"So too in history what is known to us we call the laws of necessity; what is unknown we call free will. Free will is for history only the expression for the unknown remainder of what we know of the laws of human life ( Read more... )

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Who finished War and Peace? THAT’S RIGHT, IT’S ME ( Read more... )

PETYA. PETYA NOOOOOOO ( Read more... )

I’ve reached the final book in War and Peace! We’re on the home stretch ( Read more... )

I've passed the thousand page mark in War and Peace! There are only...four hundred more pages to go ( Read more... )

Prince Andrei is ON THE VERGE OF DEATH again! I don't see how he's going to get out of it this time, seeing as he's got a stomach wound and all, but I also read somewhere that he eventually meets Natasha at a ball and she snubs him thoroughly - unless I'm misremembering? - so he can't die just yet ( Read more... )

PRINCESS MARYA HAS A SUITOR! PRINCESS MARYA HAS A SUITOR ( Read more... )

This both is and is not a War and Peace post. I’ve gotten to the part of the book where Natasha falls ill following her broken engagement, and I was feeling a bit smug, as modern people are wont to do when confronted with the medical incompetence of the past, while Tolstoy snipes about the fact that doctors are useful purely for their placebo ( Read more... )

Not much progress on War and Peace this week. We've gotten to another war section, which means leaving behind Natasha and Pierre and Sonya and all my other favorites (right when they just suffered some high drama, too!) and following some rando on his mission to convince Napoleon to rethink this whole invading Russia thing ( Read more... )

OH NATASHA NO. I have been screaming this at Natasha Rostova for the last fifteen chapters or so, but did she listen? Noooooo, she went ahead and got infatuated with that cad Anatol, and planned an elopement with him - he didn't bother to tell her he was already married - and probably would have managed it if it were not for the interference of her ( Read more... )