Starting WAR AND PEACE by Leo Tolstoy!!! // #dickensortolstoy Reading Vlog // 2021

i'm ready here i go i'm going to start reading more in peace so you have made my day my week my month my year my life oh my god oh my god it is 12 o'clock a.m it's april 1st do you guys know what that means war and peace that's what it means it means war and peace i am currently editing my pickwick papers vlog and i am planning on starting war and peace tonight i wanted to wait till 12 a.m and it's 12 a.m and it's time to read oh my god i'm so excited and i'm so nervous and i am just i'm ready i'm ready and i'm not ready all at the same time today has been just so busy but i am excited to just sit down and read for a bit um i'm going to finish up editing the clip that i'm working on right now and then i think i am going to i think i'm going to start war and peace i also set up a discord the link to the discord will be in the description box if you guys don't know i finally set up a discord for dickens and tolstoy so we can have a little big group chat a little big group chat a little big we are going to have a big group chat all about the different books that we read for dickens versus soul story and of course we are going to currently be talking about war and peace guys this is a momentous day a momentous night i'm going to start reading okay um i'm going to finish editing so that i can start reading because all i want to do is start reading this but i'm in the middle of editing so i'm going to finish that up and then i'm going to start i'm going to start it it's happening it's happening i'm ready [Music] it's happening it's happening it's happening okay let me stop filming myself before reading it and let me actually read the book okay [Music] introduction okay i'm going to read the introduction okay well this is very good so it says readers unfamiliar with the plot may prefer to treat the introduction as an afterward but i am familiar with the plot so i'm going to read the introduction first because i like going in with the knowledge and i have seen the bbc mini series from 2016 probably my favorite period piece on the face of the earth right after anika nina well they're very different one's a movie one's a mini series so my favorite mini series is the bbc warren piece but my favorite period piece movie is anaconda directed by joe wright okay the first line of the introduction is here is the greatest novel ever written thank you thank you thank you i can't wait to read it okay it says toaster himself saw it differently it is not a novel he wrote even less is it an epic poem and still less and historical chronicle tulsa began his project with a great joy and fear and only discovered the courage of artistic freedom as part of his writing process while preparing drafts of a novel about the decemberists uprising against czar nicholas the first in 1825 toy became absorbed in reading the history of napoleon and alexander as he described it in a cloud of joy and awareness of the possibility of doing great work the idea caught me up of writing a philosophical history of alexander and napoleon all the meanness all the phrases all the madness all the contradictions of the people around them and in themselves i must write my novel and work for this oh my gosh i have no words okay okay i'm gonna stop talking to you guys and i'm just gonna concentrate and i'm just gonna read and then i'll get back to you [Music] [Music] [Music] do [Music] [Music] it just took me an hour to read the 14 page introduction because i reread it and reread it and wrote all over it and highlighted and underlined and i'm literally speechless i am speechless there is so much that i want to say there is so much that i want to say that is discussed in this introduction i literally like wrote oh i wrote all over it but that's what i want to do with this book i want to take my time and annotate everything and i should say yeah i just went nuts i should say that these war and peace vlogs are going to be weekly they're going to be like regular weekly vlogs because if i tried doing one entire vlog for war and peace it would be never ending like it would not end so you are getting weekly vlogs with me reading war and peace so i hope that you guys are excited about that because that means that i can go into even more detail with every weekly vlog instead of trying to like you know pinpoint certain aspects and cut my chatting back and rambling back so that it fits into like one video so yeah i think i'm going to wait until tomorrow to talk to you guys about what i want to talk to you in regards of the introduction it is currently 2 36 in the morning i should probably go to bed but now i have notes on the text and translation the chronology of leo tolstoy principal characters and guide to pronunciation what else historical characters in war and peace dates of principle events oh we have maps love when a book has a map oh my god and then part one oh my god another map oh my gosh okay so i think i'm going to go to bed i'm going to use my toast away on the page postcard for my bookmark because you know momentous momentous event here he is yeah so i think i'm going to i'm just laughing at how much i've read literally nothing 14 pages out of 1300 you