Big Fat Book: 'War and Peace': Week It Doesn't Matter Anymore

Over a long, cold, rainy weekend, I quietly and with little or no fanfare, finished War and Peace. The conditions were ideal for hours spent reading in a cozy chair, so that's exactly what I did. I feel a natural sense of accomplishment, but I can't help but notice that my life has been profoundly changed in the past by much shorter books, and this time around, 1200 pages later, I don't feel very different. It was good, and it is worth the effort, and Tolstoy does not waste a single one of those 1200 pages. But that said, Anna Karenina was better, at least for me. When I finished Moby Dick, for example, I felt exhilarated, and like I had finally learned the meaning of a universal truth about Melville and that novel, but with War and Peace, I feel no such thing. Maybe it doesn't help that basically no one I know has ever read War and Peace because it is so absurdly long, and maybe it was never going to live up to the time it took to finish. I wouldn't really recommend reading it to anyone, but I will go ahead and endorse the upcoming BBC adaptation, which looks really lovely. No official trailer yet, but I'll share it when it comes out.

Now on to the most important issue: what should be my next big fat book?

Big Fat Book: 'War and Peace' Week Unknown and Irrelevant

It makes me very, very sad that it is now July and I'm still reading this thing -- I can't even remember my original goal but I definitely didn't see this book stretching out for six months of 2015. That said, I know that when I finally finish it, I will have no regrets and will become incredibly smug about having finished it, regardless of how long it took me.  For some amazing reason, I had a lot of momentum with War and Peace this week, and managed to read 100 pages without consciously forcing myself to, which is especially noteworthy because I am in the midst of the most war-ish part, which includes many long descriptions of regiments and their positions and flanks and so forth. Napoleon's army is finally heading for Moscow, which means that all the characters are being forced back together, finally, and resolutions are in site.

I just hope the 100 page accomplishment doesn't make me lazy in the coming weeks, because it would be great to polish this thing off before August.

Big Fat Book: 'War and Peace' Week ?

I finally found myself getting back into War and Peace this past week, and I don't just mean I finally picked it up -- I mean I genuinely enjoyed what I was reading, and even got caught up in it a bit. I'm in the final stretch of 400 pages (ha), so many of the storylines are creeping toward their eventual conclusions, which is what all novels are expected to do, but in this particular case that seems like a revelation and is hugely rewarding. Princess Marya and Rostov had a "meet-cute" when he liberated her from her estate peasants, who had decided it wasn't fair for her to flee Napoleon's army while they stuck around, and I think they had a point there...but more importantly, Rostov and Marya immediately fell in (kind of) love. This was a totally unexpected turn -- I've been very distracted by the more central characters and frankly these two are my least favorite. But the fact that the sub-plots are resolving themselves gives me the momentum I need, which I appreciate.

Big Fat Book: 'War and Peace' Weeks 10/11

I didn't bother posting last week because I read a pretty negligible amount and had very little insight to share. It's funny how when you're not reading War and Peace, there isn't enough time in the day for all the things you want to do, and when you are reading War and Peace, time couldn't possibly move more slowly. I'm normally a very fast reader, but this text is really testing my patience; obviously, I'm 11 weeks into reading it, which is frustrating enough, but even on a page-by-page level, I get frustrated. Sometimes I catch myself checking the page number multiple times per page, assuming I've read much more than I actually have, and then I find myself in a frustrating cul-de-sac of impatience and boredom mixed with an overwhelming need to finish this damn thing.

A few more stray thoughts on Tolstoy, War and Peace, and long books:

- I absolutely hate it when heroines experience some form of heartbreak and then become physically ill. That's not a real thing, and it's especially not a real thing if the person who broke your heart was practically a stranger to begin with

- This novel is exquisitely foot-noted, but there is an utter lack of footnotes regarding social conventions of Moscow in the early 1800s, so I really struggle to figure out what behavior is unusual or immoral. Some of the roguish male characters don't seem that bad to me, but I think that's because I'm missing the subtext re: gambling/drinking/racing carriages/dueling/prostitutes?

- Speaking of dueling, it rarely ends with one dead guy and one living guy, so what exactly is the point? If 90% of duels end in weird accidents, for example, why continue dueling?

- Must we constantly be reading characters' first and last names over and over and over again? Last night I was reading a scene in which a doctor's wife was entertaining some soldiers (once again with the moral ambiguities -- is she supposed to be slutty in this case?) and her full name was dropped in every reference, and in one particular sentence it was used something like five or six times. I cannot with that. I also can't tell if this is a deliberate stylistic choice (the implied irony being the formality of her name paired with the impropriety of her behavior), or is it just to help us keep track of the 200 or so characters in this thing?

Big Fat Book: 'War and Peace' Week 7

Another week, another 50 pages. I'm languishing in War and Peace purgatory. As a seasoned veteran of reading this book, I have three important pieces of advice:

1. Never take a break. You will inevitably lose momentum and possibly even start reading other things you like better. If you truly need a respite from your long novel, try catching up back issues of The New Yorker.

