Notes from Kathy:

Welcome to the Penguin Classics Book Club.  Let's get started with Paths of Glory by Humphrey Cobb.  First, I'll make the usual mention of our standard way of going about this.  If you want to talk about something that might be a spoiler for someone else, please state "Spoilers Ahead" or something equivalent to allow people warning to skip if they want.

This is our second book on the new Penguin site, and there are some differences with the old Amazon.com blog.  The main difference is that comments on this blog are moderated.  There is apparently no way to set comments so that they are automatically posted for just this blog without doing it for the entire Penguin site, so for the time being I am your moderator as well as facilitator.  I get an email message when there's a new comment and I consider those emails a top priority.  This means that I will approve comments routinely and as fast as I can throughout the day, but it will be my day (U.S. Mountain Daylight Savings Time, currently) -- probably a longer delay for people whose time zones are hours off from mine.

The longer-term way of handling this, which I will definitely follow, is to designate users as "regulars."  Once you're flagged as a regular, your comments go through automatically.  I intend to do this with everyone who posts so that the number of delays for approving comments will diminish in time.  So bear with me (and with Penguin) as the administration of the blog evolves.

Now, on to Paths of Glory.  I suggest that we begin with just the first section of the book, through page 80 in the new Penguin Classics edition.  I know that this edition came out very recently and some readers may not have finished the whole book yet, so we'll try to keep spoilers to a minimum in the first few discussions.

The first sections introduces us to a range of characters, mostly regular soldiers.  It felt to me somewhat like setting a stage, and it was done very effectively.  The descriptions of the places were matter-of-fact without making that a strong focus.  Cobb describes death, bodies, and filth as needed without using them to evoke excessive horror or dismay.  As for the characters, at first I found the different characters a bit hard to keep straight but that got easier as the book progressed.  They seemed to me to be presented both as individuals yet also as a type, so that they felt representative of a lot of soldiers.

What are your first impressions of Paths of Glory, particularly this first section?  Was there one particular aspect of the story that you found most compelling, or disturbing, or insightful?  Do you already have a reaction, either positive or negative, towards various characters?

-- Kathy Gursky