Tolstoy - Anna Karenina III

"I tried to read this book."


"I tried, I really tried."


"I tried. Oh, how I tried."


"I've tried. I really have."


"I tried, I really tried."


"I tried to read this, I really did."


"I wanted to shoot myself in the face to make the pain go away."


"The flaw with Anna Karenin (yes, this version is Karenin, not Karenina), is that Tolstoy took a stab at the ‘epiphany thing’ in the last 50 pages. Anna’s already dead and buried, the story lost its considerable head of steam and then the Russian Moralist kicked in with his weak, little stinger. War and Peace doesn’t have such a glaring flaw."

BAD BLUFF


"I was literally bored to tears."


"The story really should have been called Anna and thirty five other characters you need I remember."


"it was a sprawling over-dramatic soap opera that could possibly be a television series that women watch during the daytime."


"Throughout the book, despite having a love affair with Vronksy is told to be virtuous and what every woman in the upper class rings of the Russian elite should strive to be. My problem is that I don't think she's virtuous at all."


"If you read this, you have to remember that it's OK to skip large sections of the book. Especially when Levin starts thinking about the work ethic of the Russian peasants, or the various discussions of political theory, which have no place whatsoever in a book about adultery."


"Did I mention that we get to be inside all of the main characters' every thought and action when they are the focus? Not only do we have to 'listen' to Levin talk about farming we then have to read his inner dialogue about it for paragraphs at a time. *sigh* ... Great literature? No, just a long-winded Russian guy that received notoriety from other writers and now he will just not go away."


"WHO CARES? Who cares what your child's last name is!? When you're dead and Karenin is dead, what will it matter whether the child has his name and your estate?"


"A mistake. The cover of the book I read was of a girl's bare knees holding flowers. Now I know one should not judge a book by its cover, but I assumed Anna Karenina was going to be a story of a girl growing to adulthood ... But who am I to tell Tolstoy he blew it on this one?"


"Author man? Pick one name for your characters. Every man in this novel is called by three to four names. Confusing as anything. This has been called the greatest novel of all time, and to that, I say nonsense."