What is the most important thing about Anna Karenina? Is it the first line, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way"? This sounds so true but it isn't really.

Is it that Anna experiences much more intolerance for her unfaithfulness and leaving her husband than does her brother who screws around like a dog? Is it Konstantin Levin's attempts to marry into the aristocracy and his problem with religion? Or is the entire story just Tolstoy's way of seducing the reader into reading the political nub of the story, the feudalism that was at the heart of all politics, morality and social position.

I enjoyed the book when I read it, but I have to say I skimmed over a lot of the politics and did wonder which in Tolstoy's heart is the story he wanted to tell, love stories or political ones?

How I came to read Anna Karenina, appendicitis and an air hostess ending with a rotten tomato. I read this book when I was 13. I had a test on it in two days and hadn't even opened it so I said I had stomach ache and went to the school sick room. This was a tall, narrow room with a tiny window about 8' up and painted with shades of olive green and aubergine (eggplant). If you weren't sick going in.. those colours.... But I was away in Russia with Anna, her husband Alexei and Count Vronsky whom I swooned over. In the early hours of the morning, I really had stomach ache. At 4 a.m. I had an emergency appendectomy in a nursing home with an operating theatre. I was very sick indeed and in bed for weeks. Had I brought it on myself?

Never mind. Next day three things happened, one bad and one good and one fantastic. My period came on for the first time. I was a Woman! Yes! I told my mother and my grandmother leaned over from the visitor chair and slapped my face very hard, "That's to take the shock of the blood away." She said.

Then the good. My mother said I had been waiting for this day and she really let loose at my grandmother. They had a very fierce row. It was wonderful. My mother didn't love me and she never ever defended me or involved herself with me in any way. Memories of being slapped herself I suppose. My mother was very pretty and was the first of her family to be married. On her wedding day, her mother slapped her face as she put the veil on her. "Ruth should have been married first, not you." Ruth was her much less attractive and zealously-religious older sister. (She mellowed).

Everyone else in the nursing home was old except for an air hostess of 21. She didn't have a private room and didn't like being with the old people so would wander into mine to sit and read and eat all my chocolates, of which I had endless boxes. She brought her books - Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Mrs. Gaskell and Zola. So for nearly three weeks my days were filled with reading, talking about books with my new friend and eating chocolates all day long.

I was actually thrown out of the nursing home. The food there was terrible. One lunchtime there was something forgettable and salad. The tomato was perfect-looking but mushy, almost liquid so I threw it out of the window and it landed on one of the nuns who was beside herself with anger. I didn't care, my friend had left a few days before, left her books for me too in exchange for some fancy ribbon-bowed boxes of chocolates.

We wrote for a bit, were penpals, but eventually that died. The age gap and where we were in our lives was too far apart. But I will always remember her and the fabulous books she introduced me too. Thank you Helen.

I will never forget Anna Karenina, apart from Tolstoy's political rants and plight of the peasants etc, the book was a pure gold, convoluted love affair. It was like all the best books are, total immersion in another world populated by real people whose lives outside of those described you could easily imagine, not just "well-drawn characters". Austen, Bronte, Mrs. Gaskell and Zola were just as good, all of them worlds I lived in when I read their books.

Review 1/2020 Rewritten 15th Jan 2020 to include more about the book.

n  "Leo Tolstoy would meet hatred expressed in violence by love expressed in self-suffering."n
—Mahatma Gandhi


Through reading this praiseworthy classic, I have been forced to recalibrate my previously unreliable view of this celebrated author.
You see, I was force-fed Tolstoy at college (his writing, not his flesh, silly! Mine wasn't a college for cannibals!) and at the time only carried War and Peace under one arm so I might appear cleverer than I actually was.
So, how amazed was I that Anna K has shown me the fun side to Leo T? He is slyly hilarious. How did I not know this?

Please note that I haven't read this novel in Russian Cyrillic. I acknowledge that my perception owes a great deal to the amazing interpretive work of the translators, but let's imagine that we in the West have enjoyed his work as the great man intended.