know it's all right we'll get through it we'll get through it oh my god but it's only the introduction and i'm already blown away like i haven't even read anything that tolstoy has written and i'm already just speechless i i don't even know what to say at this point i'm not going to say anything i'm going to go to bed so i will see you guys tomorrow good night now i'm probably not going to be able to fall asleep because all i'm going to be thinking about is toastery good thing this week is my spring break because i can just stay up and read and sleep in a little bit and just read all day but i also have to do school work anyway i'm gonna go to bed good night [Music] hello everyone it is now sort of the next day it's still april 1st but it is almost 11 p.m today was another busy day full of university work i just finished the introduction contextual notes bibliography chronology list of characters and took a quick peek at the maps and then now i am ready to actually start reading the book but i think i want to talk to you guys a bit about a bit about the introduction because i find it so fascinating and since these are going to go up weekly i can go into as much detail as my heart desires you guys feel free to skip through if you're not interested but this is what i'm so nerdy about i love going into lots of details about the background of tolstoy's writing and i have a fascination with names and word origin and um and especially the russian structuring of names is just so fascinating and they break it down to be very understandable for a non-russian reader i just want to talk about this with you guys where to begin oh my goodness me yeah i showed you guys last night but i annotated like a mad woman so many so many notes because i really want to just take my time with this book right all over it so that i can look back and just feel that i soaked this book in i'm not reading it just to read it i'm reading it to absorb it okay something that i found beautiful was it's literally on the first page of the introduction and i am also reading the oxford world's classics edition this is the mod translation by louise and elmer mod and i just would like to thank them because without them i you know we wouldn't have this definitive translation so okay and i'm going to talk a little bit more about the translation in a bit so toastery said toste himself saw it differently it is not a novel he wrote even less is it an epic poem and still less and historical chronicle so he everybody's questioning like this doesn't read as a novel this doesn't read as a piece of historical text this doesn't read as an epic poem like what what is this no one knew what it was when he first read it and i don't even think he knew what it was when he was writing it but then he says something so beautiful nobody would ever tell what i had to tell like i love that and before it it says time and my strength were flowing away with every hour and i knew that nobody would ever tell what i had to tell above all traditions both a form and content oppressed me i was afraid to write in a language different from that in which everybody writes i was afraid that my writing would fall into no existing genre neither novel nor tale nor epic nor history and this is from the second draft of an introduction to war and peace and i just i love that they included text from toaster himself kind of explaining what he thought about his own work it also says his wife sofia who served as his secretary famously transcribed his almost illegible drafts into fair copies seven times over and then she is quoted i spent my whole time copying out leova's novels this is a great delight to me as i copy i live through a whole world of new ideas and impressions nothing has such an effect upon me as his ideas and his genius she was 18 when they married and i think he was around 31 or 35. i mean i would marry him i'm 22 and he's you know dead for how many years and i wouldn't i would marry is that weird yes it is let's see it also continues to say sofia says all this winter elle has kept on writing brought up the tears starting to his eyes and his heart swelling i believe his novel is going to be wonderful tulsi felt himself to be never more fit for his work i just oh gosh love that on the second page of the introduction they quote tolstoy again it says i wanted to capture everything i knew and felt about that time and yet i felt either that it was impossible to express everything or it seemed to me that the simple finale literary devices come into novels were inconsistent with the majesty deep and many-sided content so that i threw away what i had begun to write and despaired so he i i know that there are many versions of or there were many versions of war and peace he originally titled it the year of 1812 and it went through a lot of different forms before it became what we now know of as war and peace okay this i found incredible um it says we can already glimpse the future author of war and peace in the first paragraph of the raid where he writes that he is in quotes more interested to know in what way and under the influence of what feeling one soldier kills another than to know how the armies were arranged at australis and borudino so i i think that's what