War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

War and Peace has been eyeing me up and shouting READ ME from different bookcases in many different homes of ours over the past 30 odd years. At last I’ve got around to it and I feel really chuffed with myself for being able to tick it off my mental ‘must read ‘ list.

I really enjoyed War and Peace, I thought it would be really heavy going but it is actually quite a page turner. It might not be so smooth if you don’t have much of an interest in Napoleon and what was going on between 1805 and 1820 in Europe.

As you would expect from the title the storyline is split up between battles and the general chaos that ensued, and civilian life in the high society of Moscow and Petersburg and how they were all affected by the war.

There were only three parts of the book which I felt dragged a bit. I didn’t like the bits about Freemasonry in book V. It didn’t seem to add anything to the book but apart from that I’ve always disliked the Freemasons because to me it is just another word for corruption. It can’t be right that people get jobs and advancement because of a society that they’re a member of rather than the qualifications that they have. It was news to me too that the Freemasons originated in Scotland and Tolstoy sometimes called it the Scottish society. I’m mortified but according to the introduction in this edition Tolstoy saw it as a way of combating the corruption which already existed at court.

In book VII Nicholas Rostov has a wolf hunt on his estate and it seemed really out of place and distasteful to me but it made sense later on when Rostov compared his first experience of a battle with the hunt.

Almost at the end of the book, The Second Epilogue seemed never ending: The Forces That Move Nations – didn’t move me.

But that’s me nit-picking again and I would encourage any War and Peace dodgers (as I used to be) to have a go at reading it because I think most people will be pleasantly surprised.

As you can see the edition which I read is from 1943. It still has the original bookmark it was sold with and has very thin, smooth paper, the pages were very difficult to turn which was a bit annoying. I actually had to cut some of the pages so I must have been the first person to get to the end of it. This must have been a special wartime paper but it has aged really well, in fact it’s like new. We also have a paperback Pan edition from 1972 and the paper hasn’t aged at all well. Also it has no maps and no footnotes whatsoever, the 1943 book has very interesting comments.

I know that elsewhere in the blogosphere people are reading a new translation but I would be really surprised if anything could better this translation which was done by Louise and Aylmer Maude.

Post Christmas Pause

We had a very restful Boxing Day with all of us just lolling around at home. Why do people rush out to the shops/sales? I’m sure it’s a form of madness. It was bad enough that we had to go to IKEA again yesterday. We had a horrible feeling of deja vu but at least this time it was only raining and most of the roads were clear of snow.

I’m not a big fan of going to the shops, in fact I really only do it when there’s no alternative, it isn’t a pleasurable pastime for me as it seems to be with so many folks.

But as IKEA closed an hour after we got there the last time due to the snow we just had to hire a van a second time to go back and get what Duncan hadn’t had the time to buy before. We were in IKEA for four hours, and after the first one I had just about lost the will to live. He got another bed, a sofa, more bookcases, chests of drawers and odds and sods.

Then there was the horrible long journey from Edinburgh to Dundee and all the unloading and lugging everything up two flights of stairs. By which time we were saying, “Why didn’t he buy a ground floor flat?” Anyway it’s all done now and he has been warned that when he wants to move out he will have to get professional removal men to do it!

Our ’empty nest’ was only empty for about a week – and then everyone came here for Christmas. They left us today again and will be back here in a few days for Hogmanay, which is really the most important day of the year in Scotland, when it all begins again. Christmas became a holiday in Scotland fairly recently, I think about 50 years ago most people had to work on Christmas.

Because of all the shenanigans I’m way off my reading schedule. I had been planning on reading at least 100 pages of War and Peace every day but I just haven’t had the time. I had been hoping to get it finished by the end of the year but I’m only half way through it. So unless I take to my bed, (I have the best light for reading there) and read over 200 pages a day – I’m stuffed. Or should I say my 2011 reading list schedule is stuffed before it begins.

I started reading War and Peace because I’ve been putting it off for years and there seem to be a lot of people reading the new translation at the moment, so I thought I would join in as it would mean that I would have a deadline. I think the deadline is January 23rd but I’d rather finish it before then so that I can read something from my list. I’m not good at reading two books at a time, I prefer to concentrate on one and I must say that War and Peace has been a nice surprise. My copy is an old translation from 1943. I’m finding it to be much easier going than I had anticipated, so I’m able to read it at bedtime, even when I’m tired, and remember what I read when I wake up in the morning. Which isn’t always the case, believe me!

Anyway, I’m off to bed and hoping to get a good three hours of reading done before I put the light out because it was after 2 o’clock when I put the book down last night.

Just William by Richmal Crompton

This book was perfect bed time reading when we got in from crazy jaunts across the country in the snow. William is a lovable character just 11 yers old and up to all sorts of naughtiness from a more innocent era. It was first published in 1922.

Chapter XI begins:
‘She’s – she’s a real Botticelli,’ said the young man dreamily, as he watched the figure of William’s sister, Ethel disappearing into the distance.
William glared at him.
‘Bottled cherry yourself,’ he said indignantly. ‘She can’t help having red hair, can she?

I know, I know – it’s daft, but just what I needed.

Thanks again to Niranjana (Brown Paper) for pointing me in the direction of Richmal Crompton.

If you slide your gaze over to my Library Thing thingmyjig on the right, you’ll see that I’ve started reading Ian Rankin’s Black and Blue. I thought I would probably go back to the beginning of the Rebus series but decided to start on this one as it’s in an omnibus edition of three which I’ve borrowed from the library. When I’ve finished with those ones I’ll start at the beginning.

What I’m really supposed to be doing at the moment is reading War and Peace and I can’t avoid it any longer so I’m planning to start that tomorrow, during the day time, I don’t think it’s bed time reading, somehow.