War and Peace
I must admit I gave up on 'War and Peace' many times. I started reading it, got mired in the number of characters with unfamiliar names, was put off by the clunky English of the translation and confused by the sheer proliferation of Princes. To me, a Prince is the son of a King but apparently the Russian word which was translated into 'Prince' by an uninspired translator means merely the son of a member of the nobility. In any case, I started several times and got distracted by another faster moving book and by the time I got back I realized that I had lost track of the characters (who had not yet done anything to distinguish themselves) and would have to start all over again. I asked my friend, Rajesh Behl, whether it was actually worth persisting. He said 'yes, it's worth it.' Perhaps I still would not have focused on it long enough if it had not been for a break from work of nearly 6 months during which I moved from India to the US and waited for the v