Sunday, January 22, 2006

An editor's prerogative ...

I scheduled my review of Anthony Briggs's new translation of War and Peace for next Sunday. That means the review would have be done by Thursday morning at the latest. I could probably meet that deadline. But I'm not going to, because to do so I'd have to read the book faster than I would like. It's not just that it's a very long book (there's 1,358 pages of text in not very large type). More than that, the book has a certain tempo to it. Reading a book just to get it over with never is a good idea and in this case it would seriously spoil the fun. So I'm going to just keep at it at my usual pace and finish it when I do. (I'm not a fast reader and have no desire to be one.) So the review will run on Feb. 5.
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1 comment:

  1. Maxine Clarke8:25 AM

    Good decision! Not a book to rush. I look forward to reading the review. I have to admit when I read it, I found the Napoleon bits hard, ie less interesting than the other parts of the book. I was reminded of this when I read Martin Chuzzlewit a few years ago and had the same reaction to MC's visit to America. The satire was somewhat lost on me, and this part of the story seemed divorced from the main plot, indeed almost irrelevant to it. If you have seen the British TV version (forget which channel) you'll recall they omitted these sections for broadcast.
    Sorry, this is not very relevant to WandP, I hope it is repaying the effort of reading it.

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