Read For Free Anna Karenina Scripted By Leo Tolstoy Issued As Hardbound

"Leo Tolstoy would meet hatred expressed in violence by love expressed in selfsuffering, "
Mahatma Gandhi


Through reading this praiseworthy classic, I have been forced to recalibrate my previously unreliable view of this celebrated author.

You see, I was forcefed Tolstoy at college his writing, not his flesh, silly! Mine wasn't a college for cannibals! and at the time only carried War and Peace under one arm so I might appear cleverer than I actually was.

So, how amazed was I that

Anna K has shown me the fun side to Leo T He is slyly hilarious.
How did I not know this

Please note that I haven't read this novel in Russian Cyrillic.
I acknowledge that my perception owes a great deal to the amazing interpretive work of the translators, but let's imagine that we in the West have enjoyed his work as the great man intended.


The title is something of a misnomer and doesn't do justice to an endearing love story that also captures the disparity between city and country life inthcentury Russia.

For a start, Anna K isn't the star of the show, That billing falls to our antihero, Konstantin Dmitrich Levin, a socially awkward, highlyintelligent loner who considers himself to be an ugly fellow with no redeemable qualities.

Despite being weighed down by all this existential angst, he worships Kitty Shcherbatskaya, an attractive young princess whom he believes to be out of his league.

Kitty is described as being "as easy to find in a crowd as a rose among nettles.
"
Tolstoy goes to great lengths to make us understand the inner workings of Levin's mind For Tolstoy, read Levin: they are one and the same.


Levin's love rival, raffishly handsome Count Vronsky, couldn't be more dissimilar, He is socially adept and careful not to offend, whereas Levin could probably start an argument with a goldfish.


What a fabulous read this is,
Tolstoy's levity and perspicacity shines from every page and the badinage between the main characters is exquisitely observed.

He does though have an idiosyncratic way of writing: adjectives are thickly laid on with a trowel and he loves to use repetition to emphasise a point.


Anna herself is fascinating, and to affirm just how fascinating she is, Tolstoy employs the word fascinating seven times in one paragraph! Look! I've even started doing it myself! How fascinating!

When not beating you about the head with repetition, the Russian master can do majestic descriptive imagery as good as anyone.
One simple scene, where Kitty collapses into a low chair, her ball gown rising about her like a cloud, was just perfectly captured.


This is a wonderful story of fated love and aristocratic hypocrisy,
Tolstoy uses Levin as his political mouthpiece to rail against the ills of latethcentury Russia, and the author's philosophy of nonviolent pacifism also had a direct influence on none other than Mahatma Gandi.


Anna Karenina is often cited as 'one of the best books ever written',
So who am I to disagree Tolstoy draws a portrait of three marriages or relationships that could not be more different.
Anna Karenina is rightly called a masterpiece, Moreover Tolstoy does not spare on social socialism and describes the beginnings of communism, deals with such existential themes as birth and death and the meaning of life.

Tolstoys narrative art and his narrative charm are at the highest level, He also seems like a close observer of human passions, feelings and emotions,
All in all I was touched by his book because it was one of the most impressive books I have ever read.


"Kendi yüceliğinin yüksekliğinden bana bakmasına bayılıyorum", Sayf

"Belki de sahip Olduğum şeylere sevindiğim, sahip olmadıklarıma da üzülmediğim için mutluyum.
"

Sayf

"Kadın dediğin öyle bir yaratık ki istediğin kadar incele, gene de hiç bilmediğin yanlarıyla karşılaşıyorsun.
. . "
Sayf

"Insana akıl, onu huzursuz eden şeylerden kurtulması için verilmiştir, "

Sayf.When Tolstoys work comes to mind, I think not of books but of life, Its hard to explain, but I dont think I ever feel as alive as I do while enveloped in his work its as if the very spirit of living has been written on the page, and Ive caught it just by reading.
No book Ive read has ever captured the essence of humanity so perfectly as in his writing, and Anna Karenina is no exception.
In this vast yet intimate novel, we explore the delicate intricacies of human relationships and how love has the power to be both a poison and an antidote depending on whose heart it ails.


