relevant to my interests

Read Tolkien's translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which I was not expecting to start with the fall of Troy?? (Only briefly mentioned as a sort of city, state, country, continent, Planet Earth, Milky Way Galaxy approach to setting the scene of Arthur's Britain, but I did find myself momentarily baffled about whether I'd opened the correct e-book.) Interesting to finally read the poem after having seen/read various retellings/adaptations of it— for one thing, it turns out the answer to why would Gawain jump straight to "chop this guy's head off" when presented with the challenge of "whatever blow you deal now, I'll return in one year's time"? is because the challenge was, in fact, set up that way. (Of course, even with the Green Knight kneeling and helpfully baring his neck and making unsubtle comments like I'll tell you where to find me in a year's time afterwards... if I can! If not, you're off the hook!, he could have not done that, but I guess it's a load-bearing detail of Arthuriana that absolutely no one can see a trap when they're about to walk into one or else no one would have weird adventures.) For another: ohhhhh, okay, the OT3 reading is not a stretch of the imagination at all. It also spent more time describing food, clothing, armor, horses' gear, castle architecture, and other luxuries than I would have expected - on the other hand, it also spent quite a lot of time on how to disembowel a deer?? - and each stanza ended with an ABABA rhyme scheme, although I guess in this case, we are not meant to pronounce Gawain as Gar-win—

'What is here, all is your own, to have in your rule          
and sway.'
'Gramercy!' quoth Gawain,    
'May Christ you this repay!'     
As men that to meet were fain     
they both embraced that day.

Later, it also rhymes Gawain with retain, so I guess the pronunciation is supposed to be "Ga-wayne," which is frankly how I always assumed it was pronounced, until The Green Knight (2021)...?

In War and Peace, Dolokhov (of the "just fought a duel over sleeping with Pierre's wife" incident) has fallen in love with - and proposed to - Sonya, the poor Rostov cousin/ward who is in love with Nikolai but (spoiler!) he ends up jilting her for Princess Mary, and Sonya ends up never marrying and moves in with them to care for their children. ANYWAY. We are not there yet; Dolokhov has proposed to Sonya, Sonya refused out of love for Nikolai, and Dolokhov proceeded to take his revenge by needling Nikolai into gambling himself into financial ruin, because Nikolai has the backbone of a chocolate eclair as well as one (1) singular brain cell just bouncing around thinking about how much he loves Emperor Alexander.