Sunday, January 11, 2009

I Must Confess...

I am hating War & Peace.

It is so convoluted and the whole thing feels more like an endeavor in keeping track of names and making sense of the awkward language of what I have to assume is a lousy translation.

I'm only 200 pages in, more than two weeks after starting it; it's frustrating for me to not be able to get through a book faster, especially when reading it feels like such a chore. I'm not sure I can commit myself to reading the rest of the book, at least not without breaking up the arduousness of it with other, less brain-paining texts.

Not that I'm planning on filling my reading schedule with Danielle Steele or anything, but there are so many worthy books out there than I really want to indulge in it seems a shame to spend all my time trudging through something I'm not enjoying, or even retaining from one reading to the next. This has always been my struggle, though; not finishing a book I've started feels like failing and I don't "do" failing.

Anyone read War & Peace and want to tell me that it gets RIVETING by page 201?

2 comments:

Tress said...

What translation are you reading?

I am taking my library book back and buying my own copy. This is going to take forever, and I will also need to break it up with some other reading. Unfortunately, Zola's "Nana" does not seem to be a good intermission choice...I think I'm going Harry Potter #2.

Threeundertwo said...

Have you read Anna Karenina? That one took me an entire summer, and it got better (and easier to read) as it went along. I haven't tried War and Peace though.