Nessicle Posted February 10, 2009 Share Posted February 10, 2009 I very much want to read War and Peace, I picked it up in a book shop and put it back down again - it was a bit daunting lol but I think I'm going to buy it and attempt to read it after I've got through the 15 other books tbr it sounds like it is well worth reading Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kylie Posted February 10, 2009 Share Posted February 10, 2009 There seem to be a few of us around who want to read War and Peace. Maybe we should take the bull by the horns and put it up for vote for one the reading circles (as suggested by ii a little while ago). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ahsilet Posted February 11, 2009 Share Posted February 11, 2009 I own a Penguin publication of War & Peace and Anna Karenina. I have both on the bottom of my TBR pile. War & Peace is going to take a good two months to read, and I don't have two months to spend on one book. I am taking three literature classes this semester and I need leisure reading books I can snap through. I have always had a tough time getting through Russian novels for some reason. It took me a month to finish Hadji Murad and that book is only like 170 pages depending on the publication you have. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ben Mines Posted February 19, 2009 Share Posted February 19, 2009 (edited) I've finished War & Peace now. I'm not sure it makes sense to do a "review", as the book has surely been reviewed more times than it needs to have been. Anyway, my thoughts are that as a historical family romance romp kind of thing, it was fantastic. As a description of wars and battle scenes, it was also fantastic. It may be one of the best novels ever written. But it is deeply, deeply flawed. There are too many pages discussing the flow of history, discussing how events happen without the control of people. The whole of Epilogue 2 is redundant and incredibly dull, too, being full of only this stuff. Tolstoy needs to discuss his views on history a bit, as he tries to explain how the war of 1812 flowed, how the French won almost every battle yet lost the war, how the inaction of the Russians led to the greatest success. He wants to explain how "Great Men" don't change wars and history, that the flow of human history will happen irrespective of Great Men. A view with which I strongly differ. But Tolstoy appears to be trying to contrast that with the love and happinness you can make in your own life, and to those closest to you. He's talking about the contrast between how you achieve personal redemption, and why that is what you should focus on rather than focussing on the bigger stage where neither you nor anyone else will genuinely change anything. So the discussions on the nature of history are clearly relevent to the book, but they are just too long winded (and, to my mind, wrong). The other thing that drags, for me, is a typical tendency in Victorian novels for the characters to spend too long on introspection, and have moments of epiphane when they suddenly change their entire outlook on life; to me neither of these things seems particularly realistic, although perhaps that's because of my modern sensitivities. But, these criticisms aside, it's still a wonderful book once you battle past the swarms of characters and determine who is who. Something that's pretty inevitable in a 1400 page novel. I agree that the Epilogue drags. Tolstoy simply spatchcocks a lumpy lecture on historical determinism onto the novel. A similar point was already made subtly through the poetry and narrative drama of the novel, and the Epilogue does nothing but belabor, and exaggerate, the point. It's kind of like seeing a superb film, after which the director appears on screen to deliver a boring lecture about what he was trying to say with that film. And if a work of art is successful (which War and Peace emphatically is), then the explanatory lecture is unnecessary. But for those of you that haven't read War and Peace, don't be disheartened. The philosophical lecture contained in the Epilogue is only fifty-odd pages long. Putting aside its length, the novel itself is very approachable and surprisingly readable. Edited February 19, 2009 by Ben Mines Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ben Posted February 19, 2009 Share Posted February 19, 2009 I want to read it, it's just getting hold of it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chrissi Posted February 27, 2009 Share Posted February 27, 2009 I just bought Anna Karenina yesterday and quite like it so far. Had two different editions to choose from and bought the Penguin Classics one. But it was interesting to see how different translations can be as I compared the first page of both editions Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vinay87 Posted January 22, 2010 Share Posted January 22, 2010 The edition of W&P I have is ridiculous. Some 1500 Pages and each character is printed small as footnotes in normal books. It's like the book keeps daring me to read it one day. I want to buy Anna Karenina one day. Why? I got bored of Lego. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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