The title is something of a misnomer and doesn't do justice to an endearing love story that also captures the disparity between city and country life in 19th-century Russia.
For a start, Anna K isn't the star of the show. That billing falls to our anti-hero, Konstantin Dmitrich Levin, a socially awkward, highly intelligent loner who considers himself to be an ugly fellow with no redeemable qualities.
Despite being weighed down by all this existential angst, he worships Kitty Shcherbatskaya, an attractive young princess whom he believes to be out of his league.
Kitty is described as being "as easy to find in a crowd as a rose among nettles."
Tolstoy goes to great lengths to make us understand the inner workings of Levin's mind (For Tolstoy, read Levin: they are one and the same).

Levin's love rival, raffishly handsome Count Vronsky, couldn't be more dissimilar. He is socially adept and careful not to offend, whereas Levin could probably start an argument with a goldfish.

What a fabulous read this is.
Tolstoy's levity and perspicacity shine from every page and the badinage between the main characters is exquisitely observed.
He does though have an idiosyncratic way of writing: adjectives are thickly laid on with a trowel and he loves to use repetition to emphasise a point.

Anna herself is fascinating, and to affirm just how fascinating she is, Tolstoy employs the word fascinating seven times in one paragraph! Look! I've even started doing it myself! How fascinating!

When not beating you about the head with repetition, the Russian master can do majestic descriptive imagery as well as anyone. One simple scene, where Kitty collapses into a low chair, her ball gown rising about her like a cloud, was just perfectly captured.

This is a wonderful story of fated love and aristocratic hypocrisy.
Tolstoy uses Levin as his political mouthpiece to rail against the ills of late 19th-century Russia, and the author's philosophy of non-violent pacifism also directly influenced none other than Mahatma Gandhi.

Anna Karenina is often cited as 'one of the best books ever written'.
So who am I to disagree?

welcome to...ANNA DECEMBERENINA!

it's the start of the month (kinda). i've attempted a (reprehensible) pun on a book title (to everyone's chagrin). there is a notoriously long classic on my currently reading (ill-advisedly).

you know what that means.

IT'S PROJECT LONG CLASSIC TIME, the fan favorite in which i read a very long book divided up into little bits over the course of the month, and usually i drag elle along with me except this month i'm planning something truly nightmarish so i'm starting while she's asleep as an act of terror / peer pressure.

let's do this.


DAY 1: PAGES 1-25
my tbr review of this was "sometimes i like to pretend i'm capable of reading thousand-page books. just for fun," and in this case that pretending includes starting 2 days early and doubling up eventually so that i can read in 25 page chunks.

i'm cool like that.

damn! that opening line! we are off to the races.


DAY 2: PAGES 26-75
didn't even intend to make today my bonus day but this is just so readable. why didn't anyone tell me the 900 page classic from 150 years ago is unputdownable??

i fear i may adore all of these characters.


DAY 3: 76-100
in a state of bliss right now in which i look forward to reading this every day but am relishing it so much that dividing it into sections works perfectly.


DAY 4: 101-125
literally any book is doable in teeny chunks like this. i had negative free time (and a negative interest) today but boom. easy money.


DAY 5: 126-150
the descriptions of emotions in this...sheesh. excellence.


DAY 6: 151-175
and here we have the farming sections i've heard so much about...

in truth if they're like this every time i can handle it. i like poetic descriptions of the descent of springtime as much as the next annoying girl.


DAY 7: 176-200
i am absolutely indulging in vronsky's downfall here. finding pleasure in his every misfortune. his sadness and disappointment spark joy for me.

hate that guy.


DAY 8: 201-225
well jesus anna! we're only at the 25% mark, we can't act like this already!


DAY 10: 226-250
i missed a day. i'm a nightmare person.

now i have to see how many pages i can manage in, generously, 20 minutes.

perhaps unsurprisingly it took 25 and i'm not caught up.


DAY 11: PAGES 251-275
something fun that the universe and i are doing is that we've set up the last three weeks of the year so that i don't only have to finish 24 books, complete two projects, and remain active on seemingly 100 accounts, but i also have the busiest work week(s) i have had in (without exaggeration) 2 years.

without the depressive episode that made the last time so fun.

anyway i may never catch up on this.


