Posts Tagged ‘russian literature’

Good novel. I really enjoyed the sections on Levin’s farm management. There was also some stuff with someone called Anna, shagging around, which was less interesting, but she did provide an important message that you should always follow your heart. You know, until the train scene.

I finished it inside a week. This replaces finishing War and Peace as the greatest achievement of my life.

Pin a fucking medal on me, I have finished War and Peace. As Mark from Peep Show would say, I am not directly comparing my struggle reading it to the French invasion of Russia and subsequent retreat, but it was very difficult. Well, not so much difficult, but long.

I really got into it at the end. To say the first 800 pages were slow going but then it picked up sounds like a joke, but it did feel a little like that. As you get to know the characters more and more you become more involved with them, and in a novel this long, that is quite a lot.

The epilogues were huge. Normally an epilogue a chapter at the end of a book. Tolstoy had two epilogues, each with a dozen chapters in.

The fact such a book managed to maintain my interest all the way through is praise worth in itself. But this is to assume that the man, in this case “I”, had a choice in continuing to the end. However, history has shown us that once something is set in motion, it is not the will of a single man that moves it. Or something…

I have not posted about many books recently. Not because I haven’t been reading, but because I have been tackling the Leo Tolstoy epic, War and Peace. I have not finished it, but I have reached the end of the first volume.

That term is a little misleading as the copy I have divides the book into two halves, which it calls volumes. However, Wikipedia divides it into four books/volumes, which according to the text itself, I am now on the 8th book.

The story is that of the Russian high-society during the Napoleonic years. So far there has been some peace, then some war, then some more peace. Throughout this the story had managed to maintain my attention with it’s beautiful language even if parts of it threatened to stray into a Jane Austen-style monolog on the problems of finding a husband.

So good so far. I will report back after volume 2.

When I started on Crime and Punishment I expected a rather long and drawn-out exploration of human psychology. What I found was a rather short story about a murderer. Perhaps it would have been longer if I had not have stopped reading after the murder itself, but with the main event over, I assume the rest was just a conclusion (it is difficult to tell with Kindle editions).

The important thing is that I learned murdering people can be bad, because you might feel about it afterwards.

Elina said that Sofia Semyonovna was her favourite character when she read it. She was quite offended when I suggested that might be because they are both of a similar personality. I am not sure whether there was a tension point because of the home truths in this statement, or because Sofia had worked as a prostitute, while Elina never has (to my knowledge).