Friday, long weekend yee-haw-link-o-rama

Hey, Veteran's Day is Monday. Thank a vet and read a good book about their heroism.

One of the best books I've read, which just happens to be a war vet book, is Surviving Hell: A POW's Journey, about South Dakota's own Leo Thorsness.

Thorsness was awarded the Medal of Honor. But he didn’t learn about it until years later—by a “tap code” coming through prison walls—because on April 30, Thorsness was shot down, captured, and transported to the Hanoi Hilton. Surviving Hell recounts a six-year captivity marked by hours of brutal torture and days of agonizing boredom. With a novelist’s eye for character and detail, Thorsness describes how he and other American POWs strove to keep their humanity. 

Thrown into solitary confinement for refusing to bow down to his captors, for instance, he disciplined his mind by memorizing long passages of poetry that other prisoners sent him by tap code. Filled with hope and humor, Surviving Hell is an eloquent story of resistance and survival. No other book about American POWs has described so well the strategies these remarkable men used in their daily effort to maintain their dignity. With resilience and resourcefulness, they waged war by other means in the darkest days of a long captivity.

The best books on today's wars from the pens of veterans.

Here are five books recommended by Veterans Today to help understand what they may be going through back on the home-front.

For other stuff to occupy your weekend:

Here’s a bookish website that seems a little more interesting than most (and by “most” I mean mine).

Five things you didn’t know about the Pioneer Woman, which I guess is some deal I should have known about (don't end a sentence with a preposition, Haugen!).

Here are 10 tips to avoiding speeding tickets, that don’t necessarily involve you slowing down.

Tips for snowblowing, in case you're an idiot.

Fan of The Killers? I am. For what it’s worth, new song out. Here's the vid.