DAY 13: PAGES 276-300
guess who's behind. behind again. emma's behind. except she never caught up in the first place so now she's just...50 pages behind instead of 25.

or i guess 75 since i haven't actually read any yet today.

okay NOW 50. why is this book so good??


DAY 14: PAGES 301-350
well, well, well. look who decided to catch up.

biiiiig farming chapters.


DAY 15: PAGES 351-375
part four alert. we pray for mercy from agricultural labor bureaucracy content.

and our prayers are heard <3


DAY 16: PAGES 376-400
KITTY AND LEVIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

wow i am so invested in this. even dozens of pages about farming and politics can't divest me. i am in it.


DAY 17: PAGES 401-425
way, way, way too much is happening. it's the halfway point, people! this is no time for climaxes OR happily ever afters, let alone both! we have 400+ pages to cover!


DAY 18: PAGES 426-450
i am uncomfortable with how high stakes everything is. THERE IS SO MUCH LEFT. WHEN I HEFT THIS UNWIELDY VOLUME I AM ONLY AT THE HALFWAY POINT EVEN STILL. I THINK. EVEN THOUGH I'VE BEEN SAYING THAT FOR SEEMINGLY DAYS.


DAY 19: 451-475
honestly i care less about the Christian Art than the farming. sheesh.


DAY 20: 476-500
it's the circleeee of lifeee...


DAY 21: 501-525
what a moral quandary we find ourselves in!


DAY 22: 526-550
okay phew, i'm back on board with being obsessed with anna. it makes me uncomfortable to not like a female character who is constantly committing moral wrongs...feels unnatural.

part 5 done!


DAY 23: 551-575
i'm internally titling this one twenty-five page chunk number 23: the tangled webs we weave. get it together, folks! it's like a sally rooney novel in here.


DAY 24: 576-600
this too realistically conveyed the feeling of being clinically annoyed by a friend of a friend. i feel irritable now.


DAY 28: 601-650
it's the most wonderful time of the year...

read: it's actually december 26, meaning we have actually skipped right to day 28, and i am extremely behind just in time for the end of the year to be right around the corner.

but i'm also behind on my other project, and i'm also behind on my actual literal reading challenge, so we're just going to ignore that for today. no time for worrying, only time for reading.

actually read 50 pages anyway because i am perfect and infallible.


DAY 31: PAGES 651-700
being very brave and reading 50 pages again and also pretending anna isn't on my damn nerves. GIRL STAND UP.

we find ourselves heading into part 7.

never mind. it's not hard to not be bugged by anna. she's the sh*t.


DAY 32: PAGES 701-750
anna is so evil and kitty is so perfect. i love them both.


DAY 33: PAGES 751-817
it appears it is time. hello and welcome to the last day of the anna karenina project.

oh man.


OVERALL
not only was i intimidated by this book's length, i was sure i'd find it unconquerable. even as i started it and found it a pleasure, i was waiting for the other shoe to drop. it never did! i enjoyed this every day, through farming and politics and religion and art.

readable and sweeping, stunning in its writing and its carrying across effortlessly of both the minutiae and the most important topics of life. it's insane how applicable, how of the moment this book is now, across languages and centuries.

read it! i can't believe how long i put it off.
rating: 4.5

Marcel Proust scriveva che “ogni lettore, quando legge, legge se stesso”, e nessuna frase potrebbe descrivere meglio il mio rapporto con Anna Karenina.

Ma andiamo con ordine.

