The Big Read: War and Peace

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Last week was one of those War and Peace weeks where the plot doesn’t move forward much, but Tolstoy blows us away with the beauty and quality of his…
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We’ve been in Part III of Volume II for almost a month — 26 chapters! In many ways, this chunk of text has seen a lot of characters grow up, for better…
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Though we’ve encountered Natasha here and there throughout the book, she hasn’t yet played a starring role. Until this last week. The big event, of…
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Throughout chapters 6-12, we saw bits and pieces of most of the main characters and what they were up to. Over the course of a couple years everyone has…
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This week we read the end of Volume II, Part II and started on Part III. At the end of Part II, Rostov is finding the same disillusionment with Napoleon…
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Though the plot didn’t move forward a whole lot this week — that’s bound to happen over the course of 1,200+ pages! — there were still a number of…
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This week, for me, the most enjoyable bits of reading centered on Pierre and Andrey as they philosophized about the meaning of life. But first, in…
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This week we wrapped up Part I of Volume II with Rostov confessing his debt and elder Rostov paying it off for him without too much of a fight. We then…
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This week saw a couple interesting plot twists, another soiree, and a poker game that ended in near-ruin for one of our main characters. Let’s jump…
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The big story in this week’s reading, of course, was the duel. But we can’t miss the importance of the opening few chapters of Volume II either. Let’s…
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As the Russia-Ukraine war enters its second week of fighting, the relevance of this 155-year-old novel grows and grows, doesn’t it? I’ve heard from a…
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This recap was written well before Vladimir Putin, “President” of Russia, unilaterally decided to attack a friendly nation. Putin’s imperialistic…
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