Showing posts with label anna karenina. Show all posts
Showing posts with label anna karenina. Show all posts
Saturday, March 8, 2014
a new beginning
After finishing my first Tolstoy novel, Anna Karenina, I have decided to embark on a new, even longer journey. The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas, is 1200+ pages to Anna Karenina's 800, so I'm certain it will take me a while to finish. I am incredibly looking forward to reading this, and to adventuring alongside the protagonist Edmond Dantès. If anyone has read The Count of Monte Cristo, please do let me know- I'd love to find out what you all think of it.
Sunday, March 2, 2014
unhappy families
"All happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
There are many unhappy families in Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, a wonderful, wonderful novel with I have been reading for over a month now. Usually, I am a fast reader. There are many books I have sat down with, and have not stood up until I had finished reading it. Anna Karenina, however, is- as I've said before- a process. It is beautiful and a lengthy near eight hundred pages. It catalogs several groups of characters, all who intertwine.
For example, the novel does not begin with the title character. It begins with Stepan "Stiva" Oblonsky and his wife, Dolly. He is having an affair, and this is where the unhappiness begins. He is the brother of Anna, and she comes to fix the problem.
However, when Anna starts to have her own troubles, everyone around her begins to have troubles as well. By the end of the novel, Stiva and Dolly's marriage has completely fallen apart. Kitty, Dolly's sister, is rejected by Vronsky, who becomes Anna's paramour instead. Anna's husband becomes controlled by a woman who tells his son that Anna is dead.
Tolstoy, I have found, is a genius of the written word. There is so much in Anna Karenina that at first caused me to wonder about it inclusion, but by the end, everything comes together. It is not neat or tied with a bow, and it is not happy.
But Tolstoy certainly shows his readers the differences in unhappy families.
There are many unhappy families in Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, a wonderful, wonderful novel with I have been reading for over a month now. Usually, I am a fast reader. There are many books I have sat down with, and have not stood up until I had finished reading it. Anna Karenina, however, is- as I've said before- a process. It is beautiful and a lengthy near eight hundred pages. It catalogs several groups of characters, all who intertwine.
For example, the novel does not begin with the title character. It begins with Stepan "Stiva" Oblonsky and his wife, Dolly. He is having an affair, and this is where the unhappiness begins. He is the brother of Anna, and she comes to fix the problem.
However, when Anna starts to have her own troubles, everyone around her begins to have troubles as well. By the end of the novel, Stiva and Dolly's marriage has completely fallen apart. Kitty, Dolly's sister, is rejected by Vronsky, who becomes Anna's paramour instead. Anna's husband becomes controlled by a woman who tells his son that Anna is dead.
Tolstoy, I have found, is a genius of the written word. There is so much in Anna Karenina that at first caused me to wonder about it inclusion, but by the end, everything comes together. It is not neat or tied with a bow, and it is not happy.
But Tolstoy certainly shows his readers the differences in unhappy families.
Thursday, February 6, 2014
you can quote me on it
It has been a while before I've posted some of my favorite literary quotes, so I decided to renew that tradition:
“He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.”
-Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina
“Being in a minority, even in a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.”
-George Orwell's 1984
“When an uninstructed multitude attempts to see with its eyes, it is exceedingly apt to be deceived.”
-Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter
“Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilised by education: they grow there, firm as weeds among stones.”
-Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre
“He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.”
-Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina
“Being in a minority, even in a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.”
-George Orwell's 1984
“When an uninstructed multitude attempts to see with its eyes, it is exceedingly apt to be deceived.”
-Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter
“Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilised by education: they grow there, firm as weeds among stones.”
-Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre
Monday, December 9, 2013
Somewhere There's a Party
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| Everyone loves puppies and books, correct?
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A few classic book recommendations...
1. "The Great Gatsby", by F. Scott Fitzgerald
2. "Anna Karenina", by Leo Tolstoy
3. "Fahrenheit 451", by Ray Bradbury
And this list of the top one hundred teen novels.
Enjoy!
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