Rating: 
Summary: It's all a matter of taste, after all
Review: This will not, perhaps, be very helpful to you, future reader, to hear but: in my humble opinion, there is no way to *learn* to like Tolstoy. There's no process of adjustment, no method of accustoming oneself to the prose, the descriptions, the style, the themes. It's either there within you or it's not.In other words, if you begin "Anna Karenina" and you are not immediately swept up into the story, with its many characters, family tensions, and ornate depiction of Russian society on many levels... If you are ten chapters in and going forward on pure stubbornness... Put the book down. Walk away. This is not for you. For example: I read in an earlier review that the reader was "bored" by Levin's description of working in the fields with the peasants on his estate. Personally, I find that to be one of the most compelling passages in the entire book. I'm not right while the other reader is wrong, but I will say this: it's a matter of taste. If you are not engrossed by the complexities of this vast and entrenched society, if you do not feel sympathy for Levin, or feel drawn to Anna, or understand the attraction of Vronsky, then do not torture yourself, and move on. If you're staying, though -- Anna remains, I believe, one of the most interesting protagonists in literature, and precisely because while the reader is almost unwillingly forced to sympathize with her feelings, it is similarly impossible to remove the stigma of blame from her, watching the wreck she makes of her life. Her transformation from the alluring and enchanting woman who so impresses young Kitty, to the sad and scorned woman that Vronsky himself no longer truly loves, in the end, is all of her own doing -- but who among us can say we would have successfully avoided all of her misjudgments? Contrasted with Anna is Levin, though their lives are intertwined only through friends and relatives and they have no real knowledge of each other -- Levin is Anna's exact opposite. We meet him as an awkward and abrupt, solitary man, with troubled family relations and an unrequited love -- and in the end, after his long journey of self-awareness, we leave him in a place of pure contentment. We warm to Levin and take him to our hearts, perhaps because his choices are the ones we would *like* to think we would make. If you ask the average American to name a Tolstoy novel, they will generally say "War and Peace", but I've always thought "Anne Karenina" to be the more human story, the more accessible, and perhaps the greater classic because of that. It truly is a matter of taste -- but if it's to yours, you'll have stumbled upon a literary find you'll treasure always.
Rating:
Summary: the best?
Review: this was a great book, in part 6 things got slow but overall it was good especially in the end when things start to wrap up,levin is my favorite character in lit. i'm having a hard time calling this better than the brothers karamazov, i guess all i can say is that they are different, for now its off to gogol or proust, any reccomendations?
Rating:
Summary: Great works of Literature need readers who love them.
Review: There are times when one's own personal relation to a work of literature seems mistaken even to oneself. Anna Karenina has always seemed to me a poor cousin of War and Peace a book I have loved from my early teenage years. And this though there were characters and scenes which I deeply loved. Not Anna Karenina, but fumbling Tolstoy alter ego Levin was at the center of what I most cared for in Anna Karenina. His long struggle to find his way his awkwardness his transformation in love were to me something to identify with and take heart from. Anna's story and Vronsky's appealed to me less. Heartless Vronsky I did not like, and I too somehow resented and disliked. Why did women fall precisely for this kind of character so unlike myself? How I wondered could Anna betray her husband even if he was not so interesting or alright? Wasn't it the job of a wife first of all to be faithful, and wasn't anything outside this simply sin and betrayal? In other words I had one side of Tolstoy's equation the wrongfulness and sin of the adultery without understanding really the other side , the passionate love that comes out of desperation? So too I must confess that it was difficult for me to deeply identify with and understand ' a woman's story'.All this says I am afraid little about Tolstoy's novel and much about the limitations of one in this case not particularly perceptive reader of it. Thinking back on it now I remember being moved by the death- bed scene of Levin's brother. I do think too of the broad expansive feeling of life there is in Tolstoy's literature. Many have remarked that no one describes nature in such a natural way as Tolstoy. There is of course so much in this book that I did not grasp, that others have experienced and known through it. Perhaps the level of Tolstoy's imagination , his emotional grasp of human life and character is simply so much greater than mine than I could not grasp it. Great works of Literature need readers who love them. I failed the test with this one.
