I think this is where I’m at, I’ve no issue with content warnings or anything like that (I’m not advocating a Daily Mail “these snowflake students wants trigger warnings for Coriolanus!!1!” stance), but the texts are the texts. If you want to drop them entirely from study because of their issues, that’s another thing and there are also valid arguments for it.
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It’s pointless to the film and its plot. If you know Lord of the Rings it’s cool to see but it’s a drag. Far better to follow the book so you start with these loveable Hobbits as and gradually the real world comes in and darkens everything
Save that for 2020 (and I will not be taking part)
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Apparently Christopher Lee read LOTR once a year every year since it was published 
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Imagine how many more metal albums if he could have made if he wasn’t wasting his time.
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Think you’re overlooking where he (and all of us) got the inspiration.
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Decided to get on board with this last night and download the book before going to bed.
It was 1am
Couldn’t get my kindle to connect to the WiFi.
Spent an hour unplugging things and swearing at my router, got to bed at 2 and still haven’t read a word of it.
All going swimmingly so far.
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Read chapter 1 on the tube this morning. Will do chapter 2 on the way home. Seems fine so far. Looking forward to the inevitable point where every character has about 7 names as per every pre-20th century Russian novel and I inevitably forget who’s who and assume they’re talking about different people.
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I liked how Anna changed to Annette in the space of two pages.
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So that was war followed by peace (sleep)? Sounds like you’re all aetup
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I’m still calling her Pavlova in my head and it’s making me hungry
how have you made a thread about war and peace more boring
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probably the worst opening paragraph of any ‘classic’ work of literature I’ve ever read
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Yeah, it’s even more confusing given that they’re all Russian nobility as well, so addressed by their titles at points. There are points where there’ll be a sentence like “Aha, replied the prince” and you have to thumb back a couple of pages trying to remember which one of the dozens of potential princes or counts, or even which of the multiple Prince Balkonsky’s is being referred to!
I don’t think it’s too important to ‘get’ much more than the gist from that opening chapter. The early parts of the book are a dizzying array of names and relationships. I think that if you’ve taken from Chapter 1 that the Kuragin family have been introduced with Prince Vasili trying to marry his kids into money and stop them being a drain on his pocket. Helene is physically beautiful; Hipolyte looks like his sister, but conversely the idiosyncracies that make her attractive make him ugly; Anatole Kuragin is a bit of a shit, and they want to set him up with Princess Bolkonsky. Her father is Prince Bolkonsky (another of the main families) who is old and rich, but is also belligerent and rarely comes to St Petersburg - making matchmaking daunting.
Chapters 2 & 3 introduce Pierre Bezukhov (the third of the five main families) who is the central character of the novel and you start to get a sense of how he’s doesn’t quite fit and it lacking in the grace and social norms of high society. He’s also illegitimate, which makes him even more of a misfit.
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this book sounds so fucking boring
good luck everyone
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Yeah but we haven’t got to the war yet!
I’m reading Limmy’s Daft Wee Stories. Bet you War and Peace doesn’t have any bits that are of this standard:
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Someone on Reddit is posting Aussie translations of each chapter. It’s pretty good.
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Heaps of posh wankers were at Anna’s place by now. It was getting full as. There were all kinds of people here - some old, some young, some true blue, some shonky as - but all of them posh wankers. Prince Vasili’s daughter Helena, (who was a bit of a looker), was there to take her dad to the Ambassador’s Entertainment, so she was dolled up to the nines. Hot as a tin roof in Alice. Speaking of smoking hot, Princess Bolkonskaya was there too, a.k.a the talk of the town. She was married now, and she was the most preggas person of all the posh wankers.
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- I am reading a chapter a day as per the point of the thread
- I have read W&P already and am here for the bants
- I am thinking about catching up and joining in on this brave venture
- I have no interest in reading W&P, I don’t even know why I’m in this thread
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