Among the many pleasures of the #TolstoyTogether group, while life has often felt on pause (which has ups and downs to it) seeing how much we've read reminds me I've been traveling all along, and not alone.
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Carl Phillips A Public Space initiated a communal reading of Tolstoy's
War and Peace under the aegis of the novelist Yiyun Li, with the intention of lifting spirits and establishing a common bond among lovers of good literature.
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Joyce Carol Oates, Wall Street Journal The brilliant novelist Yiyun Li has started a
War and Peace book club online... at A Public Space. You read 12 pages a day of
War and Peace in a whole community of readers. And the next thing you know, you have read the book and the pandemic is over and you have read
War and Peace, which is terrific.
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Ann Patchett, the PBS Newshour "In just 85 days, Yiyun Li invites us into a liminal space full of prismatic explorations on love and grief and the actions that inspire both. More than just a wondrous study of Tolstoy's
War and Peace,
Tolstoy Together reflects our thoughts back to us; a reminder that even in isolation, the simple act of reading contains multitudes."
–Kaitlynn Cassady, Seminary Co-op Bookstores
Tolstoy Together: 85 Days of War and Peace presents a collective act of reading as well as storytelling – a new story, created together. We are invited not only to read (or re-read)
War and Peace, but to read other readers' margins and underlines; and in doing so, we glimpse their inner lives.
–Claire Foster, Type Books
In March when the virus was getting officially out of control, it felt like the only things people were talking about here in NYC were the virus, uncertainty, and thanks to A Public Space's book club: Tolstoy. I recall it being one of the few joyful things about that terrible period of time–imagining so many people, shut away in their city apartments, all reading Tolstoy, alone yet together. Sometimes we read to escape and sometimes we read to remember. Tolstoy Together is a great way to bookend that initial escape by remembering it through this lens, and continuing to carry Tolstoy forward.
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Rebecca Fitting, Greenlight Bookstore Tolstoy Together couldn't have come at a better moment. It already has a vibrant community of readers participating just two days into the read. The group additionally benefits from A Public Space's active and inviting Twitter presence (you don't need to be an English major, or even a regular reader, to feel welcomed), and if you aren't a big social media person you can still follow along with Li's wonderful musings on A Public Space's blog.
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The Week Tolstoy Together "embodies the common humanity... a paradoxically rich connection with strangers who are widely dispersed yet linked by their predicaments and imaginations.... Thousands of isolated souls are on the same page."
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Alix Christie, the Economist
Tolstoy Together presents and re-presents–in a wonderful economy of style–passages from
War and Peace and deposits them next to tantalizing fragments of thought... a work that operates by echolocation: an entertaining miscellany of personal anecdotes, close reads, contextual clues, and trivia that reinforce and refute each other in playful turns.
–Rhoda Feng, The Smart Set
Tolstoy Together: 85 Days of War and Peace with Yiyun Li delivered me to a new publisher (A Public Space) and a collective reading of Tolstoy's novel...Yiyun Li's single, thoughtful gesture broadened my reading and life. While we may be presently forced to live in more isolation, we do not need to think in isolation and expanding our thinking and reading should also not become an isolated event.
–Anakana Schofield, the Irish Times
Tolstoy Together: 85 Days of War and Peace with Yiyun Li, edited by Brigid Hughes, is a convivial companion that infuses the experience of reading a long, difficult novel with joy and revelry.
–Christine Jacobson, Los Angeles Review of Books