Rating: 
Summary: Another great book by Tolstoy!
Review: This was a very interesting book. I actually read it because I had loved War and Peace so much, so I figured another Leo Tolstoy book would be just as good. While War and Peace was better, this was pretty good too. I can't say that I always love his story lines, but his style of writing, character development, and depth of detail without always being boring makes me love his books. One thing about Leo Tolstoy is he always has many different stories going on within one story - and brings them all together in the end, making a concise but informative summary difficult. As the title would bring you to assume, one of the main characters is a woman named Anna. Anna is a real life character - meaning that he makes her very human. She is content in her life - despite her loveless marriage, until she meets Vronsky - a woman-loving bachelor. She has an affair with him, and eventually leaves her husband and much-loved son Seryozha to run off with him. Throughout the book her life gets less and less moral, and more and more dissatisfying. As this is going on, there's Kitty - who once loved Vronsky, but eventually falls in love with Levin, who has been in love with her for a long time. Levin is probably the books "hero", having all the lovable qualities of one - kind and always helping others, dependable, sensitive, and jovial at times. And lastly but not least, there is the couple Stepan and Dolly Arkadyevitch - Stepan being Anna's brother, and Dolly being Kitty's sister. They have the typical middle-aged couple relationship - no passion and not much love, but both pretty content with the situation - Stepan having several "mistresses". Stepan is a lazy spendthrift - using up all his and his wife's fortunes, while Dolly is a very steady mother, trying to save what little they have left. Tying all these characters and their stories into one, Tolstoy also integrates conversations/arguments on such a relevant topic of his day as communism into this amazing story. Although the book was, at times, a little slow, it was definitely worth reading, if only to get another taste of Leo Tolstoy's wonderful style of writing. I would definately recommend it those who love old classics!
Rating:
Summary: It isn't about Anna
Review: I had very high expectations for this book, and they were exceeded. The opening line sets the tone of what one can expect from the rest of the book, which is the essence of Tolstoy. He is able to articulate complex thoughts and observations that we all unknowingly have into pithy, memorable statements.
There is a beautiful softness to this story but you must divert your attention from Anna and Vronsky and rather look towards Kitty and Levin to see it. These two characters are as heroic as Anna and Vronsky are miserable. I didn't consider the ending to be the denouement to Anna's eventual fate. I took it away as the point of the whole book.
Levin is Tolstoy.
Rating:
Summary: A enduring classic.
Review: Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina. Translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude; with an introduction by Malcolm Bradbury. Oxford World's Classics. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Pp. xiii; 1002. ISBN 0192100351.
1. Edition:
The Oxford World's Classics have been around for over 100 years and currently contain over 700 titles. This copy is the cloth edition, dark blue in color. It is quite small, but I like the compact, handy size.
2. Content:
The story of Anna Karenina is one of needless tragedy (at least from my perspective). From an early scene to one toward the end, the story comes full-circle, with the suicide of one individual, a nameless character, meant to foreshadow the demise of the second, and ending with the suicide of that second individual, a prominent character in the epic.
If you do not like sad endings, do not allow the fact that the present story has one (at least in part) to cause you to pass this story over, because it is also a story that is full of rich, intricately developed characters (they should be, since Tolstoy spends over a thousand pages developing them). Each is portrayed with believable traits, engaged in realistic circumstances, and possessing the ability to draw the readers into the story and to keep their attention. I must confess, however, that there was a dry spell midway through the story. Still, this may have been due to responsibilities and distractions that I had at the time of reading. The story is a study in contrasts in morality, if you will: some rising to higher levels of moral cognition, and others descending to lower ones. Throughout the story the readers observe both the ascents and descents, by way of right and wrong decisions that the characters make, and though there is an air of hope for each character, the hope fades for some as the story goes along. These and similar elements, of great interest to me, made for a rather rewarding read. I intend on reading it again.
It is because of the skill of Tolstoy to craft such depth in his characters; timeless, universal issues that remain current today; and a relatively believable story line, that appears to be richly reflective of Russian society of the nineteenth century; that Anna Karenina is rightly considered a classic.
