I'm rereading Bleak House by Charles Dickens right now. I love Dickens but this isn't my favorite of his books. It has two narrators, a first person one and a third person one. The first-person narration gets kind of annoying with her protestations that she's nobody special (though I'd argue they make sense given her ultra strict upbringing) and the third person narrator's aloofness can get tiresome too. Nevertheless, the book's full of great stuff and I've read it many times. (When I was part of an online reading group that went through all of Dickens's novels, they graciously allowed me to write a blog post about how some of Bleak House's themes are seemingly the opposite of what we expect from Dickens.  Bleak House: The Anti-Dickensian Dickens Book? – All the (Dickensian) Year Round ) 

I took a break from reading BH though to read the novelization of the movie Love and Friendship by screenwriter/director Whit Stillman. For those not in the know, Love and Friendship is based on Lady Susan by Jane Austen. The premise of the movie novelization is that the narrator is Lady Susan's nephew (by marriage) and he's writing to defend his aunt whom he claims Jane Austen, or "that spinster authoress" as he calls her, maligned but it's obvious that he doesn't have a leg on which to stand and Lady Susan is just as evil as Austen wrote. It's a fun read. {ym}:lol: For my thoughts on the plot and characters of Love and Friendship, or Lady Susan for that matter, feel free to check out this blog post. Love and Friendship-or Not | The Adaptation Station.com

I took two of Dr. Schakel’s classes at Hope College. One was called Practical Criticism (applied to poetry) and the other was the C. S. Lewis course.  I really liked both of them. Dr. Schakel’s books are just as interesting as his classes. He also wrote a book about Narnia called The Way into Narnia. 

Okay, I think I see what you mean about it being more real to them then. I guess I liked him *having* a family to come home to enough that it didn’t bother me that that family was in this other world. Granted, it does further complicate things when someone marries someone from another world. It would be an interesting change if Frank, having found the way that was lost to him, had also found contentment in our world and ended up choosing to stay there, knowing visits are possible..

@arin I had almost the opposite experience with Sunrise on the Reaping vs. Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. I preferred Sunrise to Ballad. I liked neither as much as the main trilogy, but…well I’m not generally a fan of tragedies, and Ballad was too frustrating for me. I am surprised I liked Sunrise as much as I did, but at least there I could root for the main character wholeheartedly, knowing that though this book would end badly his story wasn’t over. For a while I was considering them both additions to canon, but over time I saw more reasons why it doesn’t quite fit the logic of the main trilogy. They’re subtle and probably there are ways to explain them away that would satisfy most people, but the main thing I can’t square away is

that if the rebels were doing that much that obviously 24 years before Katniss and Peeta’s games, and it was only the propaganda machine that kept it from being known in the districts, Snow would have been *more* cautious about deviating from the rules, even temporarily, and would never have allowed the 74th games to end the way they did. The explanation for why he did is shown in the beginning of Catching Fire, and it’s that which I can’t make it so it meshes with more obvious rebel activity.

That said, I may still reread someday and there are some interesting themes.

@jo I used to read LotR every year and there were a few years (when the movies were coming out) when I read them twice a year: once for the library’s summer reading program and once in December. It’s actually been a few years since I read them though, and even longer since I read The Hobbit, so I’ve started The Hobbit and intend to do a full reread at last!

@narnian78 I’m pretty sure this isn’t going to be very helpful, but I have read Reason and Imagination in C. S. Lewis: A Study of Till We Have Faces. I read it because I thoroughly loathed Till We Have Faces when I read it, and was hoping something would give me an idea of why. Did I just not understand it, I asked myself? Was it simply Too Deep for me? Well, reading Reason and Imagination confirmed that I understood it well enough, it just wasn’t for me. I won’t go into why I disliked it so thoroughly here except to say that Greek or Roman mythology has never had the draw for me as it’s had for others I know and I dislike this myth in particular.

Anyway though I’ve read quotes and things from Peter Schakel before about other things (mainly Narnia) and that’s really cool that he was your professor in college!

@snowangel I remember that Childhood of Famous Americans series! I did like the Robert. E. Lee one a lot.

Ooh, Tahn is one of my favorite books! I do like the other two books but Tahn is one of my comfort reads.

