In my lifetime, if there is one book that I want to finish, then it’s ‘War and Peace’. It just refuses to get over. The first time I picked up this book was after 12th boards and when all the entrance examinations got over. The book is about 900 pages, so I thought that I would be able to finish it in a month if I read it everyday. I have had previous experiences with Russian classics, and knew how hard it was to read them, but I guess, I overestimated myself. I could not manage more than 100 odd pages. This all happened in the summers of 2003. I moved on, went to college, but with the book, I remained stuck at the same place. Every holiday, before coming back home, I would say to myself that I shall pick up the book and leave it only once I’m done reading it. But I never managed to go beyond 50 pages in one holiday (that too with a lot of effort). 2 years have passed since the summer I picked up this book, and I have been able to read only about 300 pages till now. It’s not that I’m a slow reader, or that it’s a very tough book. It just that it gets too hard to digest everything in one go, and I just can’t read more than a certain number of pages. This is one book which is considered to be one of the greatest books ever written and the book which millions tried to read but only thousands have succeeded in finishing it.
I’m determined to be able to finish this book before I pass out from NITK, and to be able to tell my children, that I am one of those few thousands who have read this book. :P