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jay_the_hippie 's review for:
War and Peace
by Leo Tolstoy
Was it worth reading this really really long book? Hmmmm. I'm going to try not to write an essay here.
Short answer: yes. I learned a lot about Napoleon and how the history of wars differs from how it really happened. I recently read that some of France hoped Napoleon would be like George Washington, so it was interesting to see how different he was. I really like reading books where I learn things or see events from a different point of view, and since I'm not a Russian living early in the 1800s (in fact, I never have been), I enjoyed seeing that point of view.
But... I like Anna Karenina and The Death of Ivan Ilyich much better. For the plot, character, relationships, and psychology, those other two books are at least as good as War and Peace and are much shorter.
Oh, and the second half of the epilogue of War and Peace I should have skipped. Once Tolstoy got done with the story of the characters and started a rant about historical theory, I would have been better off closing the book and being done.
It is a bit of a slog to get through so many pages and words, but the story is complicated (which reflects Tolstoy's view that the war stories and histories are usually great simplifications of what really happened). The descriptions of what is going on in the world (War and more) that come along really do add flavor to the story. A lot of authorial thoughts, which do add to the story but can be distracting if you prefer your novels without the author intruding.
Short answer: yes. I learned a lot about Napoleon and how the history of wars differs from how it really happened. I recently read that some of France hoped Napoleon would be like George Washington, so it was interesting to see how different he was. I really like reading books where I learn things or see events from a different point of view, and since I'm not a Russian living early in the 1800s (in fact, I never have been), I enjoyed seeing that point of view.
But... I like Anna Karenina and The Death of Ivan Ilyich much better. For the plot, character, relationships, and psychology, those other two books are at least as good as War and Peace and are much shorter.
Oh, and the second half of the epilogue of War and Peace I should have skipped. Once Tolstoy got done with the story of the characters and started a rant about historical theory, I would have been better off closing the book and being done.
It is a bit of a slog to get through so many pages and words, but the story is complicated (which reflects Tolstoy's view that the war stories and histories are usually great simplifications of what really happened). The descriptions of what is going on in the world (War and more) that come along really do add flavor to the story. A lot of authorial thoughts, which do add to the story but can be distracting if you prefer your novels without the author intruding.