I've been remiss in updating this blog and, for that, I apologize. Indeed, since my life has picked up with the busy-ness of late, it's been difficult not only to find the time to update, but also to continue reading Tolstoy. While my neglect and my schedule HAVE diminished any possibility of getting through a fourth Tolstoy text before the year is over, I still hold out hope that I will be able to finish the book of his short stories that I began a couple months back. I've finished "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" and moved onto "The Kreutzer Sonata," which is a downright interesting story with echoes of Plato's Symposium and hints toward Capote's In Cold Blood. Sometime soon, I will have to review them for the blog here.
However, in the meantime, I have an announcement to make. It was a little over a year ago that I announced my intention to read Tolstoy's classic War and Peace. From that simple announcement, a journey of two novels, several short stories, and a literary awakening sprang forth. I came to a realization before I had even finished War and Peace that there were a great many fantastic works of fiction in this world and so few that I had ever actually bothered to read. I resolved myself then and there to change that for myself. I wanted to read those books, to better myself in the process, and discover why these classics are considered 'classics' in the first place.
After I had dedicated a year or my life to the work of Tolstoy, I challenged myself to dedicate each and every new year of my life (for as long as I'm able at least) to reading one classic author and their best-known and best-loved work. There came to be so many great authors that began to vie for their place on my bookshelf and in my hands: Joyce, Dumas, Dostoyevsky, Cervantes, the Brontes, Dickens, and many, many others. It was difficult to decide where to go next.
However, after giving it a goodly amount of thought, I found myself coming back to one author (and, indeed, one text) over and over again. For most of my young life (since my junior year of high school if I'm quite honest), one story has followed me. I first experienced it as a film starring Liam Neeson, Geoffrey Rush, and Uma Thurman, then as a musical written by Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil. About the only way I have NOT experienced the story of Les Misérables was the way it was originally intended to be experienced - by reading the original novel.
So, my main story was set and, with it, my author for 2012: Victor Hugo. Reading massive novels did not really fill me with feelings of dread and apprehension like they did before I started reading War and Peace. As such, tackling a novel even bigger than that epic tome is not as daunting as it once might have been. In fact, I find the prospect rather exciting. So exciting, in fact, that I'm not ending the fun and excitement there! I've decided that, when I finish Les Mis, I'll take to reading Hugo's original masterpiece, The Hunchback of Notre Dame a.k.a. Notre Dame de Paris (provided, of course, that I can find a good translation of it).
While I am still excited about the prospect of finishing Tolstoy, I am anxiously anticipating beginning this new chapter in my literary journey! I would welcome any and all of you who have not read Les Mis (or even those of you who HAVE) to read it with me! I would love to discuss it with you as I go!
