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I started reading Tolstoy's War and Peace a few months ago. Originally planned to read a chapter every other day while chewing my way through shorter books, but I got really bored of doing that after a few months, so decided to pick up the pace and drop the other books for a while. I've just made my way a little over the end of the first volume, where the story really picks up at the Battle of Austerlitz.
I'm reading the Briggs translation, which is a lot more colloquial. Briggs tends to take more liberties with the original text, so the language is adapted to the English-speaking reader. This means the Russian soldiers talk like a bunch of blokes, saying shit like 'Hey mate, look at them two,' and 'Dead right, 'e knows 'is stuff,' which I got a kick out of. You sure these guys are the Tsar's men?
I like the war scenes a lot better than the 'civilian life' scenes, the hussars Rostov and Denisov being my favourites by far. Rostov's idealistic love for Russian military glory made his perspective really fun to read, cause the guy was practically blushing, giggling and kicking his feet in the air whenever the Tsar was around. I jump in joy whenever Denisov says something because his speech impediment makes all his dialogue sound hilarious. (let's dwink to dwown our sowwow!)
The first part of War and Peace is mostly setup, so a lot of characters have been introduced with no elaboration. I'm excited to see where this goes and how each of them end up.
I'm reading the Briggs translation, which is a lot more colloquial. Briggs tends to take more liberties with the original text, so the language is adapted to the English-speaking reader. This means the Russian soldiers talk like a bunch of blokes, saying shit like 'Hey mate, look at them two,' and 'Dead right, 'e knows 'is stuff,' which I got a kick out of. You sure these guys are the Tsar's men?
I like the war scenes a lot better than the 'civilian life' scenes, the hussars Rostov and Denisov being my favourites by far. Rostov's idealistic love for Russian military glory made his perspective really fun to read, cause the guy was practically blushing, giggling and kicking his feet in the air whenever the Tsar was around. I jump in joy whenever Denisov says something because his speech impediment makes all his dialogue sound hilarious. (let's dwink to dwown our sowwow!)
The first part of War and Peace is mostly setup, so a lot of characters have been introduced with no elaboration. I'm excited to see where this goes and how each of them end up.