written artwork - war and peace

Yahoo!  Hooray!  I did it!  Everybody listen!

I READ WAR AND PEACE!

This is pretty much how I felt when I finished this gargantuan book.  It is a title that is revered in the literary world and a book that most stay away from simply because of it's size.  Luckily I was able to easily carry this encyclopedia sized book around on my tiny Kindle.

After completion, I decided War and Peace is made of three parts.

1. A fictional story with many fictional characters
2. Narration by Tolstoy of historical events and figures
3. Tolstoy's opinion on the war between Napoleon and Russia as well as general thoughts on war

As the book begins, we only see the first part.  Tolstoy takes his time telling the fictional story and we get to meet many interesting characters.  As the book progresses we get to learn more and more about the historical storyline that goes with the fictional, which it is quite interesting.

Then we slowly start to hear more of his, very thought out and valuable, opinions on war.  First with small tidbits, then small essays, until it turns into an all out rant.  This portion of the book could easily be separated from War and Peace to make it's own book.  Although I really saw that Tolstoy knew what he was talking about and had valuable opinions, I could have done with a lot less of the rants.

Other than this point, War and Peace was extremely readable.  Much more so than I had first imagined it would be.  For someone that is looking for a big reading project, I would highly recommend this book.  Especially if you are a history buff like myself.  It was truly a pleasure to learn about a culture I personally have heard little of, such as Russia's. 

A list of what's to come, and what has already been explored.
My Written Artwork Journey Explained here

1. Animal Farm - George Orwell
2. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. Emma - Jane Austen
4. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
5. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof - Tennessee Williams
6. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
7. Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson
8. Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
9. The Canterbury Tales - Geoffrey Chaucer
10. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
11. Nineteen Eighty-four - George Orwell
    
12. Death of a Salesman - Arthur Miller
13. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
14. The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
15. The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
16. Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson
17. Pickwick Papers - Charles Dickens
18. Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
19. The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
20. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
21. Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison
22. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
23. Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut
24. The sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway
25. Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston
26. Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
27. Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
28. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
29. Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
30. Crime and Punishment - Fedor Dostoyevsky
31. Watership Down - Richard Adams
32. Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak
33. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
34. All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque
35. Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
36. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
37. The Red Badge of Courage - Stephen Crane
38. Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe
39. Tales - Edgar Allan Poe
40. Diary of a Madman and Other Stories - Nikolai Gogol
41. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
42. A Farewell To Arms - Ernest Hemingway
43. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen