It’s been a minute since I published stuff here, so here’s what I’ve been up to.
War and life
I've been reading War and Peace, and I came across a WSJ column by Peggy Noonan about her experience reading the book thanks to the amazing
. The subheading of the article was:This year I finally resolved to read ‘War and Peace.’ To think I might have died without having read it.
That just about sums up how I feel about the book. It's just utterly stunning and brilliant. As I read the novel, for some reason, I kept thinking that a better title for the novel would've been War and Life because the way Tolstoy writes about the lives of the characters is so bloody realistic. No wonder people call it the greatest novel ever.
You can see those characters come alive in your imagination as they go through the trials and tribulations of life. You start to sense and feel the full range of emotions they feel, from love, lust, resentment, heartbreak, and regret. In thinking about the way Tolstoy has sculpted the characters, it makes a lot of other novels with similar themes seem hollow. I'm now convinced that if you die without reading this book, you will never find peace.
China
I’ve been fascinated with China for some reason, and I wrote two messy posts:
Instead of dumping everything I write in one place, I decided to keep things separate, and hence the two different blogs. However, I’ll publish links to everything I read, learn, and write here.
That’s it for this week.