In Which We Discuss Serial Reader and War and Peace

When I was younger, I owned a lot of books.  They topped out at about three-thousand, most of them from charity shops.  My grandmother would take me down her local high street and I'd pick up fifteen or twenty for £10.  It was magical.  Some of my favourite books are the ones I found in that way.  When I was twenty-four, I donated most of them back to charity shops because I'd moved twice by then and never, ever wanted to move all of those books again.  Now I own about a hundred physical books and another two hundred on my Kindle.

A small selection of my old collection, circa 2012.

I bring that up because there was a subgroup of books that I collected but never actually read, for the most part.  The old Penguin Classic paperbacks.  I was always going to read them "someday", and I justified getting rid of them by the fact that the Kindle editions are free.  Despite that, I still haven't read most of them.

One app that's helped me there is Serial Reader.  Serial reader takes those classics, cuts them up into bitesize pieces (5-15 minutes of reading), and sends them to you one day at a time.  If you have the paid version, you can read ahead, while the free version limits you to that one piece.

Another bit of backstory; I'm planning a trip to Russia, hopefully this year, if funds allow.

Serial Reader on my iPhone.

In short; I'm trying to read War and Peace.  I did try once before, and very quickly got confused as to who was who (which is, apparently, a Russian thing), so I'm going to take notes on each section as I go.  There are 235 of them.

Incidentally, I am also carrying on with my Stephen King project.  I'm just bogged down in Dreamcatcher at the moment, and also slightly addicted to Kristin Painter's Nocturne Falls series, of which I devour a book every three days or so.  That's loosely connected as well; I'm up to The Dragon Finds Forever featuring "Puff the magic MMA fighter", a Russian dragon shifter.  He's just breakfasted on syrniki.  Which I was already planning to make next week, despite my lactose intolerance, because they sound amazing.

War and Peace: Section 1

Sparknotes are here, if preferred.  I'm not reading ahead, but I am checking them at the end of each section, to see all the pretty nuances that I missed.

It's 1805.  Prince Vasili Kuragin is being told that the Buonapartes have taken over Genoa and Lucca (google: those are Italian cities).  So this little speech is about war, and it's taking place during a peaceful, high-society function.  Okay.  Anna Pavlovna is a 'maid of honour', which I don't think means head bridesmaid here, and she's a favourite of the Empress Marya Fedorovna.  Apparently, she wrote her invitations in Frence, presumably to be fancy.  England does that.  All our fancy words (beef, mansion) are from French while are commoner words (cow, house) are from German.

Apparently, the prince is also a count, and Anna Pavlovna may also call herself Annette Scherer.  You see why I was confused.  They are being very polite and courteous while speaking in fancy French.  I wonder if they are smiling?

Anna Pavlovna is afraid of revolution.  Another google search; the Russian Revolution occurred in 1905 and War and Peace was first published in 1869.   Austria does not wish for war and is betraying Russia, who must stand alone.  The English are suspicious and commercial (true), and is refusing to evacuate Malta, which sounds like us.  The emperor is Alexander, and this prince has a son and a daughter, and a youngest whom Anna doesn't like, Anatole.  She wants to marry him to Princess Mary Bolkonskaya, who is a relation of his.  Not unusual for princes.

From Genomes Unzipped (linked in text)

The Prince is tempted because Anatole is expensive and the princess may be rich.  Anna agrees to start matchmaking, while complaining - jokingly, I think - that it makes her feel old.

I quite like the name Anatole.  I hope he's in this a lot, he sounds fun.