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War and PeaceBook

by Leo Tolstoy

Who uses, recommends or left War and Peace, in their own words: each a verbatim quote with a link to where it was said.

2 people

dynomight
Pseudonymous writer investigating everyday questions by reading the studies
loved

Fair. I definitely feel like I’m living my best life when I read War and Peace.

Essay on why we read novels

2026-01-22·dynomight.net ↗

Austin Kleon
Writer and artist, author of Steal Like an Artist; publishes a weekly newsletter and an annual list of the books he read.
lovedaffiliate link

While reading War and Peace, I marveled over and over again at how something written so long ago can be so applicable to our times while still being very much of its own time.

His annual "my reading year" post, an unranked chronological list of the 2025 books worth noting to him; the site discloses it participates in the Amazon Affiliates program.

2026-01-14·austinkleon.com ↗

Every entry is a verbatim quote and a link to the public post it came from. Nothing is paraphrased. If it is not on record somewhere public, it is not here.

The verdict is what they actually said: loved and liked are explicit; recommended means they told others to get it; uses means they only say they use it; read is a book on their public shelf with no verdict; mixed and disliked are kept too.

A dashed affiliate link, sponsored or their own label means the post disclosed a relationship. It is shown, never hidden.

The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is for its kind of thing.

The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is, for its kind of thing. Fully green is recent. It drains a quarter at a time as the post gets older, and is empty once it reads as dated.

What counts as old depends on the thing. A laptop praised four years ago has been replaced twice; a book loved twenty years ago is probably still loved. The shading is gone after about:

Stripes mean the post carries no date and the date shown is an estimate. No date at all, no shading.