Thank you, Laura! Good points.

Thank you, Emily!

@Sarah K – thank you! And we’re going to have a “lunchtime” (Eastern) discussion soon so hopefully that will help a few more folks be able to attend one!

@Elisabeth – thanks but we shall see on the move! Just learned our “confirmed” fridge did not show up. Did the distributor, facing a shortage, give ours to someone else??? Who knows….

Heather – I’ve read it twice, and I realized, on the second read (when I read a chapter a day), that I had missed a lot. Some of that was a function of speed. I read the book in about 3 weeks the first time, possibly because when there is a lot to get through, you feel the need to make noticeable progress. But also there are a lot of characters and it’s impossible to know from page 1 who is important and who is not. I’m not going to do any spoilers here, but I didn’t know that a major (and in retrospect obvious) conclusion to the book would happen and so certain earlier scenes didn’t seem nearly as important to me. On the second read, I realized that they were foreshadowing major plot points.
I’m not sure what to do about this, because if you read a wikipedia thing on the characters you will learn the major plot points, and if you don’t want to do that, then you’re going to have a harder time keeping track. I think that the digital version I read for my first read through had a list of characters organized by families in the beginning. That didn’t give away anything — it’s fine to know that the Rostovs have children named Vera, Nicholas, Natasha, and Petya and that Sonya is the cousin they took in. It might be worth tracking down something like that.
Or just accept that you might want to read it again!

@Allison- thanks for the recommendation! I will check it out.

Hello Heather, when I read War and Peace, I drew a chart with the characters and arrows showing the relationships. It took me a little bit to realize that each character had about 3 different names, and that a lot of people were referred to as “prince” or “princess.” Drawing the chart and referring to it frequently helped me understand the story, which I enjoyed. Happy Reading!

Do you have any tips on War and Peace? Inspired by you, I’m now on chapter 2 and plan to read 1 a day through the year. I believe you’ve read it multiple times, right? For your first time, did you keep a character list or anything? I’ve heard there are over 500 in the book…seems Game of Thrones-esque, and for that, I could have benefit from a spreadsheet, ha!

Thanks,

Heather