I've spent another non-productive Sunday laying in bed reading a book. Last week it was Reay Tannahill's In Still and Stormy Waters, which was okay but not nearly as good as Passing Glory. This weekend, it was Sebastian Faulks' Birdsong.

The cover said "romantic" and "erotic"; and it was, for about 60 pages. The next 450 were some of the most heart-wrenching, life-draining pages of pure depression I'd ever read, as the hero of the story spends three years in a French trench during the First World War.

I found Faulks when I first rented Charlotte Grey, a movie based on his book of the same name. I bought the book and loved it as much as I loved the movie (which, because of Billy Crudup, is ruined for me forever). I bought On Green Dolphin Street next, then found Birdsong at a second-hand book store.

I'd been on quite a chicklit jag over the last year, so even though I bought Birdsong some months ago, the subject matter just seemed too much for me to handle. But since reading Diana Gabaldon's A Breath of Snow and Ashes, I've been ready for meatier books. I wasn't sure about reading Birdsong so soon after Passing Glory, since they both dealt with the First World War, but it was either that or try a new author, and I wasn't ready for that. Plus, it said "erotic," and who doesn't love that?

I spent all afternoon crying as man after man dies alone, in pairs, in thousands. When I close my eyes I can see those festering pits; can feel the moist soil of the underground tunnels under my fingertips; can smell the mould and rot and tang of the chalk and lye. I know so little about this war. I am so ignorant of the sacrifices made for me.

How does Germany remember its war dead? With pride and sorrow? With shame? In 100 years, how will our great-grandchildren remember those who die in Iraq?

The BBC's historical archives on the First World War