War and Peace: Acquired

[osprey_archer]

Copy of War and Peace: acquired. I ended up buying the Ann Dunnigan translation, both because that's the one my Russian professor recommended and because I liked its translation of the first paragraph best when I compared it to the two others in the store.

Plus, no footnotes. Ever since a footnote gave away the ending of Jane Eyre halfway through the book, I have looked askance on footnoted classics. (Who does that? I had already read Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair, so I already knew it, but still. Who does that!)

***

In other news, a girl spent most of the afternoon in a corner of our Starbucks sculpting a boa constrictor out of Saran wrap. For what purpose? And why in Starbucks? Did she get chased out of the Saran Wrap Sculptors Guild? We may never know.

Comments

[evelyn-b.livejournal.com]

1. YAY :D

2a. I share your dismay at the footnote that GAVE AWAY THE ENDING??!? I mean, maybe it was a scholarly edition or something so they assumed that anyone buying it would have read it already? But still! Have some thought for the first-time reader!

I always skip the introductions to books in case they give away the ending.

2b. Some people (my mom, for example) find explanatory footnotes really helpful, so I don't begrudge them, but I prefer no footnotes 99.9% of the time (books where the footnotes are part of the author's text are an obvious exception). I don't like to have someone elbowing me at every turn, like the fairy in Ocarina of Time, to tell me that a barouche is a vehicle or whatever else they think I don't know/can't figure out from context/have no possible way of looking up in this benighted Dark Age of information access.

3. It's as good a place to work as any!

[silverusagi]

Ever since a footnote gave away the ending of Jane Eyre halfway through the book, I have looked askance on footnoted classics.

I was deeply impressed by the fact that the annotated Emma gives PLOT SPOILER warnings in bold (mainly relating to what is up with Jane Fairfax) before annotations that talked about future knowledge.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I was just literally thinking this morning that this might make a good read-aloud classic.


re: Saran-wrap snake, maybe her GPS was messed up and she thought the Starbucks WAS the Saran Wrap Snake All US Championship and she's like,"Score, I'm the only contestant." Oh, or worse, one of the other contestants, fearing that your sculptor would win, messed with her GPS to send her to Starbucks.

[carmarthen.livejournal.com]

Man, I'm not sure I'd want to read W&P without annotations, especially if it's an edition that either leaves the French untranslated or doesn't mark out where it was. I just don't have enough period context....

I also don't care about spoilers, though.