I finished David Jones’ In Parenthesis today, sixteen days after starting it. It’s a book that can’t be read fast and has to be taken in small chunks.
I’m pretty sure if it hadn’t been for my “one book at a time” rule I would never have finished it. But I’m glad I did even though it took longer than I was expecting.
Before I go back to Napoleon the Great (of which I’ve completed the first of its three parts) I feel the need for a bit of easier reading. So I’m going to read The Soldier’s Art, which is the eighth in Anthony Powell’s cycle of twelve novels A Dance to the Music of Time.
So for in my book challenge since January 24th I have read:
The Evolution of Everything by Matt Ridley
The Valley of Bones by Anthony Powell - set in the Second World War
Napoleon the Great (part 1) by Andrew Roberts - set in the French Revolutionary Wars
In Parenthesis by David Jones - set in the First World War
and am now starting a second book set in the Second World War.
I didn’t deliberately set out to read quite so many war books - it just seems to have happened that way!