Anna Karenina

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, 938 pages

This year's summer reading big-book, UCPL's fifth, and the first one that I finished before the third discussion. I have always claimed that I read this long ago, and I remembered much of the first half, but the second half of the book seems utterly unfamiliar. Sure, I knew the ending, and there's not much to Levin and Kitty's story that will stick with me for decades to come. Levin's religious awakening didn't seem to be as compelling as any of the long, novel length scenes earlier in the book: the reaping with the peasants, Vronsky and Anna's time in Italy, Stiva, Levin, and annoying friend out hunting. Those were all almost stories unto themselves.
Maybe the most readable of the five big books we have done, but it;s no War and Peace. 
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