War and Peace

Rating:
Summary: Worth the time and the effort
Review: Okay this is a Big book.

It is also a great one. I had owned a copy of War and Peace for several years but could never work up the courage to commit to reading it. So when I was planning to backpack for a few months around Europe, I decided that this would be "the book" I would take with me. It is a decision that I did not have cause to regret.

So what makes it so great? Well for me it was the scope and the grandeur of it, and the understanding that Tolstoy showed of both the world and human nature. This is a book with dozens of characters, yet each of them is real each of them is alive. I found myself at times identifying with Prince Andrei's world weariness, at other times with Pierre's bewildered search for order and truth in the chaos that is the world.

Worth the time and the effort.

Rating:
Summary: Nothing can touch it.
Review: War and Peace is the greatest novel of all time, and Tolstoy the greatest author. Period!

Rating:
Summary: Great, but not the Greatest
Review: Some people consider this the greatest novel of all time, but there is no such thing. The greatest novel is simply a matter of individual taste and opinion. I will say that 'War and Peace' is, indeed, an extremely fine novel that is surprisingly easy to read, easy to understand, and very interesting and entertaining. Before I read the novel I thought the entire book would be almost one hundred percent about war, but I was pleasantly surprised. Approximately 60% of the novel is about the various characters' personal lives, about 30% is about war, and the other 10% is Tolstoy's personal philosophy, intermingled throughout various parts of the book, concerning the causes of war, the effects of war, sociopolitical movements, etc...

Tolstoy does a great job in telling the personal stories of all of his many characters. He tells of parties, dances, fox hunts, love, death, betrayal, duels, drunkenness, people working to get ahead, people looking to simply survive, etc... Tolstoy intertwines the stories of his characters' lives in a very entertaining and coherent manner.

I do have a couple of criticisms of this book. First, I agree with those who say that this novel is really two novels in one. I believe about 400 or 500 pages could be cut and the novel would not be any the poorer for it. Secondly, Tolstoy's personal philosophy in explaining the causes of war and the sociopolitical movements of societies is in my opinion totally unnecessary, and more importantly, flawed. Tolstoy asserts that Napoleon's attack on Russia was due to the overwhelming desire of the people and that Napoleon was simply an almost powerless player in a geopolitical movement over which no one had any control. I completely disagree with Tolstoy's assertion about that.

I very highly recommend this novel, but, in my opinion, '1984' is still the greatest novel of all time, or at least, the greatest novel I have read.

Rating:
Summary: focusing on War and Peace
Review: I picked this book not because of its thickness (1456 pages) but because of its fame. This book is famous and I decided to give it a try.
The protagonist in the novel is Emperor Aleksandr, who wants his soldiers to fight against the French and other invaders, and kick them out of the Russian earth. Napoleon is the antagonist who invades Russia, and is shown as someone who invades Russia from time to time.
There are more than 20 different characters in this book, and perhaps the main character may be Pierre Bezukhov since the novel focuses on him mostly. Tolstoy puts Bezukhov in a role of an adventurer who "travels around by himself, accompanied by God". He ran away from his home and was taken prisoner during the war. This makes the book like "Guilliver's Travels". However, some parts are really boring and it will take time for the reader to figure out what happened in a scene. In the beginning, Tolstoy opens the book by introducing some characters and showing their dialogues. Who will know where the intro took place after reading the intro five times? The book also contains too many characters, and it is possible for readers to forget who the characters are. Tolstoy also jumps from scene to scene; this novel is divided into four books, and they starred five major Russian royal families. He would focus on a different area, and then jump to the battle scene.
Even though this book may be hard to read, it is a really good challenge for someone who wishes to challenge himself or herself in reading. Tolstoy describes things with adjectives and emotions, and he also puts a lot of his philosophies in the book. One theme of the book may be focusing on war and its effects. Many things got destroyed and many people suffered. Even though most of the characters in the novel suffered bitterly, they became better human who valued their life more deeply. In the end, the French left and the Russians ¡§lived happily ever after¡¨, just like a happy ending from the fairy tale.
Tolstoy had written this book for six years, and I think that he really do spend time on it. It is impossible for someone to write a great novel in a day, and I think this is why many people considered this novel a masterpiece.

Rating:
Summary: All-Time Classics. Lev Tolstoy : National thought.
Review: This is one of the best books ever written in my country. Tolstoy is really great writer. He is genius. This novel is very long, but... It is interesting. It has a lot of philosophy in it. It is extremely well-written. Hundreds of characters, hundreds of events - it is an example of epic-novel. Maybe, the best in XIX century. If you like really good intelligent literature, you have to read it. The Russian genius, count Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy, in his best.

