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.

A Few Good Things

1. The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak, is a fantastic book-turned-movie narrated by Death itself at the dawn of WWII. There are so many perfect quotes from the novel, I simply couldn't pick just one to share.

"I have hated words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right."

"If only she could be so oblivious again, to feel such love without knowing it, mistaking it for laughter."

And, finally:

"Humans, if nothing else, have the good sense to die.”
While I was not certain how it would translate into film, the director- Brian Percival- does a splendid job. There are a plethora of direct quotes, and it is a stunning piece of art and literature in film.

And a few songs:

2. "People Help the People", by Birdy.

3. "Glory and Gore", by Lorde.