I've never wanted to finish a book more in my life. Oh dear God, this thing never ended. Took me forever. About as long as the frigging Napoleonic War lasted. Or so it seemed.
War and Peace is, well, mandatory if you claim to know something of Russia. Or Russian culture. You really must read it. Just as you should read Crime and Punishment (excellent) or The Master and Margarita (incredible).
But oh lordy, it just kept going.
I decided to read it at the start of the are-you-essential-or-non-essential time, March-ish. I'd just heard about a bunch of book geeks who were going to read W&P over the year 2020. There's 361 chapters, so a chapter a day with some flex, and boom, you're done in a year.
I figured: I'm going to be deployed for six months. Why not do two chapters a day for the deployment? Boom, book read.
Don't get me wrong. It really was good. I was way ahead of the 2-a-day sked within a couple days. No reason to put the book down if I was enjoying it. At any point I was anywhere from one week to one month ahead.
But after a few months it dragged. I just wanted to read something else. I read other books during this time, and that's when I would lag on W&P, then have to catch up. But I like variety and too much Napoleon after a while.
I went balls to the wall the last couple of weeks. And got 'er done. And I'm glad. I even threw in some chapters in Russian toward the end. Since I knew how the story was going and where it was going, I was able to get a lot through context if I didn't know. So count some language practice in there too.
But now I'm free! I'm reading my last of the Dewey Decimal Challenge now (The Monks of War by Seward) and will start a fiction book probably tonight or tomorrow. Can. Not. Wait!
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