You cannot mention you’re reading War & Peace without sounding unforgivably pretentious. And you definitely cannot confess that you’re reading it again, last chapter one day, first chapter the next, ostensibly to compare translations but really, you just couldn’t help yourself, Andrey, Natasha, Pierre, Marya, you loved them so much. Even when someone asks outright what you’re reading, backs you into a corner making demands, you shrug, noncommittal, shifting the weight of the shoulder bag, Tolstoy’s 1,400 pages and the incriminating bookmark.