Welcome to the final episode of R&W’s 2025 year-long read of War and Peace. It really is hard to believe it’s over (Except, if you’re Shari, it’s not. Six more Epilogue essays to go!)

In this episode, Shari and Rhea discuss the way Tolstoy takes the characters off the stage in the end, and sets them squarely in the beautiful mundane of every day life. They talk about characters they wish they’d heard more from, characters they kept thinking might pop back up and play more of a role, the character Rhea loved to hate in the end. They talked about their favorite scenes and sections, as well as those places they could have done without. They talked about what part of spending an entire year with War and Peace they will miss. Oh, and what they’re looking forward to with their next (not quite) year-long read, Middlemarch, by George Eliot.

Speaking of, if you haven’t seen The Reader and the Writer’s 2026 reading list in order with dates, to include our year-long reads: Middlemarch and the Harry Potter series (going into 2027), you can find it here:

To follow my annotations, personal notes, and War and Peace story connections on Tolstoy’s Epilogue essays (12 essays in 12 days), start here:

Thank you so much for reading along with us in 2025! And cheers to many more years of happy slow reading together. 🥂

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