@col-klink I read an abridged version of War and Peace (which I should have known but did not know that it was abridged) shortly after watching the 1956 movie with Audrey Hepburn as Natasha and enjoying it more than I expected. Having watched the movie made it easier for me to keep track of characters, but I think if I read the whole book as I intend to someday then I’ll also probably have to find some kind of cheat sheet to keep them straight. Even the abridged version was difficult to get into at first, and that with the movie fresh in my mind, but I eventually did and really enjoyed it. I found an unabridged used copy a few years-ish ago and keep meaning to read it, but I haven’t yet. Constance Garnett is the translator of the one I found. Maybe this will be my year!

My own reading since I last commented has been very interesting. I finished the other books in The Mysterious Benedict Society series, (including the prequel which I did not enjoy so much) as ebooks and Every Living Thing by James Herriot as an audiobook. Also a few more Poirots, (audiobooks as well) but the most memorable of these was, I think, Five Little Pigs. It’s a sad story at times, but so well done in my opinion. And I’m not just saying that because I mostly guessed the solution before we got there. It made me cry, but not entirely out of sadness.

I got on a slight nonfiction kick (for me, at least) and listened to The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, but I didn’t get as much out of it as I was hoping. Then The Elements of Eloquence by Mark Forsyth which was well-written in some ways but very annoying with the crassness among other things. I wouldn’t recommend it. The next nonfiction I listened to was Normal Christian Life by Watchman Nee and that’s a book I can’t recommend highly enough!

So... has anyone here ever read War and Peace? {ym}:lol:  

Yes, I read the Constance Garnett translation when I was twenty. I eventually enjoyed it but it did take awhile. If I remember correctly I didn't start enjoying it until Natasha was grown up. My mom read (and likes) the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation, she did take almost two years to read it from start to finish, whenever she felt like she was burning out she would set it aside and read a different book or two, then return to War & Peace. I can't remember how long it took me to read it, longer than it took me to read Les Misérables but less time than it took my mom!

@Anfinwen, are you still reading some of Savery's books or are you working on something else now? {ym}:smile:

@Mel, have you started Team of Rivals yet?

@Col-Klink, I read the first book of War and Peace years ago - and have yet to pick it back up again. {ym}:blush: Unfortunately, no recommendations then, but I hope you're able to make better progress on it quickly!

@Narnian78, hard to say exactly what the longest book I've read is, though it might be some sort of doorstop fantasy (if it's not the Bible).

I did finish Martin Chuzzlewit last month. Not my favourite, but with some good bits and a little sense of "is everything sad going to come untrue?" near the end (except for the whole Jonas situation). I haven't done tons of reading since then, though.

Yes, I enjoyed it. I have liked reading long novels by authors such as Dickens.  They often require much time and patience, but I usually like period time settings and characters. :)

I remember reading a library copy of War and Peace decades ago.  I read the entire novel by Leo Tolstoy, and it took me a very long time to get through it.

Do you remember if you enjoyed it? 

I remember reading a library copy of War and Peace decades ago.  I read the entire novel by Leo Tolstoy, and it took me a very long time to get through it. Also, I still have an abridged paperback edition which my mother purchased for me years ago.

Sometimes I prefer shorter versions of books such as The Backyard Astronomer’s Guide.  The old edition isn’t so bulky and takes up less space than the new more recent revision of that book. So I recently purchased it, and it seems good enough for anyone who has stargazing for a hobby. It is also less expensive than the newer edition. I recommend it highly.

What is the longest book that you’ve ever read? I think the longest books that I have read include Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (remember that Tolkien considered the three parts to be one story) at about 1200 pages.  The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer is about 1500 pages. Both of these books took weeks to read, but they were interesting enough that I couldn’t put them down for long.  Shirer’s book was very sad and dark in places. :(

So... has anyone here ever read War and Peace?  

No, but in the immortal words of Woody Allen: "I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia." {ym}:grin:

(I do know my grandmother read it once, and in the original Russian, which was her native language. But she's long since passed away and I don't know if anyone in the family ever asked her what she thought of it.)

I've seen an adaptation of it and enjoyed it on the whole and I've read Les Misérables multiple times so I feel like I should be able to read War and Peace. But I haven't been able to get into it. (The first four chapters or so are about a bunch of people gossiping at a party, which I feel is the most boring way to provide exposition.) Maybe it's the English translations I've been trying but I feel like Leo Tolstoy's writing style just isn't very fun to read, compared to Victor Hugo's. (I know it sounds ridiculous to describe Hugo's writing as fun, given the depressing nature of his stories, but if you compare the first couple of chapters of Les Misérables to the first chapters of War and Peace, they kind of are fun to read.) I know the story and characters get interesting eventually though. 

Does anyone who's read the book have any advice for me? Is there a particular translation I should try?