Anyone read War and Peace?

I was going to read Lord of the Rings before someone mentioned reading The Hobbit first. I finished that and got into the trilogy but being so long I began scan-reading parts. These books are heavy!

I read The Hobbit and that convinced me not to read The Lord of the Rings.

Never read War and Peace but the Tolkein books I read as a kid. I’d say The Hobbit is written for kids and Lord... written for adults (and the Silmarillion even more so). It’s a great mistake to think the Hobbit is equal to LotR. But unless you can travel back in time to your teenage selves I wouldn’t bother with any of them. I might give Tolstoy a go some time, I'd like to I must admit.

I've never watched any of those fckwit films made in New Zealand, Tolkein was an expert on plants and New Zealand is a facking joke as a setting for any of them and I'll not have them ruining my memories of the books.

Lord of the Rings is alright if you are about 12 years old. War and Peace is very repetitive, turgid and quite boring. I got through it, but I'm not sure if it is worth the effort and time involved, tbh. Crime and Punishment is a more rewarding read, imho.

I read the first page of The Hobbit and it convinced me not to read The Hobbit.

There's a big 7 hour polemic WHAT I BELIEVE by Tolstoy, spoken word, on youtube, and I wss stunned by what he had to say about VOWS -- The evil that comes into the world through oaths and vows.

Closest I got was Anna Karenina.

She's just announced her retirement.

anyone read a Harry Potter book

War & peace a bit heavy going at the start until you get a feel for the main characters but stick with it

I read the first page of The Hobbit and it convinced me not to read The Hobbit.

Me too!

I've started all the books mentioned so far, apart from Harry Potter, and dropped them pretty quickly. Reading is supposed to be about enjoyment, torture yourselves if you wish.
I have no intention of reading Harry Potter.

Read the Hobbit and LOTS in days, back when I was a teenager.
Have read War & Peace, but was a titanic struggle, very difficult going despite my fondness for other Russian literature such as Solzenhitsyn, and especially the magical Sholokhov.

Any translated book is hard going, because you're inevitably going to miss most of whatever brilliance the author's original words had to offer. You're just left with a story to interpret. It might be a good one, but it's a rare one which justifies the time taken to plough through the bland, translated text which narrates it.

An example from Russian, as that's what we're discussing: Dostoevsky's short "story" Notes From Underground, the rambling thoughts of a lonely pensioner, cut off from and bitter about life and people. The actual Russian title is Записки из подполья. It does mean Notes From (The) Underground, but the specific word used, подполья, is derived from пол, meaning a floor on which you walk. It conjures up an image of a man lurking pathetically under the floorboards (an image the narrator actually uses in one passage of the book).

My point is that even just reading the title in translation you're going to miss so much of what might have made a book special to native-speaking readers.

Do audiobooks count? I've never been a great reader but do listen to a lot of podcasts and audiobooks.

https://librivox.org/war-and-peace-book-01-by-leo-tolstoy/

anyone read a Harry Potter book

No but read two of her 'writing as Robert Galbraith' private detective thrillers and have the third. Much as I enjoyed them both and hope the third is as good, nothing on Earth would make me want to read the Potter books.