Announcing the 2020 War and Peace Chapter-a-Day Read-along

This is the official sign-up post for the 2020 War and Peace Chapter-a-Day Read-along. You’re invited to join me in spending the first year of the new decade reading one of the truly monumental literary achievements of the world, War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. The best thing about it is that you don’t have to be intimidated by how long the book is because we’ll be reading it in little bites, a chapter a day, savoring the experience and making it a part of daily life for the next 366 days (2020 is a leap year!).

Each chapter averages about 4 pages, so you should only have to dedicate 10 to 15 minutes a day to reading. And if you get behind, you can catch up pretty easily. The book has 361 chapters (more on the schedule below), so it will take us the entire year to finish. But what an enriching year it will be!

If you loved reading Les Misérables in a chapter a day, then chances are you will also enjoy Tolstoy’s masterpiece. The book is set during the Napoleonic era and centers around the French invasion of Russia in 1812.

Why Read War and Peace?

• Pat Conroy: “Many have called it the greatest novel ever written, and their ranks include such luminaries as E.M. Forster, John Galsworthy, and Hugh Walpole. Virginia Woolf gushed over it like a schoolgirl, saying…’There is hardly any subject of human experience that is left out of War and Peace.’…Let me now add my own voice to the hallelujah chorus of novelists who have found themselves enraptured by the immensity and luminosity of War and Peace and cast my own vote that it is the finest novel ever written on this planet.”
• J. Donald Adams : “Reading War and Peace for the first time is one of the greatest literary experiences; reading it again and again is to realize the immeasurable gulf that is fixed between a merely good book and a great one…Here is a novel that is worth whatever time one gives to it. There is more life between its cover than in any other existent fictional narrative. All the normal human emotions find play in this novel; practically every facet of human experience is there. Its characters become as real to us as people whom we have known all our lives….No intelligent person can read it without a deep enrichment of experience. And having once read it, he is certain to turn to it again, to be amazed once more by its veracity, its tremendous vitality, its epic scope.”

How to Participate

1. Leave a comment on this post telling everyone that you’ll be reading along and why.
2. Get an unabridged copy of War and Peace. If you’re reading in English, then I recommend a more recent translation that has 361 chapters. See the reading schedule below for more details.
3. Download the 2020 War and Peace Chapter a Day Reading Schedule.
4. Commit to reading a chapter a day, starting on January 1, 2020. If you get behind or race ahead, no worries. Life happens. My Twitter and Facebook posts will stay on track with the reading schedule, and I would ask that you please respect the reading experience of those who may not know the full story. In other words, no spoilers!
5. It’s purely optional, but I encourage you to post a quote each day on Facebook or Twitter. I will be posting on both, using the hashtag #warandpeacereadalong
6. Please feel free to post the official War and Peace Chapter-a-Day Read-along graphic on your website or blog to spread the word.
7. Subscribe to One Catholic Life so you don’t miss any read-along posts throughout the year. You can get updates via email by using the form in the right-hand sidebar or you can subscribe via RSS and read them in your favorite blog reader.

Reading Schedule and English Translations

The reading schedule for War and Peace was a bit of a challenge to put together because not all translations have the same number of chapters. One of the most famous English translations is by Louise and Aylmer Maude, and their translation has exactly 365 chapters. However, according to the Oxford World’s Classics Edition of War and Peace, their “division imposed a different structure on the work.” Most recent translations of the book (including translations by Briggs, Dunnigan, Pevear and Volokhonsky, and the revised Maude translation edited by Amy Mandelker) use Tolstoy’s definitive edition of the Russian text. These more recent translations all have 361 chapters, and that is the structure I used when I put together our schedule. Since there are 366 days in the year 2020 and 361 chapters in War and Peace, I have built in five breaks at the end of major sections of the book. These breaks can be days off, but I have also linked to five short stories by Tolstoy if you want to keep up your habit of reading each day.

I will be reading the Signet Classics edition translated by Ann Dunnigan. It’s the one I first read in 2003, and I like the translation. One thing to know about War and Peace, is that about 2% of the book is in French, and some translators don’t translate the French except in footnotes. My edition by Dunnigan translates almost all the French into English, which I appreciate. It’s also reasonably priced. The disadvantage of the Dunnigan edition is the complete lack of footnotes. Here are the translations that should fit our schedule along with a few comments about them (prices are for Kindle editions and are as of December 16, 2019):

• Signet Classics – translated by Anne Dunnigan; translates the French into English; no footnotes; $1.99
• Oxford World’s Classics – the Maude translation, edited by Amy Mandelker; does not translate the French into English except in footnotes; lots of other notes to help the reader understand the historical context; $7.01
• Penguin Classics – translated by Anthony Briggs; translates the French into English, but has been criticized for being too “british” a translation; lots of footnotes; $9.99
• Vintage Classics – translated by Pevear and Volokhonsky; puts the French translations in footnotes; lots of reader notes; $14.99

What do you say? Will you join me in 2020 to read this monumental work of literary art?