War and peace....

I got a Kindle last Christmas and wanted to read something special on it and for whatever reason, I chose Leo Tolstoy's "War and Peace." I had other options like Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities and some other classics among others, but I wanted to read a Tolstoy book. I had heard so much about them and seen them on practically every "top 10 books of all time" list. With much expectation and must I say intrigue I started the process. Well I call it a process because that is what it became. Generally I do not take more than a few days, at most a few weeks to complete a book, if it is too lengthy or too intense in subject. But it took me full 6 months to conquer "War and Peace." The number of characters, their daily activities, their inter-personal relationships, the history, geography and the wars themselves - they were so minutely described and some scenes so vivid that I found myself completely absorbed in the scenes. I felt like it was all happening in front of my eyes and I had to keep the book aside to pull myself out of it, to absorb everything that I had read. It is a wonderful book with a simple story, but it is not the story that is important, it is the significance of everything else - the life of those times, the war, the lifestyle and society of two cities, the conditions of men who fought the war, perceptions of people, youth, exuberance, love, self esteem and much more. There will never be enough words to describe a book like "war and peace." So all I can say is that I am glad that I read it. It just made me aware of so many things about a faraway land, but it also taught me that in the end, human emotions are the same everywhere.