Just before Christmas (and I do mean just before…it was at about 10PM on Christmas eve) our friends MLK gave Nellie and I a couple of books. I just finished reading mine: Matterhorn (amazon | kobo) by Karl Marlantes. It’s billed as a novel about the Vietnam war, but it’s so obviously a slight-dramatized recounting of Marlantes’ time there. The details are too vivid, the people too real, for it to be fiction. I was a little slow getting into it, but after about 100 pages I was desperate to return to it each time I put it down. The characters stick indelibly…I would fall asleep thinking of Vancouver, or Hawke, or Hamilton, or Parker. I would flip each page terrified something would happen to Pat. I would get angry at Big John and Big John Three just like I got angry at Sobel when we watched Band Of Brothers. But mostly I would be Mellas each time I opened the book.