i love about tolstoy he doesn't care about the accuracy of the battles he wants he wants the humanity of the battles he wants the the inner workings of the people that are going through this going through the event he doesn't really he he wants the core of it he wants the truth he wants the the emotion and i just love that okay this was incredible it says in the climate of heavy censorship in russian letters political ideas and pointed critics uh critiques of the government had to be expressed cautiously and literary fiction was one way of doing this so i wrote in the margins the power of fiction it tells the greatest truths they can address these political critiques in a way where they can kind of get away with it and they can sort of bring attention to the bad or harmful aspects of the political day and bring light to it and bring attention to it without sort of disturbing russian censorship another aspect that i loved so they're talking about how telstra writes and it says he writes about characters and events that are sub-historical while the narratives of history itself like soldiers boastful war stories of the battlefield are exploded as false the movement of thousands of troops a line on the page of a history book will be enlarged by tolstoy into chapters of soldierly details about boots and carriage wheels horse manure and leg wrappings the texture of uniform cloth the steaming potatoes pulled from the campfire the great and legendary figures of military history snore during the war councils or succumb with irritability to a cult their battle plans garbled and ignored from his earlier anxiety expressed in his diaries that his habit of digression would ruin him tostre now found artistic release and justification in unleashing it so they're talking about the artistry behind tolstoy and how he he gives you the minute detail i love when they mention the texture of the uniform cloth it adds so much life and richness and artistry it's just magic it's just incredible i wrote in the margins i wouldn't want it to be any other way it also mentions which i found very fitting toaster's artistic choices were not entirely without precedent hugo's les miserables also took its time growing to over 1200 pages to accommodate the author's efforts to link characters across centuries and continents like his english contemporary charles dickens hugo also took great pains in describing the minute or minute of the daily life of characters who had only a momentary if vital role to play like the priest okay so they go into detail and they were talking about charles dickens writing to accommodate like a word count or i'm not sure where that part is let me see some critics charged tolstoy with the standard accusation leveled at charles dickens and other 19th century novelists who were considered to spin out words irresponsibly in order to fill up installments we now know to the contrary that tolstoy cut down his novel and discarded hundreds of pages of drafts so i love that they brought up charles dickens in that way because i feel like charles dickens did tend to you know i think he was paid by the word and obviously they came from very different backgrounds dickens really had to provide for himself and his family and tolstoy was born into you know a large amount of money because his account although he did gamble away at a very young age their home and he lost a lot of his money but i feel like it was more important for dickens to um to create profit than it was for tolstoy i don't think chelsea did it for the money and i kind of feel like dickens did it a bit more for the money which there's nothing wrong with that you obviously have to make a living they were also talking about how tolstoy was a lifelong admirer of hugo's work as well as i believe they mentioned that one of his favorite books was vanity fair by william made peace thackery which i thought was really interesting i have not read vanity fair yet oh this is incredible so a lot of and peace is apparently written in french because it says a lot about the political climate because of napoleon wanting to take over russia as well as the language meaning more than just the language so it says french is spoken to sonia to indicate her lower social status as a poor relation to the rest of household and sonja herself speaks french only when trying and failing to be polite to her rival i won't say who it is for no spoilers but i love how the the language shows her social status and how she's lower class like she's not just speaking french to speak french it means something everything in toast way means something it's not just there to put it there it has a purpose oh okay there's this one part that i really want to talk about but it's a spoiler so i was thinking whether i should make these vlogs spoiler free or not i really want to go into spoilers so i hope you guys don't mind that i'll hold up tolstoy every time i talk about a spoiler and then when i put him down you guys can listen again so just skip ahead until i put tolstoy down okay are you ready are you ready for spoilers okay um so it says if we turn to tolstoy's own comments about his work for guidance we find perhaps surprisingly that he considered the episodes describing anatole karagan's