Anna Karenina.- Leo Tolstoy -- Recomend




In my opinion, Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy is one of the great authors of all time. In my post on my philosophy of reading, I distinguish between valuable and worthless fiction. A major piece of the distinction is how well the characters in the story imitate real human thought, action, and feeling. Tolstoy is a master at capturing thought and feeling in a way history never can.

Anna Karenina isn't something that can be summed up or skimmed; you have to step into the pages and live the richly complex lives of each of the interwoven characters to extract the benefit of this masterpiece. I'll admit, the book is massive, it took me a month to get through it (normally I take 3-4 days per book). The journey is well worth the reward.

I'm not going to try to even hit the main points of the book. Suffice it to say it focuses on the meaning and importance of relationships but is also full of sociological, governmental, philosophical, and historical nuance portrayed in exquisite beauty. Fundamentally the book is about a search for happiness. (compare to Frankl's seminal work) It almost makes me want to study Russian.

Favorite quote: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” and 

“He soon felt that the fulfillment of his desires gave him only one grain of the mountain of happiness he had expected. This fulfillment showed him the eternal error men make in imagining that their happiness depends on the realization of their desires.”

Verdict: Recommend, but only if you're married or seriously thinking about it, otherwise, this might just be boring!

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