Reading Tolstoy's War and Peace: Vol III, Part Two, XI-XIX

Saturday, December 24, 2011

Vol III, Part Two, XI-XIX

Pierre as POW-- grim, vivid, engaging. I love this book! And relishing the race to finish... A well-paced race.

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WHY READ WAR & PEACE? WHY THIS BLOG? AND WHO IS C.M. MAYO?

Anyone with a brain in their cranium and a high school education will have heard of Tolstoy and his epic novel War & Peace and yet very few of even the most exquisitely educated have actually read it because it is... beyond... humungous. (Read about how I cut it in half with scissors.) So why read War & Peace? To experience one of the reputed great works of Western culture; to check it off the bucket list; and, as Mallory said of Mt Everest, "because it's there." But more: in my case, as a writer, to learn from its both its successes and failures.

This blog is my exercise in reading as a writer-- a very different endeavor than merely reading to be entertained.

>START READING HERE.

Who am I? Herewith the third person boilerplate:

C.M. Mayo is the author of The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire (Unbridled Books), an epic novel based on the true story and named a Library Journal Best Book of 2009. She is also the author of Sky Over El Nido (Univ Georgia Press) which won the Flannery O'Connor Award; Miraclous Air: Journey of a Thousand Miles through Baja California, the Other Mexico (Milkweed Editions); and Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution (Dancing Chiva) a work of creative nonfiction that won the National Indie Excellence Award for History. For several years she has taught a popular one or two day workshop, "Techniques of Fiction" at the San Miguel Writing Conference, for Dancing Chiva in Mexico City, and at the Writer's Center, where she is a long-time faculty member.

>Download her free ebook, C.M. Mayo on Creative Writing: The Best from the Blog.

>Visit her other blogs, Marfa Mondays, Madam Mayo, Maximilian ~ Carlota, and Giant Golden Buddha.