The social commentary and juxtaposition of everyones relationships to one another in this story is executed with a brilliance that is hard to find.
I especially enjoyed seeing the differences between the adulteress Anna, and her adulterer brother Oblonsky, One being wholly shunned from society, while the other stays with his tortured wife and unhappy family to no disadvantage of his own.
Ill let you guess which is which, Even Vronsky who is half the reason for the turmoil everyone experiences throughout the book, lets not put this all on Anna remains highly regarded by the general public, despite what everyone knows he has involved himself in.
Yes, Anna displays quite despicable behavior, she is an antiheroine after all, but does she really deserve the extent of her tarnished reputation when her equally guilty male counterparts remain unscathed

One thing I will always commend Tolstoy for is his ability to test the limits of my empathy, especially when it comes to characters that are so easy to hate if you dont look past the surface but Anna Karenina is a work of art painted in shades of gray, and in order to fully understand and appreciate the nuanced beauty of it, we mustn't try to find the black and white.
I believe it is possible to feel greatly for Karenin, and also for Anna who caused him the devastation he feels as the novel progresses.
Every character in this book is so vivid and fleshed out that I find it impossible to put them into boxes and wholly dislike any of them.


MAJOR SPOILERS

I haven't felt so many emotions for a character in a long time, and my relationship with Anna is no doubt a complicated one.
She is such a wellrounded and nuanced character that despite her abhorrent actions, I still experienced a near overwhelming sense of dread as the last pages of her life drew to a close.
Anger, pity, and tentative understanding, mingled with grief for me as her story met its finale, the emotions so charged that there was a weight in my chest I couldnt shake off for days.


Though its titular characters life ended tragically, Anna Karenina would not be the beloved story it still is today if not for Levin.
His spiritual journey and character development brought this book to its true end which I ultimately believe is a happy one though Anna broke my heart, I felt it mending piece by piece as Constantin found the meaning of his life.
That last page will be a part of me for a long time, and my thoughts on it havent ceased since reading.
Alas, it is now my time to invest some meaningful good into my own life I am beyond grateful for the weeks I spent in this masterpiece and cannot wait to read it again and again and again.
WARNING: This is not a strict book review, but rather a metareview of what reading this book led to in my life.
Please avoid reading this if you're looking for an in depth analysis of sitelinkAnna Karenina, Thanks. I should also mention that there is a big spoiler in here, in case you've remained untouched by cultural osmosis, but you should read my review anyway to save yourself the trouble.


I grew up believing, like most of us, that burning books was something Nazis did though, of course, burning Disco records at Shea stadium was perfectly fine.
I believed that burning books was only a couple of steps down from burning people in ovens, or that it was, at least, a step towards holocaust.


If I heard the words "burning books" or "book burning," I saw Gestapo, SS and SA marching around a mountainous bonfire of books in a menacingly lit square.
It's a scary image: an image of censorship, of fear mongering, of mind control an image of evil.
So I never imagined that I would become a book burner,

That all changed the day Anna Karenina, that insufferable, whiny, pathetic, pain in the ass, finally jumped off the platform and killed herself.


That summer I was performing in Shakespeare in the Mountains, and I knew I'd have plenty of down time, so it was a perfect summer to read another,page novel.
I'd read sitelinkCount of Monte Cristo one summer when I was working day camps, sitelinkLes Miserable one summer when I was working at a residential camp, and sitelinkShogun in one of my final summers of zero responsibility.
A summer shifting back and forth between Marc Antony in sitelinkJulius Caesar and Pinch, Antonio and the Nun which I played with great gusto, impersonating Terry Jones in drag in sitelinkComedy of Errors, or sitting at a pub in the mountains while I waited for the matinee to give way to the evening show, seemed an ideal time to blaze through a big meaty classic.
I narrowed the field to two by sitelinkTolstoy: sitelinkWar and Peace and sitelinkAnna Karenina, I chose the latter and was very quickly sorry I did,

