What I’m Reading:

 I am currently reading two novels, one of them being “Yakuza: Japan’s Crime Underworld” and the other is “The Warrior Elite”. Yakuza is an interesting book written with a grandfatherly-narrative which expresses a historical and social mixing-pot where ideas shift frequently between the role of the “chivalrous gangster” in feudal Japan society and their effect on the era’s history, causing the book to be mostly composed of intermittently connected background information. Naturally, the combination of new Japanese social terms and the dramatic contrast in the role of organized crime in Japan against the Western counterpart leads to a fairly hard to follow book. “The Warrior Elite”, on the other hand had scarcely left my hands today. This novel is written by a retired NAVY SEAL officer who follows SEAL Class 228 as they are being “Forged into the Warrior Elite” in their three phase ordeal. The almost comical commentary of the on looking narrator gives excellent insight into the daily routines and hardships of the SEAL hopefuls as they form the bonds of a true Elite Warrior unit. His unique wording helps to connect the reader directly into the intensity of the events contained within the book by using phrases such as “intense verbal encouragement” and “physical arm harassment” to express situations we would typically label “yelling” and “push-up punishment”. “The Warrior Elite has been an incredibly good book so far and has revealed to me what the SEALs and any of the other elite taskforce groups must persevere through to become the best of the best in the name of our freedom.

What I’m listening to:

This week I have been going back to my favorite band of all time, Breaking Benjamin, and I have been listening to their latest album, Dear Agony. I was just listening to the song “Anthem of the Angels” and it brought back the sad realization that the band had split up and I probably will not hear another song from them with such a complex arrangement of string instruments and the base-heavy power rifts which blend so well.