For some things, you have to "make" time; fitting them in among other things that "take" time. Others arrive when either they or you are good and ready. It is good to be good and ready.
March arrived, and along with the broken weather and switching-out of snow shovels for rakes, came War and Peace into my days; well, nights, to be honest. It must be I was good and ready because I did not need to take an extra gulp of breath when I opened it to begin, nor did I worry about how I might have to "wade through it."
Maybe it is my 54 years?... Naw, a great read, when it comes along, happens or it doesn't. This did. I never thought it would be the kind of book to read when I had either 30 minutes between chores or an entire evening to devote to it, but it is. It is lovely and intimate as well as cruel and heroic.
It is meaningful to me now in 2008 for many of the same reasons that Giglamesh, and the Divine Comedy are: the familiar description of mornings I have known, or comfort I have found in the sweep of birds or sounds of the kitchen; all of which place me there and make the setting, the action and thus the lives of the characters relevant, like mine.
I have just left the epic Battle of Borodino. I can not imagine a more panoramic sweep of story-telling, but is the doubts and foibles, the pretense and narrowness of the people that he tells it through that bind it to my moment in time.
It has been worth the wait. It has been timeless.
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