Book cover of Freaks of a Feather: A Marine Grunt's Memoir

Book description

2023 Eugene Sledge Award winner for best Marine Corps memoir of the past three years

Kacy Tellessen is a grunt. After completing high school in rural Washington, he enlisted in the Marine Corps and began the hero's journey he imagined might parallel those epic tales he'd consumed throughout adolescence. But…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Freaks of a Feather as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

I love Tellessen’s writing style. It is honest, brutal at times, and often beautiful. I began my Marine Corps service as a Marine Grunt and share a kinship with Tellessen. Many of his stories feel like stories that I lived or could have lived.

I think that is the gift of a great storyteller. He tells the good and bad of what it means to be a Marine in a way that makes me wish I was young enough to do it all again.

From John's list on The best memoirs from five wars.

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December on 5C4 by Adam Strassberg,

Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!

On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…

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