War and Peace

Seriously. War and Peace.

A couple of years after working through the Volokhonsky/Pevear Anna Karenina (which didn't hold up quite as well as I expected it would, given how much I loved the novel when I read it (via Constance Garnett) 13 or 14 years ago, I decided to re-read War and Peace, this time (like AK) in the Volkhonsky/Pevear translation.

Given that I first read the book while backpacking alone on the Pacific Crest Trail as a 22-year-old -- the same summer that I read The Adventures of Augie March, Henderson the Rain King, Narcissus and Goldmund, and re-read The Brothers Karamazov, I'm probably setting myself up for disappointment.

But, I made it through the first 75 pages of "remind me again of why I should care about these impossibly wealthy mofos," and am now firmly entrenched in the second seventh of the book, so, I guess, all is well.

For the sake of trying to get a solid handle on the thing, I'm going to try to write about it when I can. We'll see how it goes.