emotional reflective sad medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: No

It is considered a classic for a reason. Very important book 
challenging emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
dark emotional informative sad tense slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: N/A
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: No
dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: No

“We are not youth any longer. We don’t want to take the world by storm. We are fleeing. We fly from ourselves. From our life. We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces.”

...

“How senseless is everything that can ever be written, done, or thought, when such things are possible. It must be all lies and of no account when the culture of a thousand years could not prevent this stream of blood being poured out, these torture-chambers in their hundreds of thousands. A hospital alone shows what war is.”

An important read, even if the pacing is slow. Gives an inside look at warfare during the first World War.

None of the heroics or entertainment from many of the war stories we read in books or see in movies. Just the brutal realities of war. I'm not excited to watch the film(s)

Sonst überhaupt kein Fan von Kriegsgeschichten hat mich das Buch die ganze Nacht gefangen. Unfassbar schöne Sprache, bittersüß, bildlich ungewöhnliche aber so passende Vergleiche.
Geschichte sehr kurzweilig, man trauert mit dem Protagonisten.

What can my small words add to All Quiet on the Western Front?  My edition is subtitled "the greatest war novel of all time", and as someone who reads a lot of military history and memoir, that is absolutely true.

Paul Baumer is a military everyman, a good student who enlisted in the German Army in a flush of patriotism along with his class. He had only his school books and some vague romantic notions of a life. And now after time in the trenches, he doesn't even have that.  His generation is one that has had their innocent and purpose stolen, murdered, raped, by the pride of politicians and errors of diplomatic judgement.

The story spools out over loosely connected scenes. Behind the lines, the front, gas, on leave, back again, wounded, forward, and a final futile stand.  The writing is elegant, earthy and yet oddly delicate at times, and with intimate knowledge of what a soldier really cares about: what he might eat, the terribly frailty of the human body against the power of war.

Modernity was born out of the war, a mass murder which took some kind of innocence from the world, along with the lives of millions of men across Europe.  I can't help by compare this book to Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, and Remarque is both more expressive and more romantic.  There's an elegiac sense of loss that pervades this book, a terrible grief. 

There but for the grace of god goes us.