Let me say for the record, I'm not the newest fan of Leo Tolstoy on the planet, but I don't hate the book. I may bluster about reading it, but some of it's just talk.
He's got some good chapters in there. The one where Anna thought she might die and when Vronsky tried to kill himself and failed were actually kind of tense. I like the brimming story between Levin and Kitty. I have trouble with the chapters when Levin's threshing wheat with the peasants and when Alexey Alexandrovitch (aka Karenin) is going on about something with the native tribes and some kind of legislation.
I get it. I understand why Tolstoy writes them. I just don't enjoy them. I like genre fiction, about plot and not always about character and the mise en scene of a novel. I'm sure that I'm missing literary symbolism left and right in the story. Maybe if I was reading it for class and had a professor asking pointed questions, I would be getting more of the subtext.
I'm letting myself read the next Casey Daniels/Pepper Martin book and then I'm going back to AK Pt. V to keep making progress.
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I just finished Part IV and I could have written the exact same blog post word-for-word. I barely made it through Part III with Levin's boring life and all the farm talk and then couldn't put it down in Part IV. I was so nervous towards the end with the baby and Vronsky and Anna. I'm hoping the momentum continues, but that may be too much to ask.
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