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OK, admittedly this is a LITTLE peripheral to WWI, but I’m including it because it does talk about how it affected the soldiers. It’s a graphic novel for kids and I really enjoyed it, thought it was a great introduction to an awful period of history.<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
The Absolutist<\/strong><\/p>\n I LOATHED The Boy in the Striped<\/em> Pajamas<\/em> and I started reading this one before I realised who the author was. I loathed this book, too, and now am super stoked to not ever read any of his other books.<\/p>\n It’s not just me being hateful here, either. It’s just, objectively, a Really Awful Book. The dudes are gay and incredibly dysfunctional and one of them is big time manipulating the other one and it’s just… ew. It’s one thing to read about a bad relationship if something good comes out of it, but NOTHING GOOD COMES OUT OF THIS RELATIONSHIP IN THIS BOOK. Vomit emoji, do not recommend, yuk, so bad I won’t even bother with an affiliate link on this one.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n The Alice Network<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n I. Loved. This. Book.<\/em> The reader of the audio was fantastic (aside from my perhaps petty complaint that she didn\u2019t pronounce Evelyn the British way). Spies, Scotsmen, snogging, the things that make my heart flutter, this has it all. I love the author\u2019s attention to detail. The author\u2019s note wasn\u2019t included in the audio, unfortunately, but I was thrilled to get the print version and be able to read that and learn about all the history she drew from.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n All Quiet on the Western Front<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n This one kind of goes without saying. It\u2019s just about the only serious, well-known literary work out there that deals with WWI from the German perspective. I was super moved and impressed by it as a teenager (or early 20s, I honestly don\u2019t remember when I first read it). The translation by Wheen is my preferred one.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n American Heritage History of WWI<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n This wasn’t the most riveting read, BUT it was very thorough in a flyover sense, and I’d recommend it for someone who wants a history that touches on pretty much everything that happened.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Among the Poppies<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n “Skin that looked like it was carved out of cream.”<\/p>\n That’s an actual line from this book.<\/p>\n It wasn’t a horrible book, it was just… rather far-fetched and stretching plausibility as far as plot goes. It also felt like it wanted to be Christian histfic but didn’t ever come out and just clearly mention that the characters are Christian?? Think “headstrong girl who wangles her way into a private ambulance unit in France”. It felt very formulaic… ***<\/p>\n The Assassination of the Archduke: Sarajevo 1914 and the Romance That Changed the World<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n I absolutely loved this book. Max Hastings in Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War <\/em>(see below) called Vienna the \u201cglobal pinnacle of snobbery\u201d and this book made me understand why. It also gave personality and sympathy to the man and wife whose murder set off the war. ***<\/p>\n A Bend in the Stars<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n I still have SO many of my fellow Debut19s\u2019 books to read, but I\u2019m finally getting to this one! I\u2019ve always adored this cover. Set in Russia at the start of WWI, too, which furthered its appeal to me. It\u2019s about a Jewish surgeon and her scientist brother who is trying to do Complicated Maths Things related to relativity (I don\u2019t understand a thing about all that, but it\u2019s written in a way that doesn\u2019t make my brain swim so that\u2019s good). 🤣<\/span><\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Biggles Learns to Fly<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Biggles of the Camel Squadron<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Binny in Secret<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Birds of a Feather<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n I love these books\u2019 covers, and because there is a whole slew of them, I was excited to try them, since Maisie was a nurse in WWI (the books themselves are set post-war, but there are plenty of flashbacks).<\/p>\n Birds of a Feather was better than the first book (ie it had an actual plot). Still, not that hot. I started the third one and partway through the first chapter I said to myself, \u201cI just can\u2019t handle any more of this\u201d \u2013 and moved on.<\/p>\n There\u2019s so much mysticism and intuition and just\u2026woo<\/em>\u2026about Maisie\u2019s detective work. It feels like cheating, like she doesn\u2019t have to use her brain to figure anything out as long as she meditates and whatever. It drove me bonkers. I do not understand how there are so many of these published and who in the world is actually READING them.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Blizzard of Glass: The Halifax Explosion of 1917<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Bluebird<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n This one was in the “modern-day character finds historical item” dual timeline trend that seems super popular at the minute. It was okay. I admit I am SUPER hard to please when it comes to adult historical fiction, though. If I really love it, I will yell about it at every possible opportunity. So … basically my “it was okay” probably will be 90% of other people’s “FIVE STARS WOO!”<\/p>\n Anyway, this is about a war nurse and two brothers who start a bootlegging operation after the war. I admit it was as much the Prohibition plotline that intrigued me as the WWI plotline.