Reddit mentions of The Story of Film

Personally, I've thought of The Cinema Book as something to be read more as a reference book (or a series of short introductory guides), rather than a overall narrative... which is to say that you dip into the sections that cover topics that interest you, rather than from cover to cover. IIRC each section also has a decent bibliography, so you have further reading if you find that, say, film noir interests you and you want to find out more.

If you're interested in more of an overview of cinema as a long narrative, I'd recommend Mark Cousins' wonderful The Story of Film. A couple of years ago it became a great telly series, but before that it was a really interesting book. The book goes through film broadly chronologically, and still has Cousins' characteristic enthusiasm, knowledge and charm, but without his strong accent, which could be difficult to understand depending on your level of knowledge of English.

More generally, take a look at Sight and Sound magazine's book poll, which they did in a similar way to their famous once-per-decade film polls.