War and Peace discussion thread

[TooExtraImmatureCheddar]

For all things Rostov, Bezukhov and Bolkonsky - come in, pour yourself some tea from the samovar and settle down to debate love, politics, war and religion. Or if that sounds too hard, you can just bitch about the Freemasons or the BBC version.

Spoilers - what do people think? It will be a bit hard to discuss without posting any spoilers, but maybe we could write SPOILER! at the beginning of a post if it has something major in it.

I am 45% into it on my Kindle, but it's taken me 2 years to get this far! How far has everyone else got?

Cheddar Anna K is a fantastic book, you'll love it. I try to read it about once a year. I haven't read W&P for ages, will give it another go in a couple of weeks.

Slightly missing the point of the thread there. Sorry.

I agree with middle re Anna K. I can't even remember much about it, but I can remember how I felt when I read it. Like I was completely wrapped up in another world. I read a lot but hadn't felt that exhilaration in a long time.

I read lat week that someone suggested the translation of the third word in the title of WaP could actually be "World".

Mir in Russian means peace as well as world.

Yy re: Anna K exhilaration, I've said before I think that it felt like I was coming up for air when I stopped reading.

Ooooh, I like the sound of Anna Karenina! I must wait until after W&P, though - not sure I could cope with two Tolstoys at once.

No you have to really concentrate on it in the beginning so one at a time definitely best!

I think AK is much easier to read than W&P.

I read this with my full attention while virtually bedbound for a few months.

I had owned it for years and read it in a rather "skippy" way. My Dh had read it too. So I asked what he thought of Natascha and he asked "Who was she?" And he asked me what I thought of Kutuzov's military tactics and I said "What?"

So we realised he had read War and I had read Peace!

Had no expectations of thecurrent TV series and was pleasantly surprised.

Spoiler alert: I'm liking the hunting bit with Nicholas and Natasha where they wind up back at Uncle's after a shoot and Natasha does the Russian dancing, but I still don't really feel as if I know Natasha as a person. She's done some teenage longing for her fiance, but she hasn't really done anything else, much. I'm hoping this improves and you get inside her head a bit more (and that there's more to it than Likes Dancing, Singing and Boys).

You get a lot more from Andrew and Pierre - long descriptions of Pierre's disillusionment with the Freemasons or Andrew's depression. I don't mean to imply that I don't like getting inside their heads, but I wish the same would happen with Natasha.

The Freemason bits I may even have skipped when bedbound..

I could never let myself warm to PRince Andrew after his treatment of the little princess. All shown in episode1 so no spoiler!

Prince Nicholas Bolkonski is such a cock. I was really taken aback by Jim Broadbent's twinkly merry-faced approach because the old prince is horrible to everyone. Do you think he's going to become nasty later on, to suit the character? Poor Princess Mary - she's the classic abused daughter, isn't she? I can just see her MN thread.

Jim was far too genial!

I've taken a shine to Nicholas Rostov! Poor lamb! He's like a little boy playing soldiers!

Yes all the characters are flawed. I will say no more about him though as he's close to my heart!

Oh Nicholas Rostov is irritating me a bit!

I wasn't sure what to make of Broadbent's old Prince either but did wonder if he will become nasty later on, almost as though the kindly old man thing is all a cover for how abusive he actually is.

Am 44% into the book. Cheddar - I think this is all there is to Natasha at the moment but am hoping she'll get more interesting as she gets older?!

I hope so!

I'm on 46%. Can anyone give me any background to Peter the Great using a cudgel on his government? Wikipedia isn't very helpful. I mean, is it just as it sounds and he hit them? If they disagreed, or just if they behaved badly?

Was speech free, or were they all terrified of him?

Nice. Julie, at the grand old age of 27, would have been considered a sexless acquaintance by most men!

(I didn't write spoiler because that's not plot-based)

I'm not a Peter the Great expert by any means but sounds quite plausible. IIRC from A level history, he was a violent sort of a sod and didn't like opposition, to put it mildly. And I think they were pretty terrified of him, yes.

Didn't he ban beards? Or did I imagine that? I know he was on a mission to 'Europeanise' Russia.

I am deliberately ignoring all the negativity towards Andrei, BTW.

He taxed beards, I think!

Peter was a tyrant (albeit a generally well-meaning one, in contrast to Ivan the Terrible, for example) and, although I don't know for definite about the cudgel, it sounds very likely that he did hit the government when/if they disagreed.

He tried to ban beards in an attempt to copy Western European fashions, then settled for taxing them instead.

When I went to Russia a couple of years ago, our tour guide idolised him and wouldn't hear any suggestion that he was anything other than a saint....

Gosh. I know so little of Russian history except a little bit about the revolution and Anastasia. I knew nobles used the knout on serfs right into relatively modern times, but not that it was okay to go about cudgelling ministers.