seduction of natasha to be the crux of his work it is tempting to read these episodes allegorically picturing this quintessentially russian heroine as representing her homeland while her conquest by the immoral and deceptively elegant continental rake could be interpreted as symbolically describing the fall of russia to the french so when anatol seduces natasha that's like the french seducing russia and or trying to take over russia and i find that so incredible it's genius i love symbolism and it also says natasha's defended marriage loss of the beloved and sufferings in love convey within her personal narrative the agony of a national tragedy so natasha's agony symbolizes the nation's tragedy it could be said that natasha's collapse under the spell of french manners and opera mirrors the events of the french invasion of moscow her spiritual resurrection expressed most clearly when she casts aside her family's possessions to make room for the wounded soldiers on their carts parallels the self-sacrificing heroism of the russian nation in retreat ravaged conquered yet giving no quarter to the enemy natasha's experiences in love and marriage clearly had a meaning for tulsa beyond their symbolic potential within a few years of completing war and peace he would revisit the same narrative of the fallen woman in an extended probing and sustained way in his next great work the first novel he credited to himself with anna kadanina so i just think that that's so fascinating that symbolism of natasha and the conquest and the defeat and the resurrection it's just so mind-blowing and also i love the mention of anakin there's more but i feel like i don't want to take too much time going over this stuff oh i'm done with my spoiler i will put this down now okay you can come back there's this quote from virginia woolf that they included and i think it's brilliant it says um like virginia woolf says if you think of the novels which seem to you great novels you think of all sorts of things of religion of love of war of peace of family life of balls in country towns of sunsets moon rises the immortality of the soul there is hardly any subject of human experience that is left out of war and peace so she's saying that war and peace is you know the great novel the same monumental and comprehensively detailed quality of war and peace has inspired characterizations of the masterpiece as the great book of life even life itself which i just love thinking of war and peace as the great book of life and life itself because that's what tolstoy does he captures life itself i i know that there's a quote i forgot who said it um if the world could write itself it would write like toast away i could start crying and then they include a little excerpt from a n wilson's tolstoy biography the whole thing is brilliant but i feel like i shouldn't babble on too long no book seems more real for everyone who has enjoyed the experience of being completely lost in the world's war and peace putting down the novel and returning to the everyday concerns of real life is a turning to something paler less true than telstra's art itself so saying that tolstoy's words and tolstoy's world feels more true to life than life itself your life itself does to you just incredible i definitely want to read that toaster biography by ayan wilson which we might possibly read also the diary of his wife sofia i would love to read that as well i loved this as well it says as victor hugo observed and then it's a quote from victor hugo he who would paint a battle scene must have chaos in his paintbrush i love that i love that as a an artist myself as an illustrator um whenever i paint something i that that made me think that quote made me think that whenever i'm painting something that's very serene my my paint strokes feel serene and fluid and when i'm painting something with grit and like i was even my drawings i was drawing the my author portrait of fiore dostoyevsky and you know dostoevsky's a hard dark tough grim harsh gritty writer and i i felt it in my pencil when i was doing his sketch i i thought myself you know give that feeling to my work and it was just like that's exactly what viktor hugo is saying in that sentence and i loved it i wrote at the at the end of the introduction i have no words because i really don't um okay and then this is now notes on the translation i just read this a little while ago and they're talking about the different translations the importance of translations and they also mentioned that they were personal they as in louise and elmer mod who this translation is by they were personal friends of tostoy and dedicated themselves to translating his work into english as well as to writing their own accounts of his life and his ideas readers can continue to appreciate its elegance fidelity and helpful apparatus biographer a.n wilson states that every english reader owes a vast debt to louise and ahmer mod for their contribution to tolstoy's scholarship leo tolstoy himself asserted that better translators than elmer and louise mod could not be invented and he chose to authorize louise mod as translator of his other story resurrection and so i love that tolstoy himself knew the mods person personally and thought that