2. Beethoven is the best and really the only appropriate background music while reading War and Peace. Try the Egmont Overture for the "War" and the piano concertos for the "Peace." Anything he dedicated to Napoleon is also a good choice.

3. Don't even do the mental math to calculate your finish date. Long ago I figured I'd finish in ten weeks at the rate I was reading; now at Week 7, I really regret ever getting that idea in my head. It's over when it's over, and no matter how long it takes, it's an accomplishment.

Big Fat Book: 'War and Peace' Week 6

This week I only managed another 50 pages for the complete opposite reason as last week's zero pages. I skipped 'War and Peace' in order to dig myself out of a reading rut, and as I result I delved into a half-dozen new books in an attempt to find something compelling, and it (fortunately or unfortunately?) worked. The goal of reading a gigantic book was not to become the focus of my reading, so I'm not beating myself up over it, but momentum is important with an undertaking like this, and I'm already itching a bit to finish it and start thinking about my next enormous book.

Sadly, now that my pace has slowed, the events of the novel are finally at the place I've been waiting for -- the titular "peace" portion. I don't remember enough about Napoleonic history to know how long this peace is going to last, but in the meantime every character is getting into all kinds of Tolstoyian intrigue; I'm going to attempt to make up for some lost time by really focusing on War and Peace for the next week, and I'm really desperate for Natasha's inevitable marriage proposals to start rolling in.

Book Trailers: 'Anna Karenina' by Leo Tolstoy

Joe Wright's 'Anna Karenina' is the movie trailer we all have to thank for the idea of Book Trailers in the first place; I saw the trailer, as did my fellow book club members. We swooned, appropriately, and agreed on a two-month commitment to the novel, which luckily none of us had yet successfully finished. Now I'm very glad we did it because I really, really love the novel.

This feels like the appropriate moment to digress on the nature of film adaptations of literary source material, because as you can probably tell from the trailer, this is not a traditional movie adaptation. The screenplay for this particular version of Anna Karenina was written by the playwright Tom Stoppard, and there is a very self-aware, theatrical vibe to the entire thing, which I found to be utterly charming and visually stunning. And most importantly, it was something that could only be achieved on camera, making this Anna Karenina distinctly a film that knows it's a film. Some people hated it; those are probably the same folks who hate Joe Wright's Pride and Prejudice, which is not a word-for-word translation of the novel; he tweaks and cuts and rewrites here and there, and in some instances, he uses music, or camera movement, or lighting, or costumes to communicate with the audience. Jane Austen or Leo Tolstoy fans balk at this kind of faithlessness, but Joe Wright is not a novelist, he's a film director, and he is using the tools of the cinema to tell the story. I don't have a problem with a good Masterpiece Theater production that is extremely faithful and literal, but I admire and enjoy much more literary adaptations that take some risks do things that can only be done in a movie.

This version of Anna Karenina is a perfect example of that, as it communicates so much of the story without dialogue. And it is an absolute masterpiece of film aesthetics -- regardless of whether or not you "like" or approved of the adaptation, you remember certain scenes and moments because they were so beautifully executed. I'm feeling woozy just thinking about it. And I don't think I need to remind you that it's cold outside and you need to watch a movie in which an entire train is magically frozen solid.

Book Trailers is a recurring post that tricks you into reading the books that inspired great movies (or just great trailers).

Big Fat Book: 'War and Peace' Week 4

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.

Big Fat Book: 'War and Peace' Week 2

I've made a very respectable dent in my first week with War and Peace, reaching the 100-page milestone last night. My initial thought is that this will not fit into my normal reading routine the way I had hoped; in a normal week, I read when I feel like it, and somehow I manage to transform it all into a blog. But there is no way I'm going to get through War and Peace without being much more deliberate. I made it all the way to Sunday night without even cracking the thing open, although I did find that it makes the perfect prop for my Kindle when I'm watching 'Gilmore Girls' in bed. In the end, the only way I managed to conquer those 100 pages was to set aside specific, uninterrupted time to read, and I had to neglect my usual TV habits, which is tough in January when there is so much great TV. The saddest thing of all is that those 100 pages were not easy, and as a result I haven't picked up any other book all week, which is not sustainable. I think it's going to take a few weeks to find a War and Peace routine that works for me.

On a more positive note, I absolutely love the novel thus far. It's not super surprising because I loved Anna Karenina and I've enjoyed more Napoleonic history than the average person.  The narrative thrusts the reader into several existing, high-stakes conflicts (inheritances, engagements, husbands going to war, etc.) from the very beginning so it's not hard to get "into" the book. As much as I loved Anna Karenina, I definitely struggled with those very long passages on Russian agrarian politics, and at close to 1200 pages, I suspect War and Peace will have some of the same, but thus far it's been very compelling, engaging narrative and charming characters.