It was a tough week for my copy of War and Peace: I made me first major crease in the binding, out of sheer necessity, and then it had a glass of white wine spilled all over it. But somehow we still managed to be productive with all that booze sloshing around, because I finished Volume 1, making my total progress 300 pages in three weeks.

The latest section of the novel had the benefit of two marriage proposals in 50 pages, but then it was back to the Napoleonic war stuff. As much as I struggle to keep track of the cavalries and infantries and Hussars and Cossaks and whatnot, even the war stuff is getting better for me as the two central characters in that section of the novel, Andrei and Rostov, are really developing quite richly. I may have even laughed out loud at Rostov's ridiculous bro-crush on the Russian emperor. Really, I guffawed at Tolstoy.