War and Peace

I finished Huckleberry Finn last week. It had been about two decades since I last read it, so it was nice to read it again. I've also come to the conclusion that I would rather hang out with Huck Finn that I would Tom Sawyer; not because Huck is more of a wild-child, pretty much the opposite. Although Huck is fairly ignorant about a lot of things, he has his head screwed on better than Tom. Tom, being raised "proper" and all, goes out of his way to cause problems for other people. During the last few chapters, I just wanted to reach through and smack Tom upside the head.

Anyway, now that I finished, I've decided to tackle a book that I haven't read yet and that has intimidated me for a long time: War and Peace.

I've generally heard this book described as a story about people with incomprehensible names, going to places with incomprehensible names, doing incomprehensible things. That and the fact that it is a REALLY long book kept me away from it for a long time. But I got started on it this week. You know what? I'm really enjoying it!

Yes, there are a lot of people with Russian names and titles to keep track of (and they seem to be all related somehow and all their stories intertwine), and there are a whole pile of sub-plots (actually, you might say that it is nothing but sub-plots and therefore everything is a main plot...go figure). But I've been surprised at how much I've liked it so far. It doesn't hurt either that it takes place during the Napoleonic Wars, which is one of my favorite periods of history to read about (Go Hornblower!). The writing style (or at least this particular translation) is easy to read. Had I known all of this before, I would have read it a long time ago.

However, I imagine it is going to take me a very long time to get through this as I normally only take time to read while I'm waiting for the bus or I am on the bus going to work.