The Born Loser by Art and Chip Sansom for July 23, 2021

He even slept through part of it…..

It is true that Russian literature is full of characters: like Russian music has lot of notes and instruments.

Meh!! You see one war movie and you’ve seen them all!! Boom-Boom, bang-bang, etc etc!! In the end, it get’s monotonous!!" *ZZZZZZZZZZZ

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I had no problems with the movie; the book? 40-some pages in and I surrendered. I did read a Dostoyevsky book and that took me a year. The periods of things happening were spread apart by long dissertations on Man’s relationships with his God and his soul.

It can take a long time to read the book, you know you will fall asleep before your done.

I read the book as a teenager. I think it was abridged, but still several hundred pages long.

I remember it’s about Russia.

I think the movie left out a thing or two.

Best sleep he had in a long while.

I’ve read classic literature before. To me it’s often a slog to get through with prose that is VERY flowery and descriptive.

So “many characters” means I’d have trouble with the movie. I have prosopagnosia. Watching at home, I often pause a movie to ask me SO, “is that the same guy from the previous scene?” or something like that. I’m hell in a theater!

Speaking of characters, Uncle Ted is my favorite. He has achieved what I for now can only aspire to, retirement. :^)

I guess Uncle Ted visits like Mother Gargle? I’ve never seen them there together.

gee, I wonder why.

the problem with trying to read war and peace is that after five minutes or so your fingers start to go numb from the effort of trying to grip the thick tome. you definitely don’t want to read it before bed because when you inevitably fall asleep in the midst of reading you’ll end up with a concussion when the book smacks you in the forehead…

A most effective soporific.

Brutus, that’s a no no. Don’t interrupt a retired person finally doing what they always wanted to do. Especially Uncle Ted.

Original tittle… “War. What is it good for?”

Halfway through the book I realized I should have kept a notepad with the characters listed. All the ‘ovitches got me lost!

It’s because you were using all 3% of your brain’s capabilities…weren’t you listening when Veeblefester explained it to you yesterday?

Nor did most of us who saw the movie. However, books offer so much more than movies can. How many of the Harry Potter fans out there who read a combined 3500 pages or more of reading the seven novels, taking multiple dozens of hours, can honestly say the movies were better than the books. While I enjoyed both, the books allowed me to actually share the journeys and exploits as if I were actually there. I must confess that I have not read War and Peace, but it is on my Bucket List. If you liked the movie, the novel will usually make the experience better. Give it a shot Brutus……

You slept thru most of it…

I hear the real story was much more involved.

A high school English teacher had War and Peace on his recommended summer reading list. During the last week of school he did brief summaries of why we might find certain books interesting. When I saw the size of that book I thought, “No way! I want time to do others things this summer.” And that’s, from someone who would read almost anything and everything.

You got me beat Brutus, I haven’t even seen the movie.

I started to read War and Peace once. Once.

Unfortunately, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve found it more difficult to follow the plots of books or TV shows that have lots of characters. I’m watching a Brit series right now, and they have quite a few people I have to try to remember. The good thing about it is, at the end, they tie everything together, so I keep watching because it’s so good.

I always find Russian literature confusing because everyone has three different names depending on who is addressing them. Since there also are a lot of characters, you can be trying to keep track of dozens of names.

Je suis Brutus on some days, je suis Uncle Ted on others. Need more “Uncle Ted Days”. : )

A popular 20th century author (I think it was Heinlein) said of Russian literature…Paraphrasing here…“The Brothers Karamazov was dark, depressing, brooding and difficult to read. Perhaps it was a poor translation, so I read the original language version. It was worse.”

Books like War and Peace and other Russian epics are the only things I’ve read that are more palatable as movies. In English.

When all else fails, watch Love & Death https://youtu.be/ELI212NgR6M?t=211

That book doesn’t look thick enough. Now that my foot is in the door, what do the Thornapples think about thr Cleveland Guardians ?

read everything as a kid…read ‘war and peace’ in the 5th grade and loved it, and it wasn’t a class assignment

War and Pace, summarised: the army marched forward. The army marched back.