The Junior Officers' Reading Club
# The Junior Officers' Reading Club

The Junior Officers' Reading Club: Killing Time and Fighting Wars is a 2009 book by Patrick Hennessey, a former officer in the Grenadier Guards.

It charts his military career, from training at Sandhurst through several campaigns including Iraq and Afghanistan. The book received positive reviews for its account of the realities of modern soldiering and warfare.

The book was serialised as the Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4 in June 2009. A sequel, Kandak, was written by Hennessey in 2012.

## Reading list

A version of the book published by Penguin Books with a new Afterword in 2010 details the books that were read in "The Junior Officers' Reading Club". The list is as follows:

| Title | Author | ISBN |
| - | - | - |
| The Marsh Arabs | Wilfred Thesiger | ISBN 0-14-144208-5 |
| Dispatches | Michael Herr | ISBN 978-0-330-25573-8 |
| Chickenhawk | Robert Mason | ISBN 0-552-12419-2 |
| Saddam Hussein: An American Obsession | Andrew Cockburn | ISBN 1-85984-422-7 |
| The Utility of Force | Rupert Smith | ISBN 0-14-102044-X |
| On War | Carl von Clausewitz | ISBN 1-85326-482-2 |
| Catch-22 | Joseph Heller | ISBN 0-09-947046-2 |
| Ice Cold in Alex | Christopher Landon | ISBN 978-0-304-36625-5 |
| The Count of Monte Cristo | Alexandre Dumas | ISBN 1-85326-733-3 |
| Don Quixote | Miguel de Cervantes | ISBN 0-09-946969-3 |
| Kingdom of Fear | Hunter S. Thompson | ISBN 0-14-101422-9 |
| A Confederacy of Dunces | John Kennedy Toole | ISBN 0-14-118286-5 |
| The Day of the Locust | Nathanael West | ISBN 0-14-102365-1 |
| The Rules of Attraction | Bret Easton Ellis | ISBN 0-330-53634-6 |
| Glamorama | Bret Easton Ellis | ISBN 0-330-44799-8 |
| Vile Bodies | Evelyn Waugh | ISBN 0-14-118287-3 |
| Tristram Shandy | Laurence Sterne | ISBN 1-85326-291-9 |