Rating:
Summary: 100 gold pages... the rest is not quite close...
Review: I have heard before that people must say War and Peace is wonderful because they would be fools if they had read such a long book and hated it. I believe this is what happens. Hearing that this book was one of the greatest masterpieces, I bought it and decided to read it. The book starts out very boring... confusing... but soon the clouds dissipate and it becomes clear. When this happens the book should start getting a whole lot better, but it doesn't, because Tolstoy decides to plant his theories on the "natural forces" and luck against the belief that a man can be a genius and lead a group of people. Although I do not agree with what he attempts to prove (I believe that those are just the justifications of someone who can't tolerate a non-Russian accomplishing so much... I never find a word of fault for the Tzar though...), if he did it well, I would not mind, but he breaks up the action and messes up the pacing of the novel to deliver this absolute hogwash. The novel cannot really take off. I will not deny, around the middle of the book, some 100 pages are REALLY good, but then the theoretical analysis becomes more frequent and even becomes a way to mess up the ending of the novel. War and Peace would definitely not be so long if it only told the story, but it would be a whole lot better. Tolstoy should not have mixed essay-writing and creating a novel... at least in his case, they go as well as oil and water. In summary: Tolstoy ruined his own book by trying to "prove the truth".

Rating:
Summary: Life as we knew it
Review: A review by Ross
This story takes place back in the time when Napoleon was at war with the world. It tells about how the war effected the course of the Russian people. Of how families united and how they split apart. About life and death, happiness and sorrow. It tells of how life can change with one decision and how it will turn out in the end because of those choices. The book was slow moving in the beginning and quite confusing. For one thing the author used so many details on starting the book that it takes a good hundred pages to. He gave so many details that it seemed as if you would have to read every second of the eighteen or twenty years this takes place during. In the first three pages the author changes to totally different setting and lives that you get confused on who is who. For there had to be about twenty princesses, ten princes, five counts, and what not other characters. The book becomes very interesting when it talks about the front lines of the Russian versus French battles. But the first two hundred pages bore you to death. All in all, beginning = bore, middle and end were quite good. The characters you can almost see perfectly in your mind, with every detail about them. The battles seem as if you were watching a movie. This I could say could be the most historical and LONGEST book I have ever read.

Rating:
Summary: If you have the time, read this, and if not, find the time
Review: Before I read 'War and Peace' I had read almost nothing ... maybe a 'Sports Illustrated' article here and there, but that's about it. I decided to read it because I heard it was the greatest book ever written. I was sure it wouldn't be great, though, and decided to read it just to make sure, for at the time I didn't think books, or reading in general, were important at all. It took me about a month to read, and I spent at least 2 hours every night reading it, so you can imagine the time and effort I put in. The first 100 pages or so were so confusing for me that I almost gave up. But I got past that, and enjoyed reading it more and more as I went on -- I made it a goal for myself to finish it. And by the end, I was reading as slowly and carefully as possible, not because I was confused, but because I didn't want it to end. Near the end, and when I finished, I almost couldn't believe that one man had written it, that all the characters and ideas in it came from one man. And so now I no longer despise reading, but read whenever I can and as much as I can, with hope that I might someday know as much as Tolstoy.

Rating:
Summary: A great book
Review: This is a great book to read. I enjoyed reading it and I recommend this book to everyone. If you are looking for a great book, you have to read "War and Peace"!!!!!

Rating:
Summary: Authentic
Review: Obviously, Tolstoy deserves five stars in anybody's book. When I give this edition four stars, I'm talking about the translation.

Ms. Edmonds' translation is a few decades old, but she gives a crisp rendering of the classic, and I would pick her any day over the all too well-worn Garnett translation.

Still, some points could use some work. I can't escape the feeling that Ms. Edmond's English prose is somewhat more labored than Tolstoy's Russian, which is disarmingly simple and lucid, as he always is. Also, it is a regular source of disappointment to me that any translation of "War and Peace" that I have ever seen translates even the passages in French and German (of which there is a considerable amount, generally in conversations and correspondence) into English. It doesn't make up almost half of the book, as someone tried to tell me once (!), but the point is that Tolstoy was trying to be authentic.

I suppose the English reading public won't tolerate leaving the French as it was, and admittedly Ms. Edmonds gives us a taste of it occasionally, with a phrase here and there. The only other drawback is her translation of the character Denisov's speech pattern. In the original, Tolstoy was trying to show that he affected a French accent in his Russian, pronouncing his "r's" as in French. In this translation, he sounds like Elmer Fudd.

Aside from these concerns, on the whole an impressive piece of work. If you're going to read Tolstoy in English, this is the version to do it with.