War and Peace

This book is incredible monotonous. All the characters feel the same and there is too much of them. They're introduced by name and given a police sketch-up artist description. Something I've felt also in Anna Karenina is that all characters are aristocratic, many are princes or princesses. Overall the prose is too descriptive, it feels very stereotyped Russian.

Read 1:43/60:49 3%

What's great about this book is how good Tolstoy is at creating and describing characters. The various plots of all the characters are interesting and move quickly. The story of Napoleon's warring across the continent is quite interesting too. I don't like all the ranting about historians and self-congratulating about how Tolstoy himself knows how to analyze history; in particular, I did not care for Part II of the Epilogue, which should have been entirely excised so I could have gotten on with my life.

This translation seems really good to me, although I haven't read any other translations. It's written in a very lively and modern style, more so than I remember the translation of Anna Karenina that I read being. There are several typos throughout, though.

“What took me so long?”, and “I'm glad I waited.” I'm experiencing both sensations. Ultimately I'm joyful to have discovered this magnificent work.

War and Peace has acquired an unfortunate reputation as the roll-your-eyes eccentric uncle of the literature world. An undeserved reputation. OK, it's long. But it is oh so worth it. It took me a while, many nights and weekends, but every time I sat down to read it was with anticipation. I am wiser, better, and happier for having read it.

Tolstoy's insights are astounding and as sweeping as the book itself. Would I have understood them ten years ago? (Do I understand them now?) It's not just that: his writing, his ability to range from the epic to the minute, his ability to make you feel. I'll never read the original, but Pevear's and Volokhonsky's translation is beautiful, their copious footnotes and endnotes rewarding.

Life is short. Too short not to read this book.

teljesen kizárt, hogy ezen szemmel át bírtam volna rágni magam. az utolsó kb. 10 órát már háromszoros sebességgel is marhára untam. (sajnos csak akkor jutott eszembe fölfedezni, hogy nemcsak dupla sebességgel simán érthető a komótos előadás.)
nem fekszik nekem tolsztojnak ez a filozofálgatásnak álcázott pökhendi okoskodása. a karaktereidről írjál már, ember!

Phew... this is a very long book. It took a while to get into the story but by the end I found myself connecting with the characters and intrigued with the plot.
I reviewed Napoleon's invasion of Russia on YouTube's epic history TV channel and it really helped me understand the war sections. I really enjoyed the wrap up of the characters at the end but the second epilogue took me out of the story with Tolstoy's reflections about the war.

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, Dramatized by Mike Walker and Marcy Kahan, Directed by Eoin O'Callaghan and Janet Whitaker, BBC Radio 4 Program is very nice audio program with fantastic performance and enjoyable sound effects which I went through.

This novel have a lot to say and it is not gonna be easy to write review for. Drama is all over the story, war, peace, family, love, loyalty, betrayal and a lot more have been placed beautifully within the novel. The novel do not let you get board by staying too long in a seen neither get lost by moving so fast. I love the pace to the novel.

Another aspect of the novel I loved were philosophical and educational parts which appears every now and then and bring the novel to educational level while it is entertaining at the same time.

Whew! Let me start by saying that is one long and complex novel. I started it on January 1st and here I am at the end of the year and I've just finished it. That's 1,225 pages of love and hatred, new life and death, marriage and separation, sickness and healing, friendship and animosity, and, yes, even war and peace. Everything is in this book.

I was most taken (and this was a surprise for me) with the war scenes. These scenes that take place during the war were not what I thought about war at all. War leaders give instructions to soldiers for battle plans and nothing is carried out as planned. Soldiers go running, many for home, when the battles begin. These war scenes felt true to life.

The other thing about War and Peace that I found to be very true is the depiction of relationships in the book. Love sparks and fades. Some relationships grow slowly over time, and some grow overnight.

This has been a remarkable experience for me, reading this complex book over a long period of time, giving me time to reflect upon it, reread parts, and think about it carefully. I have a deep respect for Tolstoy as a writer after reading this book.

En lang bok det er vanskelig å fordøye. Jeg setter pris på den personlige, lokale vinklingen Tolstoy har på viktige hendelser. Det er fint å følge de ulike karakterene i tiden de lever i, og hvordan de takler endringer, utfordringer og muligheter. Det skal sies at forfatteren bruker mye tid på å kritisere historiebruk og -fortelling i hans samtid, og selv om jeg er enig i noe av kritikken er store deler av den veldig utdatert, og dermed ganske frustrerende å lese. For å sette det på spissen kan boken tolke som at det er nyttesløst å trekke linjer eller se på årsaker og virkninger, da alt like gjerne kan forklares av rene tilfeldigheter. Det blir etter min mening for enkelt.

I am very happy I read this, but phew am I also happy to be done with it. Because this book is heavy, because it took me about an hour to read only 30 pages and because Tolstoy needed to tell us a lot about his thoughts on history and historians.

But, there is so much good too :)
Tolstoy's descriptions of characters, how he goes so seamlessly into their heads and shows us what drives them to their sometimes heroic sometimes cowardice actions, is grand. Nikolai's reverie at seeing the tsar and pretty much falling in love with him and going into battle for him, was such a vivid and slightly scary description of extreme patriotism, and it stuck with me.

There's a lot of talk of the many many characters in W&P, but it wasn't as confusing as I feared it would be. After a while you figure out the central ones and realise it's not that important to keep track of all the generals and side characters. Also, a warning, it's not particularly easy to like the characters, with Prince Andrei being the only exception for me. Pierre with his ignorant naivete, getting pulled into the freemasonry, or Natasha the charming yet spoiled adolescent with her exuberance, are hard to root for. My compassion was more with the quiet women side characters, poor forgotten Sonya, and passive yet intelligent Marya.

The main narrative follows a group of connected characters and families through the years 1805-1812, from the high society events in Moscow and Petersburg to the battlefields in Europe, up until after Napoleon's invasion of Russia. The book is also interspersed with Tolstoy's musing on history. Which at the beginning are quite interesting in relation to his characters, as he sees humans as just cogs in the machine of history. From the smallest foot soldier to the highest generals - none of them truly in control of how a war is fought and won and lost. Even though historians assign the outcome of wars to the genius of the men in power, Tolstoy multiple times makes a point of highlighting how Napoleon's or Kutuzov's commands have little impact on outcomes. As fights are won and lost due to circumstances that have been in motion for a long while already. If only he wouldn't have quadrupled these thoughts on history towards the end of the book. It just made it a bit of an uphill battle to finish the book. (and I absolutely skipped the second epilogue)

Nice surprise: Tolstoy's funny. Occasionally the text has a very sharp and dry humour. Plus, I also enjoyed the bilingual nature of the book, with Russian high society conversing in French.

War and Peace is a glorified romance. At times, the book presents itself as a historical drama, but Tolstoy's frequent philosophical asides and all the love stories detract from that significantly. There are many excellent historical novels that do much more justice to the genre than War and Peace. Particularly, I think Les Miserables was much better in this aspect.

For me at least, I finished this book only because I started reading it, and I don't like leaving books halfway read. It was quite a bore to read. Some characters are fascinating (I particularly liked Prince Andrei), but this doesn't make up for the lackluster plot.