Grondahl: On finishing 'War and Peace'

Three times I began "War and Peace."Each time, Leo Tolstoy's literary classic, all 2.3 pounds and 1,408 pages of it, defeated me.It shames me, an English major with a bachelor's and master's degree in literature, to admit that I did not have the stamina or commitment to finish the Russian novelist's masterpiece – widely considered one of the greatest novels ever written.As I approached 60, it loomed as a glaring omission in my reading repertoire. It was a challenge unmet, a marathon abando