The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors by James Hornfischer for nonfiction. Hornfischer was a fantastic writer, can’t say enough good things about his work. As far as the naval aspect of the Pacific goes, I think he’s pretty hard to beat. It isn’t dry or overly technical like you can sometimes get with nonfiction work, it feels like you’re reading a fiction novel at times. There’s typically a good bit of setup at the beginning which can turn some people off, but once things really get going, Hornfischer will have you hanging onto every word and you just can’t put the book down. And it’s about the Battle Off Samar, one of my favorite historical events of all time.
World War Z by Max Brooks for fiction. It’s a very unique and interesting take on telling the story of a zombie apocalypse that I’ve never seen before, basically a series of interviews from people around the world and their experiences with it. It especially dives deep into the socioeconomic and political aspects of a zombie apocalypse and how it affected the world in those terms, which is something you don’t see a lot in zombie media. Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of guts and gore and sections that make you squirm, but hearing about how the zombie virus was spread through the black market organ trade and human trafficking in East Asia and South America, or how America’s consumerist and service-based economy and car-based infrastructure affected its reaction to and ability to respond to the zombie threat, or how the South African Aparthied and Israel-Palestine conflict affected those countries’ responses, is also very interesting. It’s not perfect, Brooks does have some biases that come through and when he writes about military matters it’s very obvious he has no actual experience in that department, but conceptually it’s a great book and nine times out of ten it’s executed very well.