War and Peace thread

>>9684511

Reminds me of another character, not from W&P, but another book I don't quite remember the name of. He wasn't clueless, and pretty much did exactly what you were describing, but he suffered that he might free his friend (I remember various excerpts about enlightenment era aristocratic intrigue). Essentially he knew how bad he was fucking everything up, but that price he was willing to pay to free his best friend. I admired him on all three counts.

>>9684511
Asides from Tolstoy's annoying moralism I hated all the forced coincidences in the book. It made everything feel very lazy.
>Of the hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers fighting across hundreds of miles it's Dolohov that rescues Pierre
>Of the hundreds of thousands of people who fought in the battle of Borodino it's Anatole who dies next to Andrei
>Of all the cities, of all the men it was the Rostov's who unknowingly house Andrei
>It just so happens that of all the people and of all the places he could have been it was Nikolai who bumps into Maria
That's not even all of them.

>>9684511
I read it for school in 11th grade. I didn't retain all that much of it, but I enjoyed it somewhat. It was pretty good at certain parts. At others is was extremely boring. I liked Tolstoy's philosophy, and although I didn't understand much of it at the time, it certainly resonates with me now. 8/10 overall, didn't need to be so long.

>>9685701

>I read it for school in 11th grade.
What school on Earth makes 11th graders read War & Peace?

>>9685679
I hope you realise that the battles were all along one main 'road'. If I'm not mistaken, theres a main road that links Smolensk and Borodino to Moscow, and along that road is the estate where the Rostov's lived and took in the injured soldiers. That's why they were evacuating, since their estate was along the road from the battlefields before Moscow.

Even if you look at Google Maps now Moscow is surrounded by huge long road/rail transport that extend from each direction around the city.

Its not like 1812 aristocratic Russia was a sprawling metropolis.

>>9685711
A boarding school in western Mass called Buxton.

>>9685735
That only addresses two of the coincidences I pointed out and even the ones it does address only changes it from a one in a billion to a one in a million.

>It just so happens that of all the people and of all the places he could have been it was Nikolai who bumps into Maria
There were literally tens of thousands of people who could be doing what he is doing and thousands of locations to which can be gone to. The odds a millions to one that it would be these two that meet this way.

>Of all the cities, of all the men it was the Rostov's who unknowingly house Andrei
Just because the army got funneled into this place doesn't mean that Andrei, among tens of thousands of wounded was likely to turn up at the Rostovs, one of thousands of places he could have turned up at.

>>9684511
I'll refrain from reading things in this thread as I'm still not done with the book yet.
>three quarters finished
>in a few months
Isn't that too slow? Why are you reading it on and off? It pulled me in, I've been reading for eight days now and I'm almost halfway done.

>>9685711
Probably over 90% of schools here in Russia. I don't think I've ever talked to someone who didn't have to read this book in high school. And the unfortunate thing is, just about none of them read it because they were 16 at the time and this book is fucking long and over their head.

>>9686694
Yeah it's too slow. I wasn't reading it at all for a while because I was outside of Russia and I wanted to read the entire book while I was in the country. Then when I came back I just didn't pick it up for a few weeks. Back on it now and should be finished in about a week.

>>9686708
You reading it in Russian?

>>9686732
No my Russian is still shit. That's partly the reason I didn't pick the book up for a few weeks -- every time I had free time for reading, I was using it to study Russian. But I decided to take a break from studying and finish the book.

Can someone give me some supplementary lit or websites on War and Peace? I gave up on the book a couple of years ago because my version didn't give translations for the French lines.

Also should I just start at the beginning again or is it possible to pick something up a few years later again without losing too much of the story?

>>9686805
How far in did you make it?

I've been reading the Maude translation which takes care of the French, and to review I've read the sparknotes chapter synopses (but not their analysis).

>>9686867
I would have to look at home but I can firmly remember the first battle scene and one of the characters being wounded and seeing lots of death and suffering.

>>9687055
That sounds like you aren't that far from the start so just start again.

I'm going to marry Mary!