there was no there could be no better translation which i just love the fact that i because i'm i don't speak russian i wish i could i want to read tolstoy in his original form and his true form but i that i'm so thankful to louise and elmer mod for um translating it so truthfully then we have the chronology of leo tolstoy's life which i am pretty familiar with um and then the principal characters and the pronunciation of how to stress certain um certain letters of the names i am fascinated by the russian naming system and how they hold so much power in russian i wrote in the margins a name is so much more than just a name in russian they go into talking about the patronemic the polite form of russian address employs the first name and the patronamic a middle name meaning son of ovich or evitch or a daughter of avena or even so nikolai andrejevich and ana mikalovna so the evitch means son of andre and ovna daughter of mikhail the first name alone would be used only in intimate circles and then we have diminutives nicknames which are terms of endearment examples nikolai becomes nikoluska where andre becomes andreyosha and maria becomes masha as well as so it says some characters are known primarily by their nickname for example natasha is a diminutive of natalia russian family names reflect gender with feminine versions ending in a or a y a so for example rostova or bulacanskaya so i just it's just oh it's so incredible and fascinating how how you know those names are broken down and they mean so much more than just a name to assist the reader they put the names by which the characters are known are given in capitals the stressed syllable is marked within a cute accent so they put an accent over whatever letter you should stress so the bazookas they put the uh the accent over the use of bazooka and then they just go into talking about the characters and then the historical characters so i just i love how dickens is very creative with his names and very fun and silly but toast way his names mean they have they're multi-layered and multifaceted and they're just they're so complex it's like a it's like russian nesting dolls you open it up and then there's more inside and it's like never ending it's so it's just so fascinating and then we have dates of principal events i highlighted a few of them they're minor spoilers but not really if you're familiar with russian history and then we have maps the first map is the 1805 campaign the second map is austrolitz the third map is the 1807 campaign the fourth map is the war of 1812 and then the fifth map is borudino so we have all the wonderful maps and then we're in peace book one guys i'm gonna start reading war and peace for real now this is a momentous momentous moment i keep saying that but it is oh we start with french okay i'm going to start reading part one oh my gosh the first word in english is faithful slave which is in the middle of a bunch of french and then it says well how do you do how do you do more french sit down and tell me all the news it was in july 1805 and the speaker was the well-known anna pavlovna i don't know if that i'm pronouncing that correctly maid of honor and favorite of the empress maria fiodarovna with these words she greeted a prince of a silly a man of high rank and importance who was the first to arrive at her reception anna pavlovna had had a cough for some days she was as she said suffering from but gripe being then a new word in saint petersburg used only by the elite all her invitations without exception written in french and delivered by a scarlet the varied footmen that morning ran as follows and then we have more french but we do have footnotes with translations okay okay i'm going to stop talking now and i'm just going to soak in all the words i do have some russian classical music playing in the background obviously not right now but when i'm reading i am and i'm just so excited so okay here i go i'm gonna start reading more in peace [Music] okay it is now 1 35 in the morning i'm going to go to bed but i read the first 23 pages which is up to it is book one part one i read the first four chapters and i have a feeling that this is just going to take me a while like even just um because i'm taking it in slowly because i want it like i said i want to absorb it um so this whole time i've just been reading but i am in love with it already like it is incredible i can't believe that this is tolstoy's first like major work because it's just the way that he like fluidly weaves the characters interactions with one another together and he moves from one character to another so seamlessly and the way that he describes the characters and oh my gosh so we our three main main main characters like the top main characters are prince andre pierre and natasha we haven't been introduced to natasha yet but we have been introduced to andre and pierre and because i watched the bbc mini series from um 2016 i am very familiar with the the storyline which i like going in to hefty daunting books knowing the story and having that background and being able to put faces to names even if they're side characters it helps me a lot i know that i'm like one of the one of the few readers that likes to not likes to be spoiled but i