Anna Karenina (Word Cloud Classics) Flexibound – January 15, 2013

First let me say, and you may have guessed if you read my reviews regularly, I listened to this book on audiotape. A bonus was it was one of my favorite voice actors, Devina Porter, that did the narration. Her skills and talent shone brightly in this book and I was very glad to have her as the narrator. It took me over a month to get through, and I have a long commute. However, I feel that it was well worth my time.Secondly, I was blown away by this book. I had always heard that Tolstoy was dry, long-winded, and boring, however, I found the book very interesting, detailed, and in the same spirit (not topics or subjects of course) as Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters. I have placed it on my 100 Books to Read Before You Die list with Jane Eyre. I find it somewhat more informative than the writings by the women because it gives a full snapshot of what life was like in turn-of-the-century Russia.The book essentially follows two couples – Anna and Vronsky, Levin and Kitty. There are numerous other important characters, but mostly it revolves around how everyone interacts with these four people. Anna is married to Alexei Karenin, but falls in love with Vronsky, causing numerous issues with her marriage. Levin is a country gentleman who has loved Kitty for years, but has never been brave enough to offer his hand. When he attempts to Vronsky stands in his way and he feels defeated. Both couples relationships grow and radiate, twist and turn, hum with love, and snag and break in different times, for different reasons, and in different ways. It is quite an emotional book for the period.What I found extremely fascinating was the descriptions, explanations, and portrayal of turn of the century Russian society a short time after the Revolution. I had known nothing about Russia, its history or its people. I learned a lot just reading the book. Through the characters you learned about how the whole populace functioned, from the princes to the commoners, and their attitudes toward each other. Attitudes and ideas about education, women’s rights, politics, etc. were also discussed, these three topics being the most primary, along with agriculture and labor. The author gave an honest and effective portrayal of how society was both attempting and not attempting to change at the same time.Furthermore, the book gave an exemplary account on the subtle influences of relationship. It is a great study on how insecurity, depression, stress, and social isolation effects people. Additionally, trust and pride are also shown in the different relationships. The commonplace attitude of mistresses and women’s places help to demonstrate the role of marriages and children. It was interesting to see how society and individuals were so influenced and could influence the happiness of others.I would recommend this book to any serious reader. It is very long and you have to be determined to finish it, but it is well worth it. I would suggest audiobook as well, as I find it very enjoyable and helps to ease the dryness of some of the passages. All in all, it is a fantastic literary work.

I feel I'm not qualified to review this book. I'm just a regular guy, not a literature professor, but maybe my comments will be helpful to some. This book is really good. It's all about the characters. Many times while I was reading I wondered how all of this was going to end. It wasn't like a regular story where there's a pretty clear end goal, like get the bad guy, or solve the mystery. It was more like things are just happening and I wonder what's going to happen next. I thought maybe it's just going to stop abruptly, as if Tolstoy would just suddenly be done writing about all these characters, but it really did have a solid ending to conclude everything. Thinking back on the story I remember many ups and downs and tense moments and light hearted moments, it was very enjoyable and pretty easy to read.One thing that really amazed me was how well Tolstoy could switch between different characters and settings. Everyone had distinct personalities and the way they were all portrayed was with so much compassion and understanding that as a reader I could really see parts of myself in everyone. There was no one character that I related to more than any other. I was able to relate to every single one of them differently. I believe this is the reason Tolstoy is considered a master.The pace of the book is a little slow for me because I'm a slow reader, but in retrospect I feel like the pace was actually pretty good and it only felt slow because I had absolutely no idea where the story was going. Every chapter had something new happening and the story just strolled right along. Probably like riding a tractor for 50 miles. You've got plenty of time to look at all the flowers and clouds and barns and animals along the way, it takes forever, but it never stops moving.It helped a lot to have this book on my kindle because towards the end there was more and more french that was easy to translate with the kindle. The port to the kindle was perfect. I saw no strange spacing or oddly misspelled words.Overall I recommend giving this book a shot. Don't be discouraged by the length. I realize a reader may feel compelled to read this particular book just so they can say that they did. It's got that trophy book status. I feel like that's a bad thing though. If you find yourself a few hundred pages in and are interested in what's going on, then keep going. If however after a few hundred pages you feel like it's a chore to read, then don't bother, it's not going to suddenly become more interesting after any point in the book. It's very consistent, you can trust this author and the translation, the ending won't let you down, there will be no long lulls. What you get in the beginning is what you get through the entire book, it's very steady and very high quality writing.