Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.97 AVERAGE
3.97 AVERAGE
I can understand why this book is considered a literary masterpiece. It covers just about everything that was relevant in pre-socialist Russia and today - fear of death, social classes (peasants, aristocrats…), politics, religion and agriculture. Everything. Whilst some of these concepts reign eternal and timeless, there were a few tangents about agriculture and politics that was not as riveting to read. However, I believe that these tangents are still integral to the book as they embed Tolstoy’s ideas and opinions about what was relevant and important at the time, providing an extensive lens into pre-socialist Russia.
Anna Karenina is such a brilliant character - selfish, with narcissistic tendencies and incredibly alluring. On the surface, her death is selfish and is of childish means to teach Vronsky a lesson, but it is more than that. It is the result of her mental turmoil that was exacerbated by the unfair judgement of her peers. Why did she receive the short end of the stick when Vronsky was also guilty and even her own brother, Oblonsky, with affairs of his own (and a repeat offender)? Double standards at its simplest, purest form.
The main message I got from this book was of truths. Truth is the most powerful message in this book for me - the truthful and honest nature of Kitty and Levin’s relationship is what prevailed over Anna and Vronsky’s. Truth is what made hypocritical and contradictory character’s like Madame Stahl, appear as sinister and false. I will end this with Levin finally finding his truth at the end of this book:
The main message I got from this book was of truths. Truth is the most powerful message in this book for me - the truthful and honest nature of Kitty and Levin’s relationship is what prevailed over Anna and Vronsky’s. Truth is what made hypocritical and contradictory character’s like Madame Stahl, appear as sinister and false. I will end this with Levin finally finding his truth at the end of this book:
my life…every moment of it no longer meaningless as it was before, but has an unquestionable meaning of goodness with which I have the power to invest it.
Increíble. Es un librazo, aunque yo no lo hubiera titulado Anna Karenina.
De las mejores lecturas del año.
De las mejores lecturas del año.
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
dark
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Moral of the story: happiness is less about the circumstances of our lives and more about the perspective. the grass always seems greener.
Why I like this book:
It’s a dimensional and complex portrayal of human relationships.
Why I like this book:
It’s a dimensional and complex portrayal of human relationships.
I finally finished this after taking several breaks to read other books (it's wonderful, but very long). I love the depth and detail with which Tolstoy lingers on human emotions over the course of an ordinary day or during a peak experience like one's wedding or the birth of a first child.
Who has decked the heavenly firmament with its lights?
A love for A Gentleman in Moscow possessed me to read this book and then as csop (youtuber) says, it beat me into loving it. Formally it is (and this feels reductive to say, to TOLSTOY) written well with straightforward prose that is funny when it needs to be. I was reading this in Beta Way and had to stop laughing out loud when Levin started to "recount every unnecessary detail of Kitty's birth" (roughly paraphrased) to the doctor. I did have a love-hate relationship with this book because of the absolute stamina it required of me, given that it is a literal thousand pages, and sometimes I got sick of it. One can only take so much nothingness of the Russian aristocracy, but I found it best to read this in chunks as the scenes become much full the more it is read. And yes, I did start reading this in February then stop during the semester and pick it back up again now in the summer, I don't regret it. This book demands those chunks of time, personally. On to the actual review:
Vengeance is mine; I will repay
In 19th century Russia, we follow three couples: Anna and Karenin, trapped in a loveless marriage; Stiva and Dolly, a wife subjugated domestically by a useless cheating husband; and Kitty and Levin, young people discovering themselves and their faith through love. There is a plot, but for a thousand pages I cannot call it plot-driven. I felt like I was witnessing scenes from a life, no matter how mundane they might be, and I appreciated this quality at times. Tolstoy also has this prescient and exposing capability to write a human so exactly: while I'm thinking this is how I would feel If I were this character, I read the next sentence and find out Tolstoy has already written that exactly, and with all the parts I would censor for the sake of being a good person. We follow how Vronsky seduces Kitty only to leave her for Anna, who he unknowingly seduces all the way to the gates of suffering, leading to her tragic suicide. At the novel's start, we witness Anna convincing Dolly not to leave Stiva even if he is an adulterer. Stiva faces no consequences for this actions and is able to live his shallow life, while Anna, who has become an adultress, suffers so much (helplessness, powerlessness in a patriarchal society, social isolation, separation from her son). As she says, she has chosen this, but she is suffering and needs help. You cannot help but feel for her, honestly, even if it is deserved. This begs the question: when one commits wrongs and suffers as a consequence, how should one treat that suffering, especially if it caused suffering in turn? As a reward, as punishment, as an inseparable part of their life from now on?
a feeling like repulsion, and akin to what a drowning man might feel who has shaken off another man clinging to him. That man did drown.
but I don't want to profit by his misery. I too am suffering, and shall suffer; I am losing what I prized above everything--
One of the central themes is this: the double standard applied to the same wrongs of men and women, which may seem obvious now, but it was revolutionary then and the treatment Tolstoy gives to it revolutionized it to me still. The choices we make frame not only society's view of ourselves but also our own.