guess doesn't mind knowing the plot before going in it's not a spoiler my favorite character is andre i just have the biggest crush on him i also love pierre so much but i love pierre as like a brother like i want to like hug him these are fictional people um i'm talking about them like they're real anyway well they're real to me they're real in my mind and my heart um but the descriptions of when they're introduced i literally like started swooning for andre and then like just crying for pierre because i i love pierre so much he's such a wonderful character i feel like andre and pierre together make up levin constantine dimitrovich levin from annika bemina like they both remind me of levin and levin is my all-time favorite fictional character andre is a very close second but i'm going to talk a bit more about what i read i think tomorrow just because i'm a bit sleepy i want to get to bed um so that i can wake up and read more so i will talk to you guys tomorrow i hope you're enjoying this vlog so far and also i am annotating like a nut i'm editing like crazy and loving it so off to a fantastic start i am adoring it it is living up to all of my expectations and i am not surprised so i'll see you guys tomorrow hello everyone it is now saturday april 3rd i didn't post an update or i didn't film an update yesterday because i was pretty busy with my embroidery project that took up a lot of my day but i did read my pages for war and peace um because we're trying to read at least 22 i think pages a day for the 60 or 61 days for the two months but i did read i am absolutely loving it and now it is actually it is 1 32 in the afternoon and we are having our pickwick papers live show at 2 o'clock so emma and i are going to be debating the pickwick papers and i will be on team tolstoy should be on team dickens and then next month for war and peace she's gonna be team tolstoy i'm gonna be team dickens which i love dickens but it's gonna be really hard defending him for war and peace because i'm absolutely adoring it i have it right behind me here it is oh i'm loving it so much i think i'm up to i'm up to page 51. it is chapter 12 of volume 1 or book 1 and part 1. so i am only 50 pages in but i have so much to say about this book i think i'm going to talk about it a little bit later because right now i'm just thinking about pickwick papers and i don't want to put too much war and peace in my head right now but i have my journal with all my notes and i have my book ready so i am very excited for the debate um emma posted the poll on her instagram already i'm excited to see who you guys vote for and i just can't wait to talk about pickwick papers and then continue on reading war and peace and then having the foreign peace live show oh my goodness so many exciting things but yes okay so i'm going to hop on the call with emma in a few minutes we are going to go on at 1 45 talk a little bit before the live show actually begins and then the live show will start at two o'clock i'm so excited a bit nervous uh emma and i are always nervous no matter how many live shows we do for the dark academics book club or the dickinson toast away it's always a bit nerve-wracking putting yourself alive it's always so exciting and i love seeing all your comments while we're live so okay i am going to hop on the call with emma in a bit and i will update you guys again very soon [Music] hey everybody it is now monday april 5th i had my class today and i have my big embroidery assignment due tomorrow so i have been pretty busy for the early morning into the afternoon it is now just four o'clock and i went to the post office because i wanted to send out a little thank you card to someone who sent me something in my po box and then i have another package that i have that i got in my po box and i know who this is from uh and i'm so excited to open it so i thought i would film a little unboxing but i don't have much of an update on it's back here on war and peace yet i am on page 61 now chapter 15 of book one part one and yesterday it was easter and so i really didn't have much time to read and today i am back at school because last week was my spring break and it's the middle of my term and so everything is just pretty busy right now for my university work so uh yeah i don't have too much time to read i i wonder all i want to do is read war and peace but i don't have much time and you know gotta prioritize certain things so i did get a book yesterday for from the easter bunny um so i'll show you guys that but i think for now i'm going to open my package this wonderful girl christelle actually messaged me on d-pop of all places and um because like no one follows me on depop i don't really follow anyone on depop because i just look for used books on there um because i love trying to you know have second hand books and not buy too many new books and she messaged me saying that she had a specific edition of a book that i mentioned i wanted on my channel and i mentioned it in one of my videos and this is a book edition this specific edition is currently out of print oh do you hear the ice cream man that's when you know it's summer well it's not summer it's spring there he is oh it's mr softy we'll just wait for him to go by we'll