Not entirely sure about the 'Junior Officers' Reading Club'. I was looking forward to getting a copy, and skimmed a friend's copy before I picked my own up. From the bits I saw, I have to admit that it is very well written, and the author really does manage to get across many of the issues associated with being in the today's 21st century military. But it does seem to become a bit of an anti-RAF rant towards the end, and that really put me off pursuing it any further, the author losing a lot of credibility that he had built up in the first half of the book.
If you're looking for a couple of useful rather than enjoyable reads pre-OOA, then the following might be worth a look:
'Afghanistan The Bear Trap' - written by Brigadier Mohammad Yousaf who worked in the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate - effectively becoming C-in-C Mujahadeen. What's more it is actually very readable unlike many doctrine / theoretical texts.
'The Bear Went Over the Mountain' is a collection of 'vignettes' originally written by Soviet officers who had fought in Afghanistan. It looks at Mujahideen TTPs and gives the reader an idea of good and bad ways of trying to fight COIN ops in a mountainous / desert landscape.
Both of these were written by practitioners who had been involved in combat ops over many years; as many of today's 'fighters' are direct descendents of the Mujahideen - often using similar if not idential TTPs - both books could be worth a read.
For a slightly more academic perspective on the Taliban, 'Decoding the Taliban' is quite an informative read, and has individual chapters on many of the individual provinces, meaning if you can't face reading the whole book, you should still be able to take some relevant ideas away from individual chapters.