I particularly like the contrast between Levin's shrugging off of societal artifice and his internal freedom from it to society's damnation of Anna, who could never be free; she was judged even up to her choice of death. Even Tolstoy does not give Anna what she wants: when she dies, instead of the ostentatious displays of grief she wanted to invoke in Vronsky, we get Sergey Ivanovitch's totally irrelevant presence. I literally screamed and said I do not care about this dude! but Tolstoy does not spare Anna any indulgence.
Life had to be got through somehow till death did come
All of it had had meaning before, but now there was no reality in it.
He tried to dispel these thoughts, he tried to persuade himself that he was not living for this transient life, but for the life of eternity, and that there was love and peace in his heart. But the fact that he had in this transient, trivial life made, as it seemed to him, a few trivial mistakes tortured him as though the eternal salvation in which he believed had no existence.
Lastly, I empathize with Anna's spiral. It is one that can only be understood by someone who has lost it all, has no one on their side, and can only be saved by themselves but can no longer see the reason why one should do so. In the face of so much suffering, why live to keep suffering? In contrast, I appreciate Levin's reconciliations on the same question: despite the meaningless of life and continual suffering, one cannot help but keep living. God's existence is on unfounded ground, but if the masses are propelled to general goodness and kindness, can God not exist? Or are the masses propelled to this due to their necessary belief in God's divine wrath? A bit evangelizing towards the end but he's right: can it be helped, being alive? We live regardless.
In an infinity of time, and in infinity of matter, in infinite space, a bubble, a bubble organism, separates itself, and that bubble maintain itself awhile and then burst, and that bubble is--I!
Some other quotes:
>And so Liberalism had become a habit of Stepan Arkadyevtich's, and he liked his newspaper, as he did his cigar after dinner, for the slight fog it diffused in his brain.
I'm so happy that I've become positively hateful; I've forgotten everything.
Forgive me not according to my unworthiness, but according to Thy lovingkindness.
All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.
God has made me so that I must love and live.
He considered the Russian peasant as occupying a stage of development intermediate between the ape and the man, and at the same time in the local assemblies no one was readier to shake hands with the peasants and listen to the opinions.
Because a just idea cannot but be fruitful.
in spite of his excess in pleasure he looked as fresh as a big glossy green Dutch cucumber.
Our love, if it could be stronger, will be strengthened by there being something terrible in it.
now one-half of his abilities is devoted to deceiving himself, and the other to justifying the deceit.
And the full chorus of the unseen choir rose up, filling the whole church, from the windows to the vaulted roof, with broad waves of melody.
the unity of the impression being essential to art.
"But that's not work, like the work of a peasant or a learned profession." "Granted, but it's work in the sense that his activity produces a result--the railways. But of course you think the railways are useless." "No., that's another question; I am prepared to admit that they're useful. But all profit that is out of proportion to the labor expended is dishonest."
the first glass sticks in the throat, the second flies down like a hawk, but after the third they're like tiny little birds.
