The Red Badge of Courage

Two stars is generous. It was ponderous and boring. I have read much better descriptions of battlefields in other books whose authors had actually experienced the war (John Esten Cooke and Cyrus Townsend Brady would be two examples off the top of my head). This might have worked much better if it were half the size.
The only reason it got two stars instead of one is because I did actually finish it and have not yet recycled it.

I thought the narration was excellent and so was the prose. I will admit that I fell in and out of attending to it, but was often brought back by lovely turns of phrase and simple truths. Before reading this I already knew that there is a lot of waiting and boredom as part of being in the military which is then sometimes followed by intense action or grueling work, and this is shown well in the novel. I appreciated the emotional range that is portrayed.

I will definitely follow up by reading the spark notes or something to help fill in any gaps.