Yesterday was February 1st. Oh hey! I guess that means today is Groundhog Day! Cool! Does anyone know if he saw his shadow?

But that's not what I came here to talk about today. Please bear with me. I'm easily distracted. Oh look, a puppy!

Um.

I finished reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy yesterday. I have nothing good to say about it except that it won the Pulitzer... so I guess someone somewhere must have liked it. Wherever you are, I'd really like to have a conversation with you. I just don't understand what you were thinking. Maybe it's just me?

Moving right along...

Last night I started the mammoth experience that is Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace. I'm not going to lie. I was scared. I've been looking forward to this since I got the new translation for Christmas... but I've also been dreading it. I don't want to be the guy in the Challenge that says, "Um, yeah, I quit." And besides that, I also don't want to be the guy who misses out on this classic literature because of some weak notion that "it's too hard. Wah." Oh stop it.

I cracked open the book around 9:00 last night. Gingerly, I turned the first few pages. I stared at the title page for a good minute or so, thinking to myself: "After you turn this page, Bry, there's no turning back." Hmm... well maybe it wasn't as dramatic as all that after all. But the title page was very pretty and yes, even inviting.

The next few pages flew by pretty easily as well. The copyright information, and Table of Contents were a breeze. No sweat! Bring it Tolstoy!

Then came the introduction...

"If the world could write by itself, it would write like Tolstoy."
    -- Isaac Babel

Nice! What a flattering quote! What else?

I kept reading. (Incidentally, the introduction was written by the translator, Richard Pevear.)

"War and Peace is the most famous and at the same time the most daunting of Russian novels..."  oh boy ... "as vast as Russia itself and as long to cross from one end to the other. Yet if one makes the journey, the sights seen and the people met on the way mark one's life forever."

Ahh. My fellow WORD enthusiasts, can I just tell you what a breath of fresh air this was? No, not that. What am I trying to say? ... These first words, found here in the introduction, gave me not only a sense of hope and excitement for the next 1200+ pages, it also brought me directly out of my nervous funk and into the world of this sweeping Russian literature.

The rest of the introduction talked about Tolstoy as a man. Who he was and how he wrote. I'll save this for future bloggy posts as I can see this one is getting a little long and I want to tell you about the beginning of Volume One, Part One.

That's right. You heard me. VOLUME ONE. This book is so massive, it has actual Volumes. Ha! You gotta love it!

I read the first 25 pages of Volume One, Part One last night. I was surprised at how much fun it was! Seriously surprised! At first, I had a little trouble with the character names and the French... oh yes, the characters in this part anyway, speak some French and the translations are in footnotes at the bottom of the page. Sheesh! You get used to that too though.

Rather than go on and tell you the story so far, I'll just say that I am now over my fears and look forward to this great read. It's probably one of the toughest books I have ever tackled. But every once and again you have to challenge yourself. In literature and in life. OK, that was cheesy. I'm just inspired and excited, that's all. And I'm going to go read some more now.

How you doin, Alicia and Audra??

Word.