Getting out of big tech, step by step. The step you are observing is called Bookwyrm, in case you didn't know.
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10% complete! Benjamin Hollon has read 5 of 50 books.
"War and Peace centers broadly on Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812 and follows three …
I have to say, this book really shines on the reread. ...not something most people will ever know, I guess.
But so much of the detail that seems like extra fluff on the first read turns out to be foreshadowing; the complexity of the plot is staggering once you know what's going on.
A one-armed computer technician, a radical blonde bombshell, an aging academic, and a sentient all-knowing …
Definitely an interesting book. Not completely sure what I think. That seems to be par for the course for Heinlein in my experience.
A one-armed computer technician, a radical blonde bombshell, an aging academic, and a sentient all-knowing computer lead the lunar population …
Philosophically, I disagreed with most of it, but it was well-written enough that I kept reading anyway.
Not sure if that's a good or bad thing.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is an absurdist, existential tragicomedy by Tom Stoppard, first staged …
I got to read this out loud with my AP Lit class (then watch the movie) and it was absolutely brilliant.
As a thespian, I feel privileged to have read the Player's part.
Their Eyes Were Watching God is a 1937 novel by American writer Zora Neale Hurston. …
Really, really fantastic. While one of two books on the curriculum I had not heard of going into AP Lit (the other being Things Fall Apart, also fantastic), I thoroughly enjoyed it and am very glad I got to read it.
I saw it on the library bookshelf and started reading. It's well-written, but I'm not sure yet what I think about the content. I'm not generally a fan of the idea of war, but if well told it can make good reading.
Very good! Took me a while since it had been months since I read the previous books.
I'll be moving in a couple of weeks and will lose access to my English teacher, who I've been borrowing the series from. I'll have to figure out another way to get the rest of the series.
How to Read Literature Like a Professor (2003, Harper)
What does it mean when a fictional hero takes a journey?. Shares a meal? Gets drenched in a sudden rain …
While previous versions have softened the robust and sometimes shocking qualities of Tolstoy's writing, Pevear …
Having read so many Russian novels recently must be making this easier, because I believe this one was the easiest read yet. I'm getting used to the style, so I don't have to keep stopping to think through what the author is trying to say. That's kinda nice.
I'm not sure what I think about the book as a whole. The characters were relatable, and I enjoyed most scenes, but I usually didn't like the ways Tolstoy would resolve issues in the plot. They felt too harsh and sudden without enough meaning dredged out of them first. Still, I don't know how I'd have done it better, so I won't complain about that too much.
Other than that, I'm glad I read it. It's probably not one I'll reread again anytime soon, but that's more because of the length than the content.
"War and Peace centers broadly on Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812 and follows three …
So, War and Peace. It's a big one, for sure.
But I feel like it's a lot shorter than people think it is. War and Peace has become our archetypal "long book," but it's shorter than Les Miserables (which I read last year) and reads a lot faster. It's a book more on the scale of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, which is still long, but is also fairly widely read.
With that out of the way, let's get into it.
Russian Names
This is probably a common barrier to people understanding this book and others like it. In my case, I worked my way up to War and Peace by reading some of Dosteovsky's work: The Gambler, Crime and Punishment, and The Brothers Karamazov. At one point when I was reading Brothers K, it just clicked and I started to get how the …
So, War and Peace. It's a big one, for sure.
But I feel like it's a lot shorter than people think it is. War and Peace has become our archetypal "long book," but it's shorter than Les Miserables (which I read last year) and reads a lot faster. It's a book more on the scale of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, which is still long, but is also fairly widely read.
With that out of the way, let's get into it.
Russian Names
This is probably a common barrier to people understanding this book and others like it. In my case, I worked my way up to War and Peace by reading some of Dosteovsky's work: The Gambler, Crime and Punishment, and The Brothers Karamazov. At one point when I was reading Brothers K, it just clicked and I started to get how the names worked.
The narrative tends to either refer to characters by first name (and sometimes first plus the middle one, which is just the name of one of the parents with "vitch" or "ovna" tacked on) or by last name depending on the context.
I will say that it got a lot easier to keep track of the characters after the first quarter of the book because you start to see who's important and who isn't and can tell from their characters. For that first part, though, I'd recommend you have a chart or something where you write down each new character and who they are so you can reference it. I didn't do that, but I wished I had.
I do recommend you read some other, shorter, Russian literature before this one. I highly recommend Crime and Punishment, that was my favorite. It reads a bit slower than this, but it's also a lot shorter.
War Narrative and Philosophizing
One of the more annoying things to me was Tolstoy's constant philosophizing about the inevitability of events in a war and how the "leaders" of armies aren't really in control. It makes sense and is an interesting perspective, but it was repeated so many times. The entire Second Epilogue (12 chapters long) is about it. So yeah, that's one thing to brace yourself for.
I mean, if political commentary is your thing, you might enjoy it.
Characterization
So far I've been addressing hard things about the book, but that's not the case with this. The characterization was phenomenal. All of the characters had so many different layers and seemed extremely real.
And the development was fantastic. It was fascinating to watch all these dozens of characters growing and changing over the course of the book.
So yeah, this book is worth reading, if only for the characterization.
Overall Thoughts
Overall, this book was fantastic. There were, as I mentioned, some slow parts, but it was really well written and was actually a much easier read than I was led to expect.
Oh, and Tolstoy has got cliffhangers figured out. Once I picked it up to read a chapter or two and didn't put it down until hours later when I realized I'd read through about 150 pages.
