Are the Kindle and the iPad the harbingers of death for the object commonly referred to as the book? The growing number of e-reader owners tout the net money savings and convenience of a library in your hand, but purists stubbornly point to these power-sucking gadgets as yet another instance of the techno-savy reinventing the wheel.
At the forefront of this debate are the simple, quippy complaints that a book doesn't run out of batteries, or need software updates, but these are readily combated by the space and trees savings of e-readers. An e-reader can download a book in less than a minute right from your chair, but again this is offset by the loss of the bookstore browsing experience, for online bookstores are hardly a suitable replacement for wandering the narrow canyons of stacks seemingly formed by the countless footsteps of the wizened readers that came before. Nor are the slapdash reviews in online comments a replacement for the judicious advice of a kindly librarian.
At some point last year, wanting to make better use of the time on my hands, I decided to combat my literary ignorance by reading some of the high-profile novels that I missed through my hitherto sparse literary education. Logically, I searched the numerous lists of highly rated books and tried to find titles or authors that I had at least heard of to start with. War and Peace made the top of most lists, so it is there that I started. Since odds are that most of my blog readers will not find the time to read such an intensive tome, I wanted to essentially review the book and try to explain why this book is so highly regarded. Also, this review is spoiler-free, so if this sort of thing seems up your alley, feel free to pick-up a copy and discover it’s intricacies for yourself.
