War and Peace 2012

i want the P/V paperback of this, tho, so huge and supple; it melts across the hands like corn starch/water (unsure of the most popular name for this substance)

yeah i find that if i don't read a really long book in as short a period as possible i drift away from it. (exception: moby-dick, which is best read over a couple months IMO.)

I am finding with W&P that the slow pace suits it, especially now that the invasion of Russia is taking place more or less in real time. Having a facebook community to yap away about it gets over the embarrassing "who is this guy again?" memory lapse problems.

Steadily working my way through a 60-ish hour long audiobook version of this as of Tuesday evening. It's slow going right now, I've just started book 2. I keep having to rewind to make sure I've got all the different characters pinned down in my mind, there really is so many of them. Enjoying it for all that though, particularly the passages towards the end of book 1 with the elder Bolkonsky and Mikhail Ivanivich. Also intrigued by the hints towards something dangerous in this lad Dolokhov. Sensing that there may be some bad ju-ju afoot with him at some point. Hopefully an ill-advised duel or bar-room brawl gone bad. At the very least a non-consensual elopement or something scandalous like that.

I'm finding it quite easy to maintain interest in the plot chiefly because my knowledge of this conflict (this whole historical period, if I'm being honest) is paltry, so I'm actually excited to see where the war is going to go. Got at least 50 hours to plough through yet though, need to make sure I don't let it fall by the wayside.

Ah, Dolokhov.

The Old Prince has proved to be something of a favourite among my W&P-reading friends. Have you reached the bit where his servants clear the snow from his drive because Prince Vasili and Anatole are coming to visit?

Only just remembered this thread! Making slow but steady progress on this, I've reached the point where Andrew has proposed to Natasha with the caveat that they wait a year before the wedding.

I'm really enjoying myself with this so far, it's making very nice bed time listening. Managing to listen to about half an hour / an hour done before bed each night, and I'm now familiar enough with all the characters that it's like a little radio soap where I get a bit of story every day. I've found that my response has shifted accordingly, and I've developed very definite favourites that I'm rooting for hard. Right now I'm delighted that Andrew and Natasha seem to be getting it together, but the fact that it's happening this early in the novel means that there's just no way it can last. I'm now dreading some coming calamity that'll screw it all up, but I'm on tenterhooks all the same.

What was that Freemasonry stuff all about? Things got quite strange there for a while, it was an odd shift in tone.

How's the chapter-a-day project coming along?

does anyone have a good reading of this passage?

https://imgur.com/a/JAE7K.jpg

https://imgur.com/a/JAE7K.jpg

last try

https://i.imgur.com/981rllg.png

last try

seems pretty straightforward to me. what is your perplexity here?

what did "all the world know"? what's going on in that anecdote? there's obviously something. is it linked to the language difficulties? is the lack of real content the focus? that it's the most empty of social graces? but it really does appear to be a story, etc, even if it's not received.

is the implication that the dame tricked her into not riding in the carriage? am i meant to just be w/ the guests and not understand why he told the story (or why it needed to be told in russian)?

interpreting a tolstoy passage as intentionally vague / meaningless feels particularly unsatisfying

the world knew she only had one footman and the other one was a woman in disguise

but is there is an ironic connection between pretending to have two footmen and pretending to be a french sophisticate (or pretending to have a funny story to tell), or is russia, or the petrograd aristo/bureau class telling "moscow stories" at parties in (affectedly?) broken russian, pretending to have, or to be, something, or pretending that something else is something it is not, or is there nothing going on along these lines at all, or what? no idea rly.

ty that sounds about right to me. i didn't put together last night that she was pretending the maid was a footman and so revealing the long hair revealed that she was a woman.

dlh, you're right. The Russian aristocrats are all of a sudden trying to speak Russian because they've declared war on France. And the falseness is meant to mirror how Pierre (who is a legitimated bastard) is perceived by them, iirc.

they're all too glib unfortunately to really get a handle on the politics driving the war. hopefully he goes into it more later on.

Um... Let's just say that he talks about... what drives wars... a lot...

i'm sure - not too worried. presumably part of what drives wars are glib aristocrats.

"With the enemy's approach to Moscow the Moscovites' view of their situatoin did not grow more serious but on the contrary became even more frivolous, as alawys happens with people who see a great danger approaching. At the approach of danger there are always two voices that speak with equal power in the human soul: one very reasonably tells a man to consider the nature of the danger and the means of escaping it; the other, still more reasonably, says that it is too depressing and painful to think of the danger since it is not in man's power to foresee everything and avert the general course of events, and it is therefore better to disregard what is painful till it comes, and to think about what is pleasant. In solitude a man generally listens to the first voice, but in society to the second. So it was now with the inhabitants of Moscow. It was long since people had been as gay in Moscow as that year."

a memorable quote from the novel