Quando lessi per la prima volta questo libro avevo diciassette anni e un caso avanzato di adolescenza problematica. I testi sacri su cui si basava la mia comprensione del mondo erano, nell’ordine: L’insostenibile leggerezza dell’essere, Cime tempestose e le canzoni degli Smiths. Twilight era stata per me un’opera formativa, e il mio amore per i poeti romantici aveva trasformato i muri della mia stanza in una galleria di citazioni di Keats. L’ambiente in cui ero cresciuta, insomma, aveva fatto del suo meglio per spingermi a sviluppare una visione delle relazioni sentimentali distorta e orientata al melodramma.
È a questo punto che entra in scena Anna Karenina. La mia reazione, ovviamente, è di amore immediato ed assoluto, non tanto per il romanzo in sé — quello è ben scritto, ma troppo dispersivo, troppo incentrato su quisquilie irrilevanti come la vita nei campi e le politiche economiche — quanto per Anna stessa, eroina tragica dal fascino irresistibile. Tutto in lei mi attira, mi conquista: dalla sua bellezza leggendaria, al suo cuore dominato da passioni violente, fino alla morte tragica (ma così poetica!) che la suggella ai miei occhi come la vittima innocente di una società moralista e ipocrita.
Vorrei essere Anna, o vorrei innamorarmi di Anna? Probabilmente entrambe le cose, ma in fondo non è importante: quel che conta è che ella assume all’istante un posto d’onore tra le mie icone letterarie. In lei rivedo il mio animo romantico, pronto a qualunque sacrificio in nome dell’amore (e pazienza se colui per cui mi sacrifico non farebbe mai lo stesso per me; che amore sarebbe se non facesse soffrire?). Quando Oblonskij dice della sorella che ”ella è, prima di tutto, una donna di cuore”, quella frase si imprime nella mia memoria come il simbolo di tutto ciò che vorrei mi rappresentasse. E nella mia memoria rimane, avvolta dal ricordo dorato dell’opera da cui è tratta, per oltre dieci anni.

Fino a quando, ormai adulta, non decido di riprendere in mano il romanzo, scoprendo con sgomento che dei miei ricordi romantici è rimasto poco o nulla.

Ai miei occhi di quasi trentenne, il capolavoro di Tolstoj appare come un’opera autocelebrativa e insopportabilmente moralista. Il protagonista è un palese alter ego dell’autore, che per fugare ogni dubbio gli affibbia pure il suo nome. La narrazione esalta continuamente le virtù di Lev(in), perfetta incarnazione dell’eroe tolstoiano che ama la campagna, detesta la vita mondana e finisce inspiegabilmente per sposare la fanciulla più ambita dall’alta società. I personaggi che lodano Levin sono positivi; quelli che lo disprezzano o che non sposano le sue idee sono stupidi, corrotti o destinati a una morte prematura.
L’autore si dilunga spesso in riflessioni su temi etici e politici, come la riforma agraria e la condizione della classe operaia; ma le sue riflessioni assumono, agli occhi del lettore moderno, un tono quasi grottesco. La prospettiva di chi le formula è sempre fredda, distaccata, palesemente estranea alla drammatica realtà che descrive: è il punto di vista di un nobile privilegiato che parla dei contadini, delle donne e delle minoranze etniche come si parlerebbe di animali in un giardino zoologico. Mentre i braccianti di Levin vivono nella miseria, lui passa il tempo a pontificare sulla bellezza del lavoro nei campi e sull’opportunità di concedere loro un’assistenza sanitaria di base. Se si pensa che questo libro venne dato alle stampe appena quarant’anni prima della rivoluzione russa, è facile immaginare quegli stessi contadini mentre prendono d’assalto la casa del padrone al grido di “Morte al nemico capitalista!”.

La delusione più cocente, però, è arrivata proprio da Anna. L’eroina della mia adolescenza si è rivelata essere una donna frivola e immatura, incapace di prendere decisioni sensate e assumersi qualsiasi responsabilità. Impulsiva, egoista, troppo impegnata a piangersi addosso per valutare con lucidità le conseguenze delle proprie azioni, la protagonista di Tolstoj mi ha spinta a chiedermi se al liceo avessi davvero letto lo stesso libro che troneggia ora sui miei scaffali. Non ho impiegato molto, però, per intuire la causa delle mie impressioni contrastanti: se anni fa mi identificavo così tanto con Anna è perché ella pensa e agisce esattamente come un’adolescente. Ma se è comprensibile che una ragazzina si comporti in maniera melodrammatica e irrazionale, lo stesso non si può dire di una donna matura.

Da questo punto di vista, rileggere Anna Karenina mi ha rivelato molte più cose su me stessa che sull’opera in sé. Mi ha spinto a riflettere su com’è cambiato nel tempo il mio approccio ai classici, e soprattutto mi ha confermato in via definitiva che lo sguardo di chi legge conta più del libro in sé.

