I bought a book about World War I in the airport and made some good progress on it on the way home. It's really interesting, but the author has a strange, convoluted writing style that involves really long sentences and way too many commas. Like this:
"The only truly transnational religious movement remained, as it had since the collapse of the Roman empire, the Catholic Church, with bishoprics throughout the world centered on that of Rome; it's incumbent in midsummer 1914, Pope Pius X, was, however, a willing prison in the Vatican, a root-and-branch opponent of all modernising tendencies in theology and as suspicious of his own liberals as he was of Protestants."If you can't say a sentence in one breath, it's too long. Here's some strange phrasing:
"It remained to see whether the German Emperor and his government, without whose backing the Austrians dare not act, would support them. Dare not Austria might;"
"Dare not Austria might"? What in the heck does that even mean? Doesn't anyone proofread this stuff?
3 comments:
Scarlett and Bill wouldn't even be able to find meaning in that.
What is the title of the book? I'm teaching WWI right now. I predict the Allies will win again this year.
It's "The First World War" by John Keegan.
I'm rooting for the Allies as well. But I had to stop reading until I can find some good maps of Europe to print off. It's too hard to follow the battle descriptions without one.
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