This is how I "Keep Calm and Carry On" with my book

"My book" is still Whistle - if you don't want spoilers, look away now.

My guess is that the guy on the left, because he has the cane, must be Landers. The guy in the middle is probably Mart Winch, and then the dark-haired guy looking off to the right is probably Johnny Strange (the third incarnation of the Texan Maylon Stark, the mess sergeant. In The Thin Red Line, his second incarnation was played by John C. Reilly). So the smaller figure standing on the right side of the second row is probably Prell. He's standing, so this might mean that by the end of the book, he can walk again. The woman is probably Carol in her Red Cross volunteer uniform.

Most girls who like books can identify with Belle in Beauty in the Beast. The cartoon is even used as a sample in "Bitches in Bookshops." (Interestingly enough, this Disney Princess quiz suggests I'm actually a Pocahontas - but that's not important right now.) People like me who maintain vast book-related pinboards on Pinterest are fond of this one:

Like everything in life, it has an associated "Keep Calm and Carry On"-style poster.

But I'm not exactly like most readers. I'm completely obsessed with finishing James Jones' wartime trilogy. With about 100 pages left to go, and having read of Bobby Prell's marriage to his pregnant 17-year-old conquest Della Mae, I needed to make a Keep Calm poster of my own.

Just to be clear: it's not that I want to be Della Mae. Della Mae is young and dumb and naive and kind of a prude. It's just that I want Bob Witt/Bobby Prell to be my fictional husband. I actually imagined that I'd be the older, more experienced one (see the Memorial Day post). Prell's about 24. I'd be about 27 and already divorced once when we got together. We'd have at least one kid, a boy, and then if anything happened to Witt/Prell I'd possibly get together with Fife/Landers.

...Although it's a little troubling that Landers is, about 100 pages away from the end, planning to go AWOL similar to the way Prewitt did in From Here to Eternity - except without the deadly knife fight. I think we know how that trajectory ends.

James Jones, why did you not leave me in charge of this book series when you were dying and I was just a few months old in 1977?!

And Terrence Malick, why did you not write a screenplay for Whistle back when you could've used the same actors from The Thin Red Line?