Kathy Hamilton War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Reason: Too Complicated!
This book is probably the most unfinished book in the history of literature! Seriously if you’ve finished this book you deserve a medal, a knighthood or at least a rousing applause. I mean, this book is EPIC; the first edition was 1,255 pages and that’s before any help notes or introduction! It is also one of the books I most wanted to finish because, well, it’s supposed to be one of the most important works of literature written. The thing is, it was just so mind bogglingly complicated that I couldn’t continue with it. All the characters seem to have the same names or names that sound like names which have already been used, how are you supposed to follow a conversation between Pyotr , Pyotr, Nikolai and Prince Andrey Nikolayevich Bolkonsky? Then to find out that a Prince is less important than a Duke, and the women had different surnames to their husbands…it was just a step too far for me! It left me feeling like this:
In the end, I didn’t even get to the war part of War & Peace! So much seemed to be happening in a country, time and culture that I knew very little about that I found myself reading pages without taking a single thing in and gave up long before the first bullet was fired! The main thing I took away from my attempt to read this book was to wonder why they spoke French if they were Russian? Hardly the most profound reaction in the world! If you have read this book, tell me, is it worth another try? Or should I just use it to prop up furniture like my cousin does with her unfinished books?!