dance until he leaves okay anyway back to the unboxing so this wonderful girl christelle messaged me on depop saying that she had this edition that i wanted and she was asking if i wanted it and i said oh my gosh yes like how much are you charging it and she was like oh i'll gift it to you for free and i was blown away because i would she was selling other books on her page and i didn't see it on her page and i i felt so bad because i wanted to compensate her for it and pay for it but she very kindly wanted to gift it to me as a little thank you for the videos that i make and the content that i make so it was just so incredibly heartwarming and i'm very very grateful so christelle if you're watching this thank you so so so much oh my goodness okay um now it's time to open it because i just can't wait anymore i am so weak oh my goodness oh oh my god wait what there's more stuff in here that's not just the book oh my goodness okay oh oh she sent me a little car a little note okay let me read the note oh crystal thank you so much thank you so much oh my goodness no way no way oh my gosh she she gave me little sticky notes i these are the exact colors i use for annotating how weird is that well then where's the full one here's a full one oh my gosh these are literally the same exact colors just smaller so these are perfect because i didn't realize that they made small ones but sometimes these are a bit too big like they don't need to be so so thick she gave me pens too i am a stationary junkie ah a mild liner double double-ended oh my gosh oh it's like a peachy color crystal you did not have to do this thank you if i go to a stationery store or a craft store or any store that has pens i will buy one i have this weird i think a lot of people do i've talked to a lot of people about this so many people love pens there's something about a new pen when you write with it and it's so nice and fluid and oh thank you so much i am i will add it to my pen collection i not only collect books i collect pens as well little did you know it's even more beautiful in person okay okay are you ready oh my gosh oh my god it's the embroidered emma cover from the penguin threads editions this is a part of the penguin deluxe classics and this uh series of editions this collection was what inspired me to make my anne of green gables embroidery which i am pretty much done with so here is mine and this is what inspired it so i have to scan in after i'm done filming this unboxing i'm going to scan in my embroidery and it's due tomorrow my embroidery project so oh my gosh but this is gord gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my hair hello look at how insanely beautiful this is who let a book be this gorgeous oh my gosh on the back it says one half of the worlds cannot understand the pleasures of the other oh my gosh this is so beautiful so beautiful i love how the inside has the opposite side of the embroidery it's incredibly cool and then this side looks like this oh my god gorgeous you know how i feel if you don't know how i feel about hands a few of you are new um so hello welcome to my channel if you're new here but i am in love with hands i love as an artist i love painting hands drawing hands using hands as expressions of emotion and this just beautiful oh my god it's just gorgeous wow wow christelle thank you so much deckled edges french flaps beautiful embroidery this is the cover design is the cover art is by jillian tamaki who is an incredible cover designer and i love following her she is such a talented artist oh my gosh guys one day maybe you will be able to hold my embroidered cover in your hands maybe maybe hopefully i wish i wish thank you so much christelle you have made my day my week my month my year my life i have wanted this edition for so long and it's out of print why is it out of print i feel like everybody would buy this still it's gorgeous especially with the new emma adaptation kit which came out last year it's just so beautiful oh my god i can't wait to add her to my collection yay so i just want to say thank you so much christelle for gifting this to me it means the entire world the absolute entire world to me that you that you wanted to gift it to me so thank you so so so much i just can't believe how incredibly kind you all are like the messages that you send me the comments that you leave um and the fact that some of you guys have gifted me books and some lovely things in my p.o box means more than i really more than i can say and i just i just can't believe you guys honestly um when i started this channel i did not expect i did not expect this so thank you so much um i will show you guys the book that i got from the easter bunny yesterday also i just can't believe that she gave me pens the little tabs which are the exact colors that i use that's incredible i said in my vlog my march my march vlog that i was reading don quixote and i finished don quixote and every year for easter my parents get me a book and they always have me pick it out and this year i picked out the cloth bound of don quixote because i fell absolutely head over heels in love with the story of don quixote and the musical man of la mancha which is based off of miguel de cervantes writing don quixote