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Bruar’s Rest<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n I have a Scottish Traveller character in The War in Our Hearts<\/em> (he wasn\u2019t originally a Traveller, he was sort of a Generic Character, until someone said \u201cdude, MacFie is a super stereotypical Traveller name\u201d and it snowballed from there.) I used the name because my Scottish ancestors were MacFees.<\/p>\n Anyway, so you can imagine my excitement to learn there was a novel about Travellers set before, during, and after WWI, written by a Traveller. Parts of this book were dark and unsettling to me, not going to lie, but it was a good story, and an invaluable resource for my research.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Come On In, America: The United States in World War I<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n This was a great overview of America\u2019s part in the war. I love YA history books. So many pictures and quick to read.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Dazzle Ships: World War I and the Art of Confusion<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n I had really known nothing about the Lusitania or its sinking\u2019s impact on the world, aside from a vague \u201cit happened and the US got mad or something\u201d. Really engaging. I love Larson\u2019s writing, and Scott Brick (the narrator of the audiobook) is a favourite reader of mine. There is a lot fascinating insight into U-Boats and what it was like to be on them. (I would not want to be on a U-Boat.)<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n DKfindout! World War I<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Great intro for kids!<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n The Edge of the Cloud<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n The End of Innocence<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n I liked this book because it was an unusual premise: a German student at an American university having to leave his studies to go fight for Germany, and his girlfriend\u2019s fight to have him honoured after the war at said university. The last third or so lagged a bit IMO. The cover is gorgeous.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Eye-Deep in Hell: Trench Warfare in World War I<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n This is full of fantastic, practical-life information about life in the trenches. Among other things, it answers such questions as: How long did it take to get mail? (The mail system was very efficient.) What kinds of food did the men get? (Tinned beef and plum-apple jam and super hard biscuit were staples.) Did anyone ever wake up with rats sitting on them? (Yes.) The many pictures are not very well-reproduced, a bit like bad photocopies at times, but fun to look at all the same, and invaluable to my research for my own novel.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Fall of Giants<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n I rolled my eyes SO MUCH.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n In fairness, this was clearly a thoroughly researched work. There was a lot that I found genuinely interesting in it. The approach of the various nations and the layers of What Was Going On was great, especially in Russia where WWI and the Bolshevik Revolution were simultaneously simmering. But there was so much soap opera about it too. I didn\u2019t really LIKE most of the characters, with perhaps the exception of Billy Twice, and listening to a 30 hour audiobook about characters you don\u2019t care about is kinda hard. HOWEVER, I know there are plenty of people who genuinely like this book a lot, so remember this is just my opinion and you don\u2019t have to take my word for it.<\/p>\n For your entertainment, here are my comments to a friend as I slogged through (**SPOILERS**):<\/strong><\/p>\n -So I am listening to Fall of Giants. I kind of like it but kind of also like O_O IT\u2019S FREAKING 30 HOURS LONG<\/em><\/p>\n -I am mostly just doing it because it is one of the very few WWI era novels. I feel like it is all going to end with everyone dead or miserable.<\/em><\/p>\n -I can\u2019t get over the bit where Maude gets her dude off AT THE OPERA. like\u2026 aside from the fact that they were with other people he\u2019d literally walk off looking like he wet himself. Conveniently and frustratingly this was never addressed.<\/em><\/p>\n -Of course there is the token gay dude.<\/em><\/p>\n -Oooh, the earl\u2019s wife is pregnant. Maybe it will be a girl and the housekeeper will have the boy. Or else wife will have another miscarriage. Women miscarry so appallingly easily in books. Also they become impregnated so easily. They just happen to be constantly fertile. Dear dude authors, pls stop projecting ur limitless fertility on ur girl characters.<\/em><\/p>\n -I cannot believe I am only like 1\/3 through this.<\/em><\/p>\n -Condoms totally existed at the time, so why was the earl not being sensible. I mean, if he HAD to fork his housekeeper\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n -Oh yaaay Ethel had a boy but so did the wife. I guess all these women have to lavishly procreate to keep the series going aye<\/em><\/p>\n -Is Lev going to do over this Olga chick BARF<\/em><\/p>\n -Now he has to marry her because\u2014shock\u2014SHE PREGNANT. But it does say Lev used condoms sometimes, so there\u2019s that?<\/em><\/p>\n -Wait so supposedly earl fitzherbert\u2019s wife had a boy but I THINK SHE IS LYING<\/em><\/p>\n -Wait so fitz just got shot HE BETTER NOT BE DEAD I WANTED BILLY TO BEAT HIM TO A PULP<\/em><\/p>\n -Oh yay the earl is trying to seduce ethel AGAIN. she needs to marry the nerdy librarian dude.<\/em><\/p>\n -still plugging away<\/em><\/p>\n -3 hours left of this book<\/em><\/p>\n -I kind of love Billy Williams. his standing up to Fitz is the only thing about this book that has made me smile.<\/em><\/p>\n -I finally finished. the ending was pretty great. Fitz had to stand aside and let Ethel and his illegitimate son pass.