War and Peace Interludes

  

Okay, so I’ve been hacking away at Tolstoy’s War and Peace, the “Mount Everest of Novels,” since February 15. That’s 73 days to date. Ten-and-a-half weeks. I’m averaging about thirteen pages a day, and at this rate I’ll finish it in about five weeks. Which puts my completion of the novel around the beginning of June.

 

It’s taking me so long that I can only think offhand of a couple of other books which demanded the same amount of time devotion. My first read-through of the Bible, Genesis to Revelation, way way back in 1992, took me two solid months. A typical journey through The Lord of the Rings takes me 35-40 days. The slog through the paperback version of Hegel’s combined works took four months, to the day. Similarly, Neil Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon was an exhaustive four-and-a-half month voyage, but that was back in 2008, when I had quite the stressful job, infant, and toddler to juggle. More in line with our current subject, when I read Napoleon: A Life, I watched 54 days fly off the daily calendar.

 

Yeah, but it’s the journey, not the destination, you say. And you’d be correct. But … I’ve never had good luck with the great Russian novelists. I gave up on The Brothers Karamazov, twice. And this is my second attempt at War and Peace. I’d love to read Crime and Punishment sometime in the near future, but I’m a-scaird to. All this is a long-winded way of saying that, during these 73 days trekking through the Mount Everest of Novels, I’ve made not one, not two, but three detours.

 

The first was a slim paperback concerning conspiracy theories, given to me by a relative. Interesting, but ultimately not convincing. I reshelved Tolstoy for a solid week at the beginning of March and read through this new paperback in seven days. Then I returned to Russia of the early 1800s.

 

For another two weeks. This time I got up the novel’s mid-way point, the end of Book VII. I stayed within the same chronological period and detoured with a Sharpe book. You know, one of those thirteen paperbacks I spreed on back around Christmastime concerning English rifleman Richard Sharpe and his escapades against Napoleon’s Grande Armée. This was fun; paradoxically very close to what I was reading in Tolstoy yet 180-degrees away from it. And again I re-bent my literary nose to the grindstone that is War and Peace.

 

I quickly put another 200 pages behind me, finishing up Book X. Now I selected up a slim paperback which heartened to my bookmobile youth, Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days. Just finished that last night, a quick, satisfying, page-turning return to simpler, war-free times (although Verne did write it while France was getting it’s butt kicked by Germany in the Franco-Prussian War). I enjoyed it as a fond memory of my youth. I recalled seeing the movie ages ago, loving the soundtrack, loving the simpler, gentler Hollywood that produced it. Nice memories.

 

Now, returning from lunch, I returned to War and Peace. I am now three chapters in to Book XI. Have about 450 pages to go, so I just may put the reading blinders on and plow on through to the epilogues (there are two in this book). And maybe up my daily page count so I can get it done earlier.

 

So many books to read, so little time …