We’re only two days away from the War and Peace Chapter-a-Day Read-along, and I hope you’re as excited as I am. Please tell your friends and family that they can still sign up by visiting the announcement post. As we get ready to start our journey I thought I’d share a few things to help us prepare.

First of all, Cary, one of our fellow readers, has created a calendar that can be imported into your favorite calendar app. Thank you, Cary! The calendar comes in two formats, depending on what your calendar app requires:

• 2020-Chapter-a-Day-Reading-Schedule.ics
• 2020-Chapter-a-Day-Reading-Schedule.csv

Next, I want to share a few thoughts on how to approach War and Peace. I’m certainly no expert, having only read the book once many years ago, but I came across some helpful ideas from Clifton Fadiman, author of The New Lifetime Reading Plan. Fadiman has encouraging words for those reading War and Peace for the first time:

War and Peace, more frequently than any other work of fiction, has been called “the greatest novel ever written.” This need not scare us. However its greatness may be defined, it is not connected with obscurity, with difficulty, or even with profundity. Once a few minor hazards are braved, this vast chronicle of Napoleonic times seems to become an open book, as if it had been written in the sunlight.

Fadiman names three “minor hazards” for beginning readers: the novel’s length, its complex cast of characters, and the story’s digressions. These are, indeed, minor, and they are easily overcome.

First, since we are reading the book a chapter a day, we overcome the novel’s length by taking it slowly and deliberately. Second, as Fadiman himself says, “if you persist in your reading, the characters will sooner or later sort themselves out.” Persistence is built into our daily reading schedule. As to the third obstacle, the digressions, Fadiman recommends reading slowly, which is the entire point of reading a chapter a day.

The character names can be a challenge at first, especially with the use of so many nicknames. For instance, Pyotor Kirilovich Bezukov is also known as Pierre and Petrushka. But almost all editions of War and Peace provide readers with a character list to help sort out the nicknames. And they really do get easier to remember as you keep reading.

That’s all for now. Remember that I will be posting a quote from the current chapter each day on Facebook and Twitter using the hashtag #warandpeacereadalong. I do it mostly to hold myself accountable and to encourage everyone to keep reading, but I encourage you to post your own quotes and/or thoughts and reactions as you read. It really adds to the communal experience when we share. You can also write comments here on any of the War and Peace posts.