"War and Peace"

Heather bought me this beautiful book for Christmas. I was so excited because I love beautiful books! If only all books came looking as if they'd been published more than 100 years ago! The mahogany binding and gold-edged pages are accented by a delightful story. I enjoyed reading it before the fireplace, or out on the front porch of the Yellow Cottage when the weather began to get warm. As history will show, I am not very kind to my books. I take them everywhere. This book, however, I was not letting out of my house - or at least, not off the front porch...

...So I was very glad to find buried in my stacks of books another copy which I kept in my truck so that I could take it anywhere. The most dangerous place being the barn. There are some wrinkled pages from getting wet; the edges of the pages are slightly browner than they were when I began to read it - I'm surprised that they don't smell like horse, grain and hay; pages 117-278 just tumbled out onto the office floor the other day.

I enjoyed Tolstoy's book immensely. It is a story of love in the midst of war; a story of the survival of a nation and the people who fought for their country, and those who tried just to survive the war. 

There is romance, betrayal, forgiveness; a dual between two men that were once friends; great battle scenes and beautiful parties; it is threaded with tragedy and hope; an officer rescues a damsel in distress.  There is, history, some philosophy, and a little theology. 

It did take me a very long time to read it all, but I didn't forget what was going on as is sometimes easy to do with lengthy classics. Tolstoy's descriptions made it easy to see and remember each scene.

I was so excited to find a fairly recent version of the movie War and Peace. I must confess that I did watch it when I was only 3/4 the way done with the book. But I am watching it again now that I have finished the book.