Well.... consider the volume of what he was going to put into the freezer in the first place.... ;) (And even if he did intended to arrange it all in more "managable bits" afterwards, the fridge-freezer would still be a bit of a tight squeeze -- no pun intended :)
Finally, regarding Chris Ryan vs Andy McNab (sorry if the abbreviations is confusing, but I assume you've gotten used to them from your lurking days):
As you'll see in my profile, I've read a lot of SAS-literature. I started out reading CR's TOTGA, then AM's B20 and IA. I then started reading CR's fictions (haven't read them all though) before I gave AM's Nick Stone-series a go (but not until recently --shame on me!)
CR and AM have different qualities in their own rights, but I think the thing that sets them the most apart, is AM's way of applying his sense of humor.
This is evident in AM's non-fictions as well, although this might be an unfair comparison on CR's part, as he hasn't (yet) written an autobiography similar to AM's IA. Cameron Spence has the same type of humor in his books (I love reading the stories of various Regimental wind-ups and piss-taking incidents), and this is a quality I appreciate.
CR has a more serious no-nonsense kind of "tone" in his books, but I feel CR has stronger "technical" writing-abilities compared to AM. CR has for one a better educational level to begin with. He also manages to alternate between writing in first and third person. AM is only able to do first person. The following might not be a an advantage in many of the -- *cough, cough* -- female posters eyes, but CR manages to describe sexual situations better than AM.
By his own admission, AM is "crap" at writing about both sex and in third person.
Luckily, one of CR's best fictions (of the ones I've read) is a stand-alone. So if you decide to give him a try, I suggest you start off with "The Watchman". I highly recommend it!
Ok, I think that's enough for one post.
I'll finish with what I started out with: welcome to the board !
Cya around.
>>By ortlieb (Wednesday, 14 Apr 2004 08:56)
Thanks for the AM/CR comparison, Ortlieb -- very helpful. (Not sure I can call you O just yet... or would that be Oh? Hmm.) After I finish the last two and a half AM books I'll pick up "The Watchman" and give it a shake.
I think one of things that I really enjoy about AM's writing is his witty and self-depreciating humor, especially in B20 and IA. I did have to pull up an online British-American dictionary, though, to understand some of the, um, finer colloquialisms. Now my friends are wondering why I'm all of a sudden telling them I couldn't be a**ed to do something....
Re: New England accent and JFK & Mayor Quimby
-- yes, that is most definitely what I meant... not sure if my assessment is correct, but that's what I think and I'm sticking with it!
Re: Stepping out of the lurking shadows
-- for the record, it's *only* been a two week recce on the board... will try to spy around some more in my copious free time.
I have definitely noticed that RC and CF contain the most Amerc/Brit 'bloopers' thus far. Not a big deal, and sometimes amusing, but definitely something I catch.
Back to work... have a good one!
>>By Jiffer (Wednesday, 14 Apr 2004 18:18)
Perhaps it sounds like this when I appear: "Uh oh... here's O" . ;)
>>By ortlieb (Thursday, 15 Apr 2004 05:42)
Or you can call him Ortie like most of his fans do. :-) Hi Jiffer! Good posts! I'm just starting to reread CF. It's not one of my favorites, but for personal reasons. It's a good book and I'm enjoying it better the second time around. :-)
Thanks for the heads up on the blue M&Ms. I wonder if that works with Hershey's kisses as well. Hmmm.... Anyway, hello from another Yankee (even if I am living south of the M-D line ;-))
>>By Dare (Thursday, 15 Apr 2004 05:55)
Welcome, Jiffer!
