Book Club: Mark Zuehlke

Hello fellow isolators! I hope you are all doing well on this strange Christmas Eve. I know many people are not seeing family or having to change plans to keep everyone safe, as well as dealing with new restrictions in some provinces. As these played out in mid-December, it seemed another perfect time to have a second socially-distant book club meeting! As usual, I was joined by a special guest and a live studio audience on Zoom for an evening talking about reading, stories, and all things books.

A quick note: Normally I host these book club meetings from my home in Edmonton, but this episode is a bit special. I have travelled home to BC and I recorded this interview during some time in self-isolation in a very cute little tiny home in Campbell River. This is not just a vacation: I made the trip to help my mom move (and will be working remotely from here for a month), so I did my utmost to travel safely and stay healthy. I would like to acknowledge that I hosted this live podcast interview as a visitor on the traditional territories of the Laich-Kwil-Tach, Klahoose, and K’omoks First Nations. 

Thank you to the live virtual studio audience who have signed on a bit earlier than normal for this event, it was good to see you and good to connect as our provinces go into stricter phases of restrictions across Canada to help stop the rapid rise of COVID-19.

I was very excited to talk with my third guest on the Well That’s Cool Book Club, Mark Zuehlke. I have had the chance to meet Mark a few times over the past 7 or so years, including at book releases, talks, and when he was a guest speaker for a course I was taking at UVic. Mark is an award-winning author generally considered to be Canada’s foremost popular military historian. His 14-book Canadian Battle Series is the most exhaustive recounting of the battles and campaigns fought by any nation during World War II to have been written by a single author. In recognition of his contribution to popularizing Canadian history, Mark was awarded the 2014 Governor General’s History Award for Popular Media: The Pierre Berton Award. He is also an award-winning mystery writer, a battlefield tour historian, and a former journalist! 

Mark Zuehlke

My guest for the third meeting of the Well That’s Cool Book Club!

My conversation with Mark explored three areas of his work: the life and work of a popular military history writer, the process of writing Canadian battlefield histories, and some of the stories he’s discovered over the years. Mark recommended a couple good memoirs of Canadian soldiers who became well-known writers after the war, including Farley Mowat’s And No Birds Sang as well as George Blackburn’s The Guns of Normandy and The Guns of Victory.

My thanks again to Mark Zuehlke for talking with the small but regular group of Book Club members this month. If you want to learn more about Mark and his Canadian Battle Series or other writing, visit Zuehlke.ca. 

That’s it for the Well That’s Cool Book Club for this year! That’s right, we’ve made it to the end of 2020! I’ll be back for another book club meeting on January 21 at 8:00 p.m. Mountain Time for a conversation with speculative fiction writer and author of In Veritas, C.J. Lavigne. You can register for that meeting here.

As for the latest update on my reading list, I’ve temporarily dropped A History of Scotland by Neil Oliver and just finished History of the Glider Pilot Regiment by Claude Smith. This was a really hardcore history with lots of regimental information and not too much action, though those parts were best when they came around. What a crazy bit of military history! Now I am back to a light sci-fi read with The Consuming Fire by John Scalzi. It is the second book in The Interdependency series and I listened to the first one as an audiobook read by Wil Wheaton. The audio book was good enough, but I think I’m enjoying reading it without an excited Wesley Crusher doing all the voices!

Do you have any new year reading recommendations for me, or any good books you got for Christmas? You can get in touch with the podcast on Facebook at wellthatscoolpod or on Twitter at @well_thatscool, or by sending me an email at wellthatscoolpod@gmail.com. 

Thanks as always to Ron Yamauchi for the theme tune and to Anna Schroeder of Annather Design for the cool podcast logo, check out her work at annatherdesign.com. Other music heard during this episode and all the other podcast stuff is done by me, Ben Fast. 

Don’t forget to subscribe, rate and review on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts! Until next time, stay well, and happy isolation reading!