War and Peace in 100 books to read before you die

Jul 07, 2014 Ophelinha rated it liked it · review of another edition

I see Rostovs and Bezukhovs and Napoleon everywhere. War and peace really is a whole universe: difficult to penetrate, difficult to leave. Natasha remains one of the most interesting, best depicted characters in the story of literature - pity she loses her momentum and sheer vitality towards the end.

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Jan 03, 2017 Dominic rated it really liked it

Shelves: historical-fiction, russia, war, napoleonic-wars

You cannot read a book of this length without it becoming a significant part of your life whilst you are reading it. This book definitely became part of my life during my time of reading and I am very glad it did.

I was under the impression that this would be a challenging read, after all it is a "classic" and one that apparently many people lie about having read, and it is almost 1400 pages long! However for the most part I thoroughly enjoyed it and found myself caught up with the characters an You cannot read a book of this length without it becoming a significant part of your life whilst you are reading it. This book definitely became part of my life during my time of reading and I am very glad it did.

I was under the impression that this would be a challenging read, after all it is a "classic" and one that apparently many people lie about having read, and it is almost 1400 pages long! However for the most part I thoroughly enjoyed it and found myself caught up with the characters and the story. I will come back to that "for the most part" in a moment. I liked most of the characters at least some of the time, though Natasha, probably the most important female character in the novel, just annoyed me! She does ridiculous things and is generally a ridiculous person and I can't understand why the other characters, some of whom seemed to be intelligent logical people, seemed so obsessed with her! How can anyone be that good looking for it to balance out such an irritating personality?

Back to that "for the most part". The story was great, the battles were realistically portrayed and I loved how it told each one from the varying perspectives of the characters. I didn't so much care for all the relationships and marriages but they weren't the "for the most part". The "for the most part" was caused by the last hour or so of reading time in the book where Tolstoy spends ages ranting on about his deterministic historical philosophies which are just boring and pointless. They are interesting enough as short asides interjected throughout the story, however all in one go just seemed unnecessary. It's not that I'm not interested in philosophy, but everything that he said had been said before and said better. It ruined the flow of the novel right at the end and it seemed like he repeated himself a few too many times.

Anyway, apart from that this was a fantastic book, don't let that influence you reading or not reading it! After all it's less than 100 pages in 1392! In the end, very glad I read this book. I feel now a slight loss at having finished though... An entire month of my life on one book, and one that will definitely leave a lasting impression. ...more

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