War and Peace… Anyone else find it hard to remember what you’d read the night before? No wonder Andrew Marr has read it 18 times.
War and Peace…
Anyone else find it hard to remember what you’d read the night before? No wonder Andrew Marr has read it 18 times.
I have read War and Peace. For me, this is the single most important piece of literature in my reading life. I picked it up on a whim 20 years. It began my love affair with classics, Russian Literature and huge tones ?
I have it but I have not read it yet. Some books we can breeze right through like eating custard and others we have to take our time and chew on it slowly like eating meat. I’ve started Dostoevsky’s The Possessed and I’m reading introductions etc just to start the book.
I had to read excerpts from it in college a zillion years ago. About five years ago, I decided to try it in full. Couldn’t do it. I loved Anna Karenina, but War and Peace just wasn’t my thing. I envy those who can relate to it and to Moby Dick….neither of which I can do.
It’s my 3rd time trial and I’m stuck at just book 2….
I made w choice to read it as quickly as I could do I wouldn’t forgot any of it ? Others told me it took them months to read and there was no chance I could have remembered all of it. Took me about 10/12 days I think. Loved it , which helped too ?
I think our attention span in modern age is far shorter than what was in previous centuries. Hence, we can’t really keep our minds on a long read. I have read it some fifteen years ago and although struggled with certain parts, I went through others in a whiff and overall I loved it.
When I first read it, I did it at work during my lunch breaks. I could only read two to four short chapters each day but that stretched out over a long time so I got totally immersed in the stories and characters. I recommend a “slow burn” rather than rapid immolation…. BTW, many Victorian books were written in installments which were purchased by private book clubs in many different “books,” so much repetition was needed to refresh readers’ memories (think of modern television soap operas and you get the idea). That is why reading Dickens today really demands abridged editions or one will go crazy reading all the repetitions.
I don’t know how anybody could speed read War and Peace.
@Joan ~ I did in college, but I had already read it twice so it was simply a way to refresh my memory
Right. They were published in increments.
@Joan ~ here’s the Librivox version of vol 1 https://archive.org/details/war_and_peace_vol1_dole_mas_librivox
I just inhale it! Unputdownable! It’s a great winter read. Snuggle down for the long haul.
One has to read war and peace more than once to appreciate the book in its entirety.