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n ***<\/p>\n First to Fly: The Story of the Lafayette Escadrille, the American Heroes Who Flew for France in World War I<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n This book held my attention and was really interesting, but also didn’t feel very narratively cohesive.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Five Lieutenants: The Heartbreaking Story of Five Harvard Men Who Led America to Victory in World War I<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n This was incredibly tedious and unmemorable and I can’t believe I made it through the whole thing.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n The Fledglings<\/strong><\/p>\n This was like reading bad fanfiction. If I had a dollar for every time a dude character made comments \u201cin his nasal tone\u201d or how many times the American MC was referred to as \u201cthe sandy-haired youth\u201d instead of Luke, I could buy enough chocolate to self-medicate back to sanity. There was basically no real plot thread or point to this story. It was rambling, with lots of internal agonies from the three MCs (one British, one American, one Austrian, all young fighter pilots). The American agonises over his responsibility for the \u201cblackened bloated corpses\u201d (another phrase that gets used a million times) of the Germans he kills. The British dude agonises over whether he is gay. The Austrian, I honestly don\u2019t know why he was even in the story at all, but I seem to recall he agonised a lot about flying. The romantic encounters of the young men with various females were all just awkward beyond words. The reader of the audiobook was also pretty terrible. As with The Absolutist<\/em>, I simply cannot bring myself to put an affiliate link on this.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n The Fourth Bear<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n So this is, really, anything BUT a book about WWI, but I’m including it because in this book is a theme park called SommeWorld(tm), and I find this so hilarious that I have to put in a good word for it.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n The Frightful First World War<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Bought this in the gift shop of the Gordon Highlanders museum in Aberdeen and read it on the drive from Aberdeen to Edinburgh. Its terrible dad jokes and puns really appealed to my inner twelve-year-old and it was just a LOT of fun.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n George, Nicholas, and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War I<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Similar to <\/span>The Proud Tower<\/span><\/em> in that it deals primarily with the lead-up to WWI, but from the perspectives of the three great rulers of the day\u2014King George, Czar Nicholas, and Kaiser Wilhelm. How they interacted, how their personalities and childhoods shaped the men they became, and created the disaster that was the war. I absolutely loved every minute of this book and bought a copy after finishing listening to it. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n There\u2019s a lot of humourous insight to balances the straight-up history. If it wasn\u2019t for the fact that these guys were heads of state and therefore shaping world history, Kaiser Wilhelm particularly is just hilarious in his ineptitude, his bluster… I learned a lot of things I didn’t know, especially about King George, because I feel like he never comes up much in other WWI histories. The Romanov tragedy and Kaiser Wilhelm being Kaiser Wilhelm tend to outshine him.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n My primary beef with this book was the obvious bias the author has against Czar Nicholas. I don’t disagree that he wasn’t cut out to be a ruler of the sort he was born to be, but the author paints him (and Alexandra, too) as absolute dolts.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n The Golden Hour<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n The Great Halifax Explosion: A World War I Story of Treachery, Tragedy, and Extraordinary Heroism<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019d never heard of this explosion, and I greatly enjoy disaster stories (okay, maybe \u201cenjoy\u201d isn\u2019t an appropriate word, but you know what I mean). This was well-written and interesting.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n The Guns of August<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n This book is one of the most famous WWI works people always recommend, and I read it even though it was outside the scope of the research I needed to do for The War in Our Hearts<\/em>. It was very good, very well-written, and I\u2019ll likely be revisiting it when I get to finish a partially-written WIP whose plot starts shortly before the war begins.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Hot Blood & Cold Steel: Life and Death in the Trenches of the First World War<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Since this post has been overwhelmingly negative (eek) I\u2019m ending with one that I DID really enjoy. This book, along with Eye-Deep in Hell <\/em>(see above), was a huge help to me in writing The War in Our Hearts<\/em>. Highly recommend for anyone wanting a practical, everyday look at real life in the trenches.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n In Flanders Fields: The Story of the Poem by John McCrae<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n This was a beautifully illustrated version of the iconic poem, with historical information about the man who wrote the poem and the war itself. I got this one from my library, but one of these days I want to buy a copy for myself.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.evaseyler.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/Screen-Shot-2022-08-01-at-15.13.59-191x300.png\")
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