A love for A Gentleman in Moscow possessed me to read this book and then as csop (youtuber) says, it beat me into loving it. Formally it is (and this feels reductive to say, to TOLSTOY) written well with straightforward prose that is funny when it needs to be. I was reading this in Beta Way and had to stop laughing out loud when Levin started to "recount every unnecessary detail of Kitty's birth" (roughly paraphrased) to the doctor. I did have a love-hate relationship with this book because of the absolute stamina it required of me, given that it is a literal thousand pages, and sometimes I got sick of it. One can only take so much nothingness of the Russian aristocracy, but I found it best to read this in chunks as the scenes become much full the more it is read. And yes, I did start reading this in February then stop during the semester and pick it back up again now in the summer, I don't regret it. This book demands those chunks of time, personally. On to the actual review:
Vengeance is mine; I will repay
In 19th century Russia, we follow three couples: Anna and Karenin, trapped in a loveless marriage; Stiva and Dolly, a wife subjugated domestically by a useless cheating husband; and Kitty and Levin, young people discovering themselves and their faith through love. There is a plot, but for a thousand pages I cannot call it plot-driven. I felt like I was witnessing scenes from a life, no matter how mundane they might be, and I appreciated this quality at times. Tolstoy also has this prescient and exposing capability to write a human so exactly: while I'm thinking this is how I would feel If I were this character, I read the next sentence and find out Tolstoy has already written that exactly, and with all the parts I would censor for the sake of being a good person. We follow how Vronsky seduces Kitty only to leave her for Anna, who he unknowingly seduces all the way to the gates of suffering, leading to her tragic suicide. At the novel's start, we witness Anna convincing Dolly not to leave Stiva even if he is an adulterer. Stiva faces no consequences for this actions and is able to live his shallow life, while Anna, who has become an adultress, suffers so much (helplessness, powerlessness in a patriarchal society, social isolation, separation from her son). As she says, she has chosen this, but she is suffering and needs help. You cannot help but feel for her, honestly, even if it is deserved. This begs the question: when one commits wrongs and suffers as a consequence, how should one treat that suffering, especially if it caused suffering in turn? As a reward, as punishment, as an inseparable part of their life from now on?
a feeling like repulsion, and akin to what a drowning man might feel who has shaken off another man clinging to him. That man did drown.
but I don't want to profit by his misery. I too am suffering, and shall suffer; I am losing what I prized above everything--
One of the central themes is this: the double standard applied to the same wrongs of men and women, which may seem obvious now, but it was revolutionary then and the treatment Tolstoy gives to it revolutionized it to me still. The choices we make frame not only society's view of ourselves but also our own.
I particularly like the contrast between Levin's shrugging off of societal artifice and his internal freedom from it to society's damnation of Anna, who could never be free; she was judged even up to her choice of death. Even Tolstoy does not give Anna what she wants: when she dies, instead of the ostentatious displays of grief she wanted to invoke in Vronsky, we get Sergey Ivanovitch's totally irrelevant presence. I literally screamed and said I do not care about this dude! but Tolstoy does not spare Anna any indulgence.
Life had to be got through somehow till death did come
All of it had had meaning before, but now there was no reality in it.
He tried to dispel these thoughts, he tried to persuade himself that he was not living for this transient life, but for the life of eternity, and that there was love and peace in his heart. But the fact that he had in this transient, trivial life made, as it seemed to him, a few trivial mistakes tortured him as though the eternal salvation in which he believed had no existence.
Lastly, I empathize with Anna's spiral. It is one that can only be understood by someone who has lost it all, has no one on their side, and can only be saved by themselves but can no longer see the reason why one should do so. In the face of so much suffering, why live to keep suffering? In contrast, I appreciate Levin's reconciliations on the same question: despite the meaningless of life and continual suffering, one cannot help but keep living. God's existence is on unfounded ground, but if the masses are propelled to general goodness and kindness, can God not exist? Or are the masses propelled to this due to their necessary belief in God's divine wrath? A bit evangelizing towards the end but he's right: can it be helped, being alive? We live regardless.
In an infinity of time, and in infinity of matter, in infinite space, a bubble, a bubble organism, separates itself, and that bubble maintain itself awhile and then burst, and that bubble is--I!
Some other quotes:
>And so Liberalism had become a habit of Stepan Arkadyevtich's, and he liked his newspaper, as he did his cigar after dinner, for the slight fog it diffused in his brain.
I'm so happy that I've become positively hateful; I've forgotten everything.
Forgive me not according to my unworthiness, but according to Thy lovingkindness.
All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.
God has made me so that I must love and live.
He considered the Russian peasant as occupying a stage of development intermediate between the ape and the man, and at the same time in the local assemblies no one was readier to shake hands with the peasants and listen to the opinions.
Because a just idea cannot but be fruitful.
in spite of his excess in pleasure he looked as fresh as a big glossy green Dutch cucumber.
Our love, if it could be stronger, will be strengthened by there being something terrible in it.
now one-half of his abilities is devoted to deceiving himself, and the other to justifying the deceit.
And the full chorus of the unseen choir rose up, filling the whole church, from the windows to the vaulted roof, with broad waves of melody.
the unity of the impression being essential to art.
"But that's not work, like the work of a peasant or a learned profession." "Granted, but it's work in the sense that his activity produces a result--the railways. But of course you think the railways are useless." "No., that's another question; I am prepared to admit that they're useful. But all profit that is out of proportion to the labor expended is dishonest."
the first glass sticks in the throat, the second flies down like a hawk, but after the third they're like tiny little birds.