First published without a title but I put these words in the title space so now I suppose there really is a title now

Humpity humpity, it is hump day. That is Wednesday for those of you who like for me to state the obvious.

I have decided I'm going to once again give War and Peace a chance. I actually read the book more than 30 years ago as part of a college English Lit assignment. At that time I read everything except the First and Second Epilogues. As I relaxed in a hammock drinking gimlets after work the summer after that class, I decided there was no way I could slog through 1,300 plus pages of a book and not finish. So I did. Truth be told, I have read thousands of books in the intervening 30 or 35 years since college. I remember absolutely nothing about the novel beyond the idea that it is long and has a lot of characters. Besides, it is far different to read something because you want to rather than you have to.

We shall see if I can stick with it. Tolstoy is a typical 19th century novelist in that he is wordy; but not in an exhaustive and unreadable way like Melville or Cooper.*  How much of the tome I read will likely depend on if something more interesting appears on my Kindle. Somehow 1,500 pages does not seem so daunting when you consider some of the Harry Potter and Game of Thrones installments went 700 pages and more.  Today, Tolstoy could have milked War and Peace into a two or three book series.


* imagine me calling someone wordy.