Finished this today. Some of it was great and some was a struggle. Loved Anna’s story. Loved the Levin/Kitty love story. Got real bored with Russian provincial politics and especially with all of Levin’s stuff about farming in 19th century Russia. Learned more about that subject than I really wanted to know.

i got to page 200 – something of this book, and the details were way too extreme. we don’t need to know everything ! my advanced composition teacher then gave me the abridged version, and i stopped with 140 pages left. it still has a lot of details, and anna just plain pisses me off with her stupidity.

To me, this was worth reading for some particular personal reasons, although I had to slog through much of the book. I kind of wish I’d read a reader’s digest version :-)

Hippie1427’s comment below is valid, it probably would have been much more enjoyable to listen to on tape, since it would be easier to vaguely ignore the boring parts.

I have been listening to this on CD over the past month. While checking some of the other reviews, I realize parts of it may indeed have been tedious to read, but merely having to listen, I found the book entertaining, and quite satirical. In many ways it reminded my of vanitys fair, all but the end that is, which is a bit different from other books I’ve read from that era.

The day I never thought would come is finally here. Today I closed Anna Karenina FOREVER! The force-fed nightmare is over. While there were certainly beautifully written passges (helped by the Pevear-Volokhonsky translation, no doubt) I can’t ever imagine reading this book ever again. I will say the scene at the horse races was lyrical and sparked the imagination. And when Levin went on the hunting trip with Stiva, the natural descriptions made me feel as if I was there. But my brain was so choked by the extended description of Russian provincial politics at approximately page 600, I put the book down for a month and wouldn’t touch it. Way to throw a wrench into whatever plot momentum this thing had, Count Lev. At that point, knowing the fate of the heroine anyway, I couldn’t help wondering what could possibly be so important that we had to delay the climax for still another 200 pages. As I recall the upshot of those provincial elections was that….Levin was so confused by all the political doublespeak that he a) didn’t understand the voting process, and b) forgot who he was supposed to vote for anyway. So I made it through all that for absolutely no pay off whatsoever. Dear Tolstoy, allow me to quote Tim Gunn: I can’t want you to succeed more than you do! If the (secondary) main character can’t be bothered to understand it all—WHY SHOULD I? The only redeeming event in those final infernal pages were the descriptions of Anna’s internal emotional break down. I just kept thinking, “Yes, that’s just like a woman.” But that did not take up 200 pages. I persevered to say I had done it, but I would not recommend it.

When I first started the book I was excited, I thought it could be a really good book. I mean it’s a classic in American Literature. Whats more interesting then the common struggle between love and duty? Well it’s not this book, there are far more interesting books to read. Don’t wast your time reading this huge long story, of a messed up women who can’t take the repercussions of her actions. It’s not all horrible there are good parts but they a few and far between. There were so many charecters, they were all annoying in their own ways, and by the end it lacked luster for a conclusion. If you have time and nothing else to read, or read in short increments then by all means read, but I wouldn’t waste your time.

It had to go back to the library and, honestly, the characters were annoying the crap out of me anyway. But I’m sure I’ll pick it back up again sometime…

I just started part 8. The passionate love affair between Anna & Count Vronsky is engrossing. I’m am split between not liking her because she cheated on her husband and left her son and feeling sorry for her because she is shunned by society for making the choice of love over “duty”. I like Levin character – he is a man of integrity. Kitty slightly annoys me.

Re-reading this in the new P-V translation. Tolstoy is the master of uniting the Big and the Small; beautifully detailing inner life, and tying it together with social life and the larger state of the world. He also seems somehow able to put himself in just about anyone’s shoes, writing men, women, aristocrats, peasants, children, even animals with a deft compassion and empathy.

Anna K. has all of these things, and in a more accessible and personal package than War and Peace(which I also love.) I actually like the Levin/Kitty side story a lot better than the doomed Anna/Vronsky love affair, but the novel wouldn’t be as great without both, and the contrast that they set up. In the end, this is a novel about personal growth and evolution, and the myriad pathways: joyful, tragic, and everything in between, that it can take.

I read this in college, I think. This looks like a great new translation. Though it’s a little embarrasing to be reading an Oprah book. At least it’s Tolstoy. :-)