I wasn't sure what to expect when I started listening to the audio book. But having heard it described as one of the best works of literature, my hopes were high. And while I would agree it is a great work...I would say for it's time.

The main reason for this is the lack of show don't tell, a cardinal sin in the modern writing landscape. To me this text is an excellent example of why this technique is so important in writing. I personally find the 'telling' parts very distracting and disruptive to the story.

The story itself covers many important themes which are still relevant today. These include: Female rights and role of women in society, female sexually and how it's viewed, Russian high society as a whole, social normals of the time, how masculinity was seen, death and of course religion and mortality. Mental health is also explored in part but due to the time in which it was written this limited.

My advice to anyone thinking of reading it is take notes, lots of notes. You'll need them as there are so many characters and places. And don't be afraid to dive into other books along the way. In fact it might be helpful to have a couple of lighter books (both physically and emotionally) on the go at the same time.

The pacing is slow and while it works really well in my opinion. This maybe challenging for others.

A word of warning obviously this book was written a long time ago as such it's views on women are lacking. And the moral code the characters use doesn't match our own. While this is fine as a historical book, it might be destressing for women who have been emotionally abusive relationships.

As for the narration, it worked well. The narrator was able to give each character a distinctive voice.  This definitely helped with identity and remembering characters.  The narration was clear and at a good speed.

Loved it..

Yes, it's a "classic" and I realize that its supposed to be against some unwritten code to openly admit to hating a classic. But to my credibility, this was my second attempt at not hating it. I read it once as a teen and hated it then, so I thought maybe as an adult, experience and wisdom would let me read it through different eyes. Nope. Still hate it. It is just such typical Tolstoy: "Oh how I want what I shouldn't touch, but to hell with the consequences because I just cant help myself." To immediately after: "Gasp! We are doomed to hell; we shouldn't have done that! My life is ruined because I couldn't control my sexual desires so now I should just lay my head on this railroad track..." blah blah, blah. Honestly, I have never understood the hype over Tolstoy. I understand the era that wrought the double standard for women and premarital sex, but personally I just think this story was so repetitive, and dragged on and on and on like only Tolstoy could do. I'm convinced he had a serious ego problem and just liked to hear himself ramble on. This was the second book of his I tried, and the second attempt at this particular one...and well I guess this time was a "shame on me" scenario.

LEVIN IS THE MAN.

"if goodness has a cause , then it's no longer goodness; if it has a consequence then it is also not goodness. consequently, goodness is outside the chain of cause and effect."

Let me start by saying I went to this book blind. The only things I knew were that this is a russian classic from 19th century and it's a tragedy. And I gotta say I was shocked! In a good way. This book talks about topics I've never thought a book from this time would, such as infidelity, mental ilness, drugs addiction (I'm talking about Anna and morfium) and suicide. I read a shorter version and I don't know how I would feel about the original but I enjoyed this! And I'm definitely gonna read more classics.

As we all know, the strongest feeling is love. Love can manipulate and make you do things without any hesitation. Unfortunately, love also can cause problems and despair. Anna Karenina is a story about the tragic love of a woman who already had a husband and a son, but fell in love with another man. By that, she made herself rejected by society, which caused her to fall into a deep depression and finally commit a suicide. There are a lot of themes in the story, like love and jealousy, when Anna falls in love with Vronsky and couldn’t do anything about it. This led to a divorce between Anna and her husband, Alexei Karenin. However, Alexei didn’t accept her request, despite her affair with Vronsky. After not a long period of time, Anna started feeling jealous towards Vronskiy because he was going out to the society, while Anna couldn’t do that because she became a reject in the society when everybody got to know that she was cheating on Alexei while they were married. Tolstoy also made a major theme about the consequences of doing sinful things, by that illustrating the treatment of the society towards Anna as her punishment. This story can teach us that marring at the early age is not always a good decision. Based on the story, Anna regretted that she has married Sergei when she was young because all those years she was tolerated Alexei, even though he was busy all the time and barely spend any time taking care of his son and wife. I think every person can and will enjoy this story, who at least once fell in love and was feeling jealous. The way how Leo Tolstoy described and explained the feelings of Anna is brilliant. People who were jealous of someone can connect and perfectly understand Anna’s depression, what was she feeling, and why she did what she did. It is also a good sermon about what will happen if you will cheat on somebody with whom you are together like Anna cheated on her husband. The punishment will be the disrespect from the people who are surrounding you and a bad attitude towards you, same as the society has done with Anna. Nevertheless, the story contains complicated vocabulary, meanings, small details which will play a big role later in the novel, therefore you should pay a lot of your attention to everything in the novel. Overall, I really liked the way Tolstoy showed us the feelings which Anna was suffering throughout the novel. I also enjoyed the way Tolstoy connected the love story of Levin and Kitty, who started unsuccessfully but ended up happily in contradistinction to Anna and Vronsky. I even liked the way Tolstoy came up with the choice of Anna’s suicide when she jumped under the train. We can infer that she committed specifically that kind of a suicide because earlier in the novel she was a witness to an accident when a worker fell under the train. However, I think it would be much interesting if Tolstoy provided us with more amount of the thoughts and feelings of Vronskiy. As Tolstoy didn’t really do that, Vronskiy was a secretive character in the novel. I think it is a masterpiece of Russian literature and I very enjoyed reading it. I advise you to read it as well!

The final pages of Leo Tolsoy's 'Anna Karenina' are breathtaking, as timeless as they are meaningful. From society's revelation to a desperate and hateful Anna that all societal constructs, all traditions and fads -- religion, politics, class, education, marriage, gender, etc. -- are constructs of vanity, to Levin's pseudo-religious submission to an almost Kantian authority existing independently of those same constructs, these last pages prove worth the long and tragic, but ultimately redeeming, haul.

Ein interessantes Buch über Liebe, Ehe und Eifersucht. Tolstoi zeigt ganz unverblümt mehrere Beziehungen mit ihren Problemen auf, ohne dabei aber eine der beiden Parteien höher zu stellen. Dadurch betrachtet man alles sehr neutral und kann sich seine eigene Meinung zu den Situationen machen.

The way he details the sorts of weird incongruous thoughts that all these different sorts of people have is one of the most beautiful things an author has ever done.

Russian realism can be too dense. Definitely not an easy-read.

Tolstoy is the master of of character building. Although I already knew the ending, I was completely engaged in everyone's story throughout.