in every time i love a classic and it is comes in a clothbound edition i get the cloth bound as a little treat to myself for lu falling in love with with the new classic these cloth bounds are of course designed by the incredibly talented queerly bigfoot smith who i am just the biggest fan of and it's absolutely beautiful so on the cover we have don quixote holding up a shield and a chivalry novel because the story of don quixote is this man not really don quixote his name is alonzo kihana and he read so many chivalry novels that they basically drove him into madness kind of madness quote-unquote madness and he thinks that he is a knight errant and he goes to basically better the world and to fight evil and to do good essentially a saved um save in distress and whatnot he has a wonderful sidekick and squire and best friend sancho panza who i love so much it's just such an incredible book it's such an incredible story and i had to have it in clothbound um also what i love is that sometimes depending on i think i don't know if all of them have it but some of the cloth bounds have a little piece of paper that wraps around the like one of the covers and it tells you a little bit more about the um like the different books that they have in the cloth bounds and this one had the little design of don quixote holding up the chivalry novel with a quote and the quote says for me alone was don quixote born and i for him it was for him to act for me to write and that is a quote from miguel de cervantes and it was so it's so beautiful that i cut it and i think i'm gonna keep it in the book forever and kind of use it as a bookmark um i don't usually read my cloth bounds because i like them to stay in pristine condition that's why whenever like i read the book in a different edition and if i love it then i'll get the special edition that i won't touch it's really just a a collector's item um so it's so beautiful and i'm so happy that i have to add it to my collection i have no more room left like this way i have my cloth bands lined up this way so i'm gonna have to put it on top for now and do some rearranging for my on my bookshelf but i don't have time right now because i really have to work on my on my senior thesis project so for now i am going to scan this in and work on that hopefully later i'll have time to read war and peace i haven't had time the past two days the day before easter i read about like 10 pages which is just so sad because all i want to do is read war and peace and i just don't have time but i'm going to make time it is going to happen this has been my most like strenuous project ever i don't know ever maybe ever i'm not too sure um i have to think back to my other projects but i'm so happy with how it's coming out and i feel like once this project is done i'm gonna have a bit more time just because my heart and soul has been dedicated into that embroidery project so yes i will definitely um keep you guys updated with my reading of course that's what this vlog is all about and i hope you guys are having a great day so far and i hope you liked this little unboxing update um so i will talk to you guys very soon and again christelle thank you so much give you a big hug and i don't know actually did you put your address on here you did i'm gonna send you a little thank you i love sending you guys thank you cards so yes thank you so so much um and i will talk to you guys very soon hello everybody it is now sunday april 11th and i have been actually filming this whole time throughout the past days it isn't a time jump i promise but this vlog is already getting pretty long i was editing it and it's already at almost an hour so i thought i'm going to split up this vlog a bit i did mention earlier when i was opening up my new emma penguin threads edition that i was going to rearrange my bookshelves and as you can see a bit here he is i made room for don quixote but i did film myself rearranging my bookshelves so i was going to include it in this vlog but this vlog's already pretty long so i thought i would break it up split it in half and just create many reading vlogs for war and peace last night i reached part three of book one so right now i am on chapter three of part three book one and i am on page 228 so i am really making my way through absolutely adoring it i have so much to say about the book but i will talk more about it in my next reading vlog where i reorganize my bookshelves as well but i thought that this vlog would be a nice beginning of reading war and peace i hope you have enjoyed it i hope you've enjoyed watching me start more in peace i am just head over heels in love with it and there is so much that i want to say but i will save that for my next reading vlog and i hope you're having a wonderful wonderful day i will see you soon in another war and peace reading vlog or a sit down video if i have time to film them but uni is crazy so that might not happen anyway i hope you're having a wonderful wonderful day i will see you soon in another video happy reading [Music] you

Channel: CarolynMarieReads

Views: 16,253

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Id: FOO91DyCFLU

Length: 58min 8sec (3488 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 12 2021