From the Introduction:

n  

'I am writing a novel,' Tolstoy informed his friend the critic Nikolai Strakhov on 11 May 1873, referring to the book that was to become Anna Karenina. 'I've been at it for more than a month now and the main lines are traced out. This novel is truly a novel, the first in my life...'

nEarlier this year, I came across a quote so attractive, that I thought whatever book it was from was automatically good. In other words, I had to read it.

"I've always loved you, and when you love someone, you love the whole person, as they are, and not as you'd like them to be."

I was shocked when I found out it was this book. To be fair, I knew next to nothing about it. I had heard about it briefly in The Elegance of the Hedgehog (and its poor adaptation, The Hedgehog) and also from my dad, who's a movie buff. He deemed it as immoral and in other words a "cheating book", despite having seen only the film, and said I wouldn't like it. Being human, I looked more and more forward to reading it. Thanks to a friend, I got a very good translation, which made a huge difference. There's nothing quite like disobeying just for the fun of it.



I expected an unbearable and dull writing style, but was pleasantly surprised. The only times this book bored me was when it would ramble on too much about trivial details. I'm not conflicted about its length. I don't mind large books, but it can go both ways. Upon finishing a huge book, I can either feel as if it was the perfect length, or as if it could have easily been shortened. With this book, I felt both. The length, though much of it unnecessary, made it all the more beautiful. Despite my ever-persistent impatience, there's a certain charm to it that I've never seen in another book. This undefinable pace that if I could put into words, would be phrased as, "the pace of life". I don't even know how to describe something so abstract, but there's something so idyllic about it.

The book is noticeably filled to the brim with inner monologues and dialogues. The characters are all very realistic. Some are mean and some are stupid, and if you're lucky, you get both. There were a couple here and there that I liked, but most I didn't. I usually have a problem with this, but here I felt like it didn't matter too much.



I'm not keen on romance in the least, but this novel, as Tolstoy put it, is truly a novel. At times it was too philosophical for my liking, but in the end, all loose ends were tied off. It concluded in a surprisingly hopeful and satisfying note. A good way to end the year.

n  If you look for perfection, you'll never be content.n

At long last I can put another notch in my literary belt. It has been a long time coming. For whatever reason the thought of reading Tolstoy has always intimidated me. Perhaps I was worried that I would not, well in truth, not so much like it really as understand it. Phftttt that was never really an issue and surprise, surprise I enjoyed this story even if I did find parts of it excruciatingly tedious.

At its core Anna Karenina is a love story. It centers about the lives of seven people and if you are thinking that is an odd number for a love story then it behooves me to remind you that odd numbers and love do drama make. And there is drama to be found here. I am not a historian or a polymath but for me the real genius in Tolstoy’s writing lay in his characterization. Like them or not, love them or hate them, Tolstoy certainly was successful in making me care about every one of these people. I believe he achieved this in no small part by allowing me access to their inner most thoughts and feelings. This is a story about so much more than love, it is also about friendship, betrayal and pride and anger and life’s tedious little rituals whose roots are oft tended by societies outrageous expectations. But it is also about farming, hunting, politics and faith. In other words, life, and I cannot help but believe that Leo Tolstoy loved and had a great passion for life.

A very strange thing happened to me as I read this. It was like an out of body experience that involved two passages in particular. One was about mowing or scything the fields. Levin took it upon himself to spend a day with his labourers achieving this task and he invited me along. Tolstoy described this process, and Levin’s as well as the workers passion and energy for the task, so well that I was completely transported and embodied Levin as he perfected his technique and muscles burning found his rhythm. Seriously mowing the grass! The second scene, even more alarming to me to admit was about hunting great snipe. Trust me when I tell you that I have zero interest in hunting or the loss of life for beast, fish or fowl associated with this activity. Clearly I neglected to tell Tolstoy because he took me there to those marshes as Levin set his dog to flush them out and rifle in hand, cast his eyes skyward. If anyone had ever suggested to me that either one of these activities would hold me spellbound for pages, no doubt I would have felt their face for the flush of a raging fever. Colour me humbled then by the skill of a great writer.