Very nice to see you here. And yet another Yank, no less. If this keeps up, we'll definitely have to arrange some sort of US convention of F Troopers! Hmmm... gee, wonder who we could invite as the keynote speaker.... yeah, right! As if I'd have to think twice! ;o)
Re: New England accents
I'm gonna throw a spanner in the works cuz my impression of New Englanders is more like Pepperidge Farm "remembahs" and Gorton's fisherman's "ayh-uhh" frozen seafood commercials... (sorry, Euro Troopers, you hadda be there...)... but as I'm saying this, I'm trying to remember where Jaws was supposed to take place. Might be some NE accents in that film if I'm remembering correctly... :o\
>>By am-i-binned (Friday, 16 Apr 2004 22:14)
Hi all discovered this discussion area yesterday and was impressed with the comments made about both chris ryan and andy mcnabs books. all observations have been informative so keep the good work up, I also seen a recommendation for the watcher by cr it is by far his best book and you should go out and buy it now.
thx for your time and again "keep the post going as well as they have been"
>>By Nemesis2842004 (Saturday, 17 Apr 2004 13:42)
Hi again, All....
VBG! There are times when being OCRD really pleases me! Following up this morning on my open-mouth-and-insert-foot comment from last night, I've learned that both the Bostonian and the more nasally ayh-uhh types are New England accents. Better yet, however, I stumbled upon a really neat site by a New Zealander (ooh, how very Mike Coburn-ish!) -- which now has a permanent bookmark on my PC. Definitely worth (well, to me anyway) following all of his embedded links! And this also relates to convos here about Brit vs American phrases!
Excerpt from: www.richard-seaman.com/USA/Life/
... "When I came to America one of the first things I thought I'd do was drop my New Zealand accent and pick up an American one. There were three things I didn't count on: first, it's not easy for an adult to change accents, second, there's more than one American accent and third, women keep telling me what a great accent I have. It's true that the "almost British" New Zealand accent is considered classy over here, so why change it? So far as American accents are concerned, I thought there was only a Southern accent and a Northern accent. Perhaps I might have said there's also a New Jersey (or should I say "Noo Joisey") accent. In fact, however, there's also a New England accent, a Californian accent, Ebonic accent and lots more variations in between. In fact, a Southern accent would be much easier to master than any of the others, because it's more regular and consistent. However, it sounds more grating to a New Zealander (and to many Americans) so it would take a deliberate effort to do it.
What to do? Well, I figured I'd knock off some of the most grating aspects of my accent, and pick up American equivalents. If you want, you can learn about my beautiful American accent, as well as some of the differences between the pronunciation of American English and British Commonwealth English. And just in case you imagine that pronunciation is the only difference between the languages, check out my ever expanding list of the differences in vocabulary. Every time I say something to someone and they look blankly back at me, I know that I'm about to have another language learning experience! You can see some of the results in this page of American phrases I've learned."
>>By am-i-binned (Saturday, 17 Apr 2004 14:28)
Welcome, Nemesis2842004....
Very nice to meet you -- and now that I have, may I call you Nemesis? (pleeez) :o)
SOP's usually include asking which books you've read, favourites, what brought you here, etc. Since you're recommending CR's The Watchman (I agree completely btw!), I'm wondering if you've checked out the other forums where we F Troopers like to opine? (i.e., Chris Ryan, Duncan Falconer, Mike Coburn, Dean Francis)
>>By am-i-binned (Saturday, 17 Apr 2004 14:43)
Thanks for the CR interview link Tridy!!
Maybe put it on the CR site too, in case there are some who don't venture here?
Coming soon...another one-off (in the continuing series)
B.A.B.E.S - Before They Were Scientists...
Ha ha ha...you guessed it!!
They were air stewardesses...
(And hello to all you lovely shiny happy new posters out there...)
>>By bikergirl (Saturday, 17 Apr 2004 17:04)
Bikergirl said, "They were air stewardesses"
Rolling on the floor laughing my f'ing @ss off!!! (Those who know me will know that I have a healthy respect for raunchy airline humor). Out of curiousity, will the next BABES installment be appearing on, um, Chris Ryan's board?
Welcome Nemesis.... I, too, found this board to be quite helpful in choosing what to read next. In fact, I bought The Watchman for the very reason that it got such high marks here in Gnooks. I'll look forward to hearing your thoughts when I finish it.
