A short guide to Russian literature

I've just started reading War and Peace, on the grounds that I ought to make a start if I wanted to be sure of finishing. It make not be the greatest book ever written, but it's certainly one of the longest. I said to my wife, in astonishment, that it wasn't surprising that it was so long since in the first 50 pages the only thing that had happened was that someone had been to a party. She said she'd read a Russin novel once in which absolutely nothing happened; she then corrected herself: they had gone on a carriage ride once.