War and Peace

It's not about war. It's about how little generals control anything.

Prince Andrei under the sky at Austerlitz, ambition meets the ceiling of the universe.

Pierre inherits, blunders, survives. The book's most comfortable chair is his confusion.

Natasha at the opera, boredom is the most honest reviewer.

The oak tree scene: alive after all. I read it in winter on purpose.

Kutuzov naps while history decides. Tolstoy's whole theory of great men, in one old man.

Platon Karataev's roundness, the simplest person in the book is its teacher.

A thousand pages in, the characters are less fictional than my acquaintances.

History is the sum of infinite small wills. I stopped reading biographies of giants.

Peace was the harder subject. War just moves faster.