Based on the title of this book I was initially surprised how many words and pages were spent on Konstantin Levin but as I continued to read a pattern seemed to emerge. And as sad and tragic as it was and even though I could see the shadows on the wall, I could not tear my eyes away. I liked Anna as it happens and the course her life took resonated deeply within me. I wanted more for her and Vronsky as well. As the story opens Anna is a well respected and a much sought after member of society whereas Levin is socially awkward, stiff, difficult and lacking in self esteem. Each of these characters goes about their day to day lives and makes choices within their own realms of experience and in keeping with their own moral compass. I must stop myself from saying more as I have no wish to spoil this story for would be readers but…..  Anna’s trajectory is a downward spiral whereas Levin is lifted up to the gates of domestic bliss and contentedness and as a reader my views on each of them mirrored that reversal in trajectory.

This is a classic and a tome. It is wordy and parts of it can be tedious. These Russian writers are indeed loquacious. It is also worthy. Your time and effort will be richly rewarded.

No book has produced as strong an emotional reaction from me as this one. I can’t recall any other book in which every character, and I mean every one, is so beautifully and realistically drawn. Like real life, there are no distinguishable villains, only human beings. It illustrates some of the most accurate depictions of humans in literature, all of which are scored on my heart forever. I can't think of anything but all the lives I've just lived—after a while, they no longer seem like printed words on a page, but like dear, dear friends.

I genuinely love every single character, even the ones that most readers dislike—Anna, who abandons her child and embroils everyone around her into a maelstrom of bitterness and jealousy: Karenin, who attempts to deny his unhappy wife her livelihood: Vronsky, who is at times both selfish and careless: even Oblonsky, the serial cheater and womanizer.

Anna and Vronsky’s sensual, destructive passion for one another is no more meaningful than the gentle, unwavering love of Levin and Kitty. It's the simple, the rough the non-grand things in life that are capable of bringing humans the most beauty. Anna is Moscow's diamond; she's magnetic, she's elusive, she's larger than life. Her love is the irrational, utterly enraptured kind that seems inescapable; yet it only leads to tragedy, never satisfaction. Anna's wandering, expressive soul and of course, deeply lonely heart makes for one of the most memorable, complex characters I've ever come across.

However, it's Konstantin Levin that captures the title of my favourite fictional character of all time; his spiritual awakening and romance with Kitty are written so beautifully and with so much heart that you wonder why we need any more love stories after this one. This is the book I hope every other book I pick up turns out to be.

Edit: I'm not even joking when I say that Anna Karenina changed my life. Prior to reading this, I had no idea that books could impact someone in this sense; the human expression in here is just so genuine, so sincere. Aside from Jane Eyre, this was the first "proper" classic I read; it made me fall head over heels in love with literature and I've never looked back. I genuinely don't think I would've read 95% of the books listed on my Goodreads if it wasn't for me buying Anna Karenina on a whim 3 years ago.

People are going to have to remember that this is the part of the review that is entirely of my own opinion and what I thought of the book, because what follows isn't entirely positive, but I hope it doesn't throw you off the book entirely and you still give it a chance. Now... my thoughts:

I picked up this book upon the advice of Oprah (and her book club) and my friend Kit. They owe me hardcore now. As does Mr. Tolstoy. This book was an extremely long read, not because of it's size and length necessarily, but because of it's content. More often than not I found myself suddenly third a way down the page after my mind wandered off to other thoughts but I kept on reading... am I the only one with the ability to do that? You know, totally zoning out but continuing to read? The subject I passed over though was so thoroughly boring that I didn't bother going back to re-read it... and it didn't affect my understanding of future events taking place later on in the book.

Leo Tolstoy really enjoys tangents. Constantly drifting away from the point of the book to go off on three page rants on farming methods, political policies and elections, or philosophical discussion on God. Even the dialogue drifted off in that sort of manner. Tolstoy constantly made detail of trifling matters, while important subjects that added to what little plot line this story had were just passed over. Here is a small passage that is a wonderful example of what constantly takes place throughout the book:

"Kostia, look out! There's a bee! Won't he sting?" cried Dolly, defending herself from a wasp.

"That's not a bee; that's a wasp!" said Levin.

"Come, now! Give us your theory," demanded Katavasof, evidently provoking Levin to a discussion. "Why shouldn't private persons have that right?"

