Title: Anna Karenina
Author: Leo Tolstoy
Genre: “Realist Novel” (which really means fiction that’s trying not to be fiction)
My Rating: 4/5

For months now, I’d been reading Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. Why did it take me months, you wonder. Well because I found it a difficult book to read. I think between the Russian language and multiple storylines, I often found it hard to keep up or find my bearings. Right as I get settled and situated into one storyline, we’d abruptly switch to another. Then, we’d get a great deal of detail about a character that it turns out isn’t actually that important. So I kept putting the book down, reading other books, and then feeling the need to finish this one.

From what I’ve written thus far, you’d think I’d give it a 1/5 rating. I don’t because I found a workaround to the obstacles keeping me from reading and understanding the book. I bought the audiobook. With that, I was able to sit back, relax, and really focus on the content. Relying on the reader/speaker’s tone, inflection, pauses, and pronunciation to make the content a bit clearer. And it worked.

While I probably won’t read the book again, I will also never forget it. Tolstoy has an ability to convey the depth and breath of emotion - positive and negative - very vividly. For example, there’s a part of the book where a character dies from an illness. This part of the book spans several chapters. We follow this dying character from the moment he realizes he’s dying, to the moment he accepts it, to the moment he rejects it again, and then to the moment he actually dies. I cried while listening to it. We learned of his thoughts, feelings, regrets, and hopes. We learned of how it impacted those close to him. And we were with him to the end. I’ve never read anything like it. And while sad, it was absolutely breathtaking that Tolstoy was able to convey that through mere words.

So, read it if you dare lol. Or, get the audiobook. It’s on many of the lists of books we “should” read. So it’s worth a shot.