Introducing A Year of War and Peace +

A daily, yearlong, chapter-by-chapter reading of and meditation on Leo Tolstoy’s epic novel War and Peace

Brian E. Denton
8 min readFeb 4, 2021
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What It Is

A Year of War and Peace is the bibliotheraputic equivalent of mainlining your favorite mood enhancer.

Over the course of one year Medium members will be offered the opportunity to read and discuss one chapter of Leo Tolstoy’s novel War and Peace per day as well as a reflective essay individually tailored to that day’s chapter. These reflective essays focus on the novel’s nineteenth century characters with the aim of improving contemporary readers’ twenty-first century lives. In 2017 I published these essays on Medium. This year, 2021, for the convenience of Medium members, A Year of War and Peace+ offers daily publication of both the public domain Maude translation of War and Peace and my reflective essays.

This unique approach to reading War and Peace is quite popular. Over seven thousand people, for instance, follow a subreddit dedicated to the plan. It also breaks down an intimidatingly long book into easily manageable, bite-sized parts. Finally, if you prefer audiobooks, I’m also providing a reading of A Year of War and Peace complete with all possible manner of mispronunciation of French and Russian words…

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Brian E. Denton

For my friends and family, love. For my enemies, durian fruit.