Today’s Chapter:
Garnett/Edmondson: 1.17
Maude: 1.20
And yet again Vera does her best to make her brothers and sisters miserable. Is she jealous? Who knows . . . By the way, if you’ve got a copy of the book without footnotes or endnotes, the thing that Sonya is so upset about is that she technically can’t marry her cousin, Nikolay, unless she gets a special exemption from the Church. Of course, to do that, she’d have to Nikolay’s mum, and she’d feel like a freeloader. So she can say nothing – except to suffer in silence.
We then move into the singing and dancing part of the book (really, if Tolstoy was around now – he’d be writing for Bollywood), including the lengthy description of the count dancing his Daniel Cooper. In any other book, this would be redundant. But could you really imagine cutting this out? (Well, maybe you could – but I wouldn’t want to read your version of the book.)
Tomorrow’s Chapter:
Garnett/Edmondson: 1.18
Maude: 1.21
The Relentless Pursuit of Cold Shivers 
It was a beautiful description of a good dancer paired with a poor dancer.
I can’t help but think, though: are we ever going to get to the war?
The answer is yes – in fact, if it’s not too much of a spoiler, we’ll be there by Book 2. (So, not long to wait at all.)
Then you’ll probably all be wondering when we can get back to the dancing . . .
Well, without spoiling it for others, I’ll just mention that the next few chapters after the dancing hold some intriguing developments…
Dave, Dave, Dave . . . you’re not reading ahead, are you?
And there in fact was Sonya lying face downward on Nurse’s dirty feather bed on the top of the chest, crumpling her gauzy pink dress under her, hiding her face with her slender fingers, and sobbing so convulsively that her bare little shoulders shook.
The Nurse . . .
Semen . . . the first violin
“Semen! Do you know the Daniel Cooper?”
(Can you imagine having a name like that? Pronounced ‘See MON’)