No mention of the wasp is made again. Just a small example of how Tolstoy focuses much more on philosophical thought, and thought in general, more than any sort of action that will progress the story further. That's part of the reason the story took so long to get through.

The editing and translation of the version I got also wasn't very good. Kit reckons that that's part of the reason I didn't enjoy it as much, and I am apt to agree with her. If you do decide to read this book, your better choice is to go with the Oprah's Book Club edition of Anna Karenina.

The characters weren't too great either and I felt only slightly sympathetic for them at certain moments. The women most often were whiny and weak while the men seemed cruel and judgemental more often than not. Even Anna, who was supposedly strong-willed and intelligent would go off on these irrational rants. The women were constantly jealous and the men were always suspicious.

There's not much else to say that I haven't already said. There were only certain spots in the book which I enjoyed in the littlest, and even then I can't remember them. All in all I did not enjoy this book, and it earned the names Anna Crapenina and Anna Kareniblah.

But remember this is just one girl's opinion, if it sounded like a book you might enjoy I highly advise going out to read it. Just try and get the Oprah edition.

In the beginning, reading Anna Karenin can feel a little like visiting Paris for the first time. You’ve heard a lot about the place before you go. Much of what you see from the bus you recognize from pictures and movies and books. You can’t help but think of the great writers and artists who have been here before you. You expect to like it. You want to like it. But you don’t want to feel like you have to like it. You worry a little that you won’t. But after a few days, you settle in, and you feel the immensity of the place opening up all around you. You keep having this experience of turning a corner and finding something beautiful that you hadn’t been told to expect or catching sight of something familiar from a surprising angle. You start to trust the abundance of the place, and your anxieties that someone else will have eaten everything up before your arrival relax. (Maybe that simile reveals more about me than I’d like.)

My favorite discovery was the three or four chapters (out of the book’s 239) devoted to, of all things, scythe mowing—chapters that become a celebratory meditation on physical labor. When I read those chapters, I felt temporarily cured of the need to have something “happen” and became as absorbed in the reading as the mowers are absorbed in their work. Of course, the book is about Anna and Vronsky and Levin and Kitty and Dolly and poor, stupid Stepan Arkadyich. It’s about their love and courtship and friendship and pride and shame and jealousy and betrayal and forgiveness and about the instable variety of happiness and unhappiness. But it’s also about mowing the grass and arguing politics and hunting and working as a bureaucrat and raising children and dealing politely with tedious company. To put it more accurately, it’s about the way that the human mind—or, as Tolstoy sometimes says, the human soul—engages each of these experiences and tries to understand itself, the world around it, and the other souls that inhabit that world. This book is not afraid to take up any part of human life because it believes that human beings are infinitely interesting and infinitely worthy of compassion. And, what I found stirring, the book’s fearlessness extends to matters of religion. Tolstoy takes his characters seriously enough to acknowledge that they have spiritual lives that are as nuanced and mysterious as their intellectual lives and their romantic lives. I knew to expect this dimension of the book, but I could not have known how encouraging it would be to dwell in it for so long.

In the end, this is a book about life, written by a man who is profoundly in love with life. Reading it makes me want to live.

There are two problems with reading anything by Leo Tolstoy. 1) That guy seriously needed an editor with a forceful personality, as his most famous books are far too long. 2) It's nearly impossible to keep the characters apart, because they all have something like 10 different names depending on the situation and social setting (this is true of much of Russian literature, though for me it's worst by far with Tolstoy).

I don't remember much about this book, to be honest, as I read it in the summer of 1998. I do remember that by less than halfway through I didn't want to finish it, and I only did finish it through sheer force of will (I have this thing about finishing books I've started). So I didn't want to read half of it and I couldn't keep straight who anyone was...why the hell did I initially give this 2 stars? Gotta downgrade it to 1.

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GREAT, in the highest sense of the word.
Characters as deep and alive as the ocean, themes as diverse and as innumerable as grains of sand, a writing as powerful as a thunderstorm, as beautiful as a serene dawn, and as incomprehensible at times and yet all the more fascinating as this mysterious and neverending universe itself, and we have, in my opinion, the greatest work on life, freedom, faith, fate, love, suffering, and the human HEART ... - Anna Karenina!