I have never met such an unlikable bunch of bunsholes in my life m'kay, . . I admit it I am applying Mr. Mackey's lesson. You should see how much money I've put in the vulgarity jar this past week, Seriously. I loathed them all and couldn't give a damn about their problems, By the end of the first part I was longing for Anna to kill herself I'd known the ending since I was a kid, and if you didn't and I spoiled it for you, sorry.
But how could you not know before now, I wanted horrible things to happen to everyone, I wanted Vronsky to die when his horse breaks its back, I wanted everyone else to die of consumption like Nikolai, And then I started thinking of how much fun it would be to rewrite this book with a mad Stalin cleansing the whole bunch of them and sending them to a Gulag in fact, this book is the ultimate excuse for the October Revolution though I am not comparing Stalinism to Bolshevism.
If I'd lived as a serf amongst this pack of idiots I'd have supported the Bolshies without a second thought.


I found the book excruciating, but I was locked in my life long need to finish ANY book I started.
It was a compulsion I had never been able to break, and I had the time for it that summer.
I spent three months in the presence of powerful and/or fun sitelinkShakespeare plays and contrasted those with a soul suckingly unenjoyable sitelinkTolstoy novel, and then I couldn't escape because of my own head.
I told myself many things to get through it all: "I am missing the point," "Something's missing in translation," "I'm in the wrong head space," "I shouldn't have read it while I was living and breathing Shakespeare," "It will get better.
"

It never did, Not for me. I hated every m'kaying page, Then near the end of the summer, while I was sitting in the tent a couple of hours from the matinee I remember it was Comedy of Errors because I was there early to set up the puppet theatre, I finally had the momentary joy of Anna's suicide.
Ecstasy! She was gone. And I was almost free, But then I wasn't free because I still had the final part of the novel to read, and I needed to get ready for the show, then after the show I was heading out to claim a campsite for an overnight before coming back for an evening show of Caesar.
I was worried I wouldn't have time to finish that day, but I read pages whenever I found a free moment and it was looking good.


Come twilight, I was through with the shows and back at camp with Erika and my little cousin Shaina.
The fire was innocently crackling, Erika was making hot dogs with Shaina, so I retreated to the tent and pushed through the rest of the book.
When it was over, I emerged full of anger and bile and tossed the book onto the picnic table with disgust.
I sat in front of the fire, eating my hot dogs and drinking beer, and that's when the fire stopped being innocent.
I knew I needed to burn this book,

I couldn't do it at first, I had to talk myself into it, and I don't think I could have done it at all if Erika hadn't supported the decision.
She'd lived through all of my complaining, though, and knew how much I hated the book and I am pretty sure she hated listening to my complaints almost as much.
So I looked at the book and the fire, I ate marshmallows and spewed my disdain, I sang Beatles songs, then went back to my rage, and finally I just stood up and said "M'kay it!"

I tossed it into the flames and watched that brick of a book slowly twist and char and begin to float into the night sky.
The fire around the book blazed high for a good ten minutes, the first minute of which was colored by the inks of the cover, then it tumbled off its prop log and into the heart of the coals, disappearing forever.
I cheered and danced and exorcised that book from my system, I felt better. I was cleansed of my communion with those whiny Russians, And I vowed in that moment to never again allow myself to get locked into a book I couldn't stand it's still hard, but I have put a few aside.


Since the burning of sitelinkAnna Karenina there have been a few books that have followed it into the flames.
Some because I loved them and wanted to give them an appropriate pyre, some because I loathed them and wanted to condemn them to the fire.
I don't see Nazis marching around the flames anymore either, I see a clear mountain night, I taste bad wine and hot dogs, I hear wind forty feet up in the tops of the trees, I smell the chemical pong of toxic ink, and I feel the relief of never having to see sitelinkAnna Karenina on my bookshelf again.


Whew. I feel much better now, .