Jiffer- We'll have to meet up and do a driving tour of all the spots mentioned in RC and CF! Oh, and if you want to get really weirded out about what goes on around here, read a book called Spooky 8. Not as well written, but certainly worth the couple hours it would take you to breeze through it. One you have, we can take a drive out to Langley...
>>By Majorette (Saturday, 17 Apr 2004 18:00)
Wondered where you slunk off to BABES. Three spookers on board HMS Wckamyarse too much for you, right kiddos? Happen you missed reading latest on our spook board.
"Andrew Crofts, who advertises his trade in the back of The
Bookseller, is unusual in that his sole job is now ghost writing,
though he started out as a travel and business journalist and has
written many of his own non-fiction books. Nick Cook has ghosted two
books for Cameron Spence about the wars in the Gulf and Bosnia, Sabre
Squadron and All Necessary Measures. He ghosted a third book, but one
must take into account that he is aviation editor of Jane's Defence
Weekly, and specialises in freelance writing on military and defence
and has written two of his own thrillers, Angel, Archangel and
Aggressor."
"Sometimes a book which people think has been ghosted has simply
received a lot of help from an in-house team. Similarly Andy McNab
was tutored when he first began to write his bestseller Bravo Two
Zero. 'Andy needed a lot of help at the beginning but he is a natural
storyteller,' said McNab's agent Mark Lucas, denying a long-standing
rumour that the book was ghost written. Can the same be said about
his fiction when he has a wife with a strong background in
publishing; a truly inhouse ghoster?"
Bud's had the article kicking round all the while you lot were saying it couldn't be true and that Rose barb were pricking at wrong person. Reckon previous accounts of lack of humour post C4 is when wifey wrapped Mcnab round a tree.
Re Washington D'cers. Do you know the quick route in to L'angley de costa? Maybe we could all meet up in L'angley de costa's favourite diner.
>>By readit (Sunday, 18 Apr 2004 09:29)
Thx for the welcome. and by all means call me nem or nemesis the full thing is a bit of a mouthfull after all.
So down to the sops, in the whole CR vs Am thing i tend to prefer AM (although the watchman is by far a better book than some of Mcnabs work), his charecter Stone works on a better level and I still can't forgive CR for the way he showed some of the his fellow patrol members in such a poor light.
I think i have read almost every SAS or SBS book availible, Apart from mike coburns which is in the post to me.
I'd Like to reccomend a few books for your perusal: CQB Mike Curtis, For Queen and Country Spud Ely, Fighting Scared Robin Horsfall, Once A Pilgrim Will Scully.
And also one more that is not SAS orientated, but one of the most amazing non-fiction tales i have ever read. it's a book called heart of a soldier and its a truly amazing story, about Rick Rescorla (you may know of him being the head of security for the twin towers when they were hit) it follows his life from growing up in devon in south west England up until the tragic events of 9/11 and his death resulting from going back in to get more people out, im not going to dwell to much on the story but highly reccdomend it to anyone.
Thats it for know so i await any posts refering to this one with anticipation, and hope you are all well.
>>By Nemesis2842004 (Sunday, 18 Apr 2004 13:57)
Back again left one book out and also need to correct a spelling mistake (oops), Shooting Gallery by Gaz Hunter, he was in charge of B sqn at the time of B20, and the spelling mistake= recommend, so i appologise for my lack of a spell checker and hopefully i will proof read my comments better in future. later
>>By Nemesis2842004 (Sunday, 18 Apr 2004 14:07)
Hello Nem! You've read almost every SAS/SBS, some of us were really moved by Frank Collins' book (Baptism of Fire), did you read that too, if so, what did you think?
Readit, "lack of humour post C4 is when wifey wrapped Mcnab round a tree" - I didn't really notice but that doesn't mean it's not true. Interesting to hear if more people think there is less humour post C4.
From your description 'wifey wrapped McNab' I do see you haven't lost yours.
>>By Lynn (Sunday, 18 Apr 2004 15:45)
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