War and a Piece of My Mind

For reasons that can be pretty much consolidated down to, "It was just time already," I have finally decided to bite the bullet and read War and Peace.

It is not remotely the challenge I thought it would be, other than keeping straight the names like Bolkonsky, Bezukhov, Bazdeyev, Dolokhov and Denisov, and that most of the main characters are a prince, princess or count.  (However, I've cleverly created a cheat-sheet as a bookmark, so it's going pretty smoothly.)  

It is somewhat disconcerting, though, to reach page 400 and realize that you have almost 1,100 pages still to go.