Your Stories #6: War and Peace

YOUR STORIES discovers the books that are important to you. These articles tell the stories of favourited books and their readers.

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LEO TOLSTOY'S WAR AND PEACE
CHOSEN BY JANET RODRIGUEZ
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What compelled you to read War and Peace?

I picked up this book in 2002, and it took me a whole year to read it. I always wanted to say I read War and Peace... it was kind of a goal.

Why is War and Peace your favourite book?

The story transported me into the world of a doomed aristocracy of Russia - during the time when Napolean was trying to take over Europe. A time, place and social structure that I was completely unfamiliar with. I read quite a bit of the book before it got really interesting... maybe one-third of the massive story before I really felt like I couldn't put it down. Then *BAM* - on one page there were two different things that happened that HOOKED me to the story. All of a sudden, these people were folks I knew... people I cared about and couldn't live without. Napolean became real to me, the future of a people became something I cared about. Damn that Tolstoy!! How could he do this to me??

While I read, the rhythms of Tolstoy were made beautiful and I felt like he was a dear uncle telling me a story in front of a fire. I will always, always recommend this book... it is an important one even today.

Because of its size, it is very important that you read the right translation. Rosemary Edmonds is a master translator and a passionate lover of literature. [The edition I read] was published by Penguin and never fell apart. It has a cast of characters at the beginning (it is my deepest advice to not read War and Peace without one - you need to remember who is who and how they relate to one another).

Do you have any memories associated with this book?

I have always been told that I have ADD - that I achieve below my potential. I used to give up on a lot of things because I believed this diagnosis. One day, I remember that I decided I would no longer accept anything negative that had ever been said about me. If I did have ADD, it would be a hurdle I would have to jump over, right? So I said, "I'm gonna read War and Peace!" And I did. The next year I ran a marathon (I was told I wasn't athletic). War and Peace reminds me that I can do anything... anything.

Share a favourite quotation from the text.

"Though tattered, hungry, worn out, and reduced to a third of their original number, the French entered Moscow in good marching order. It was a weary and famished, but still a fighting and menacing army. But it remained an army only until its soldiers had dispersed into their different lodgings. As soon as the men of the various regiments began to disperse among the wealthy and deserted houses, the army was lost forever and there came into being something nondescript, neither citizens nor soldiers but what are known as marauders. When five weeks later these same men left Moscow, they no longer formed an army. They were a mob of marauders, each carrying a quantity of articles, which seemed to him valuable or useful. The aim of each man when he left Moscow was no longer, as it had been, to conquer, but merely to keep what he had acquired."

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Janet Rodriguez has been an avid reader for as long as she can remember. She read War and Peace when she was 38, ran her first marathon at 39 and moved to Africa when she was 44. Her blog is a reflection of her life as a "Christian missionary" while being a feminist (talk about a square peg in a round hole). She has written her first novel, Treasures In Diepsloot, a story of women living in extreme poverty and becoming the heart and soul of hope in darkness. She is convinced that writers are her favourite people, the watchers and translators of life. When you are good at story-telling, there's a joy that radiates from you and a love for people that comes through and makes life for everyone better.