Rating:
Summary: Great story, bad translation
Review: Despite some boring points during the book, like Vronskiy's horse race, Levin going hunting with his friends or threshing with his estate's peasants, the chapters where the male characters are voting, and Levin's endless pontificating, both out loud and to himself, about religion, agriculture, and education, this was overall a great story, hard to put down. The most annoying thing about the Maude translation is the "translation" of personal names into English, like Matthew instead of Matvey, Mary instead of Mariya, Nicholas instead of Nikolay, or Agatha instead of Agafya. It looks really arrogant and is very distracting--who's going to believe that these very Russian characters, even if they do speak French more than Russian, are actually calling one another Sergius, Mary, Kate, Annie, and Michael? I'm suprised they didn't "translate" Ivan into John or Anna into Anne, given how nearly every other personal name was "translated." They also mentioned in the list of characters (which lists every single character who ever appears, even ones who are just servants or guests who appear for all of five minutes) that ë is pronounced yo in Russian, but how many readers will remember that when they're reading names rendered as Serezha or Alesha instead of Seryozha and Alyosha? And the section where Levin comes to appreciate, love, and respect Kitty as a full mature woman and not just some pretty young sweet girl he's in love with, when she accompanied him to his dying profligate brother's deathbed and helped to look after Nikolay, has him start calling her Kate after this shift in how he relates to her. I had heard about this part of the book before, only that he began to call her Katya. How un-Russian is the nickname Kate?! I've also seen other translations where the characters are called by multiple nicknames, not just the ones given here, yet the Maude translation only has them going by Dolly and Kitty, not Dolyenka and Katyenka, for example. Were they afraid that was too Russian for the average reader? I had always thought that the scene involving the train ended the book, and was really surprised that there's about 50 more pages after that, during which we barely gauge anyone's reactions to what happened, and the matter isn't even discussed for very long before it's swept under the rug. The real end is very unconvincing; we're supposed to believe that Levin, who has been an agnostic for the entire book, who even didn't like having to go to Confession and hear Mass as a prerequisite for getting married, suddenly gets religious faith? Parts Seven and Eight should have been switched around. The title is also somewhat misleading because of how that story ends; wouldn't it end the entire book if it's the end of the story involving the title character? The title character isn't even introduced till around page eighty, and like so many stories, Anna and Vronskiy barely have said ten words to one another before they fall into bed. What were their motivations for entering this relationship, why did they do it when so many other people could never have done such a thing, was he even any good or worth it? There's no delving into what's going on in their hearts or their feelings for one another, something which should be in any book about an affair.
Rating:
Summary: Ayn Rand's opinion
Review: Why does Ayn Rand say that "this is the most evil book in all of serious liturature"?
Rating:
Summary: Six Reasons to Buy and Read It:
Review: 1--Because you have read, understood and enjoyed Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary 2--Because you have patience and appreciate Tolstoys elegant, long-winded, moralistic, religious, deeply aristocratically Russian viewpoints (I do) 3--Because you are interested in the historical shift from serfdom and reliance upon farming in rural Russia to early industrialization (Levin is a wonderful character) 4--Because you would like to envision the beautiful Russian countryside filled with wheat ready to harvest and great hunting 5--Because you find it fascinating to live like a Prince and jet set around Europe while having an illicit affair 6--Because you are interested in why a woman would feel compelled to destroy everything she has, including her family, for a man For a better taste of Tolstoy read War and Peace.
Rating:
Summary: Superb 19th-century literature.....
Review: Didactic, comprehensive, tragic, and challenging, Tolstoy's Anna Karenina is immutably powerful 150 years after it's original telling. A searing juxtaposition of Constantine Levin, a confused, cautious, and questioning man and the impulsive, emotive Anna Karenina, Tolstoy's masterpiece gives reason to long reflect on the net results of adultery. Levin, a man of simple tastes and patient plodding, ultimately achieves love, family, and inner-peace while the cosmopolitan Anna, in her haste for self-gratification, throws it all away. Amidst the often supercilious affectations of Russian nobility in Petersburg and Moscow, Tolstoy's refutation of the timeless notion of "greener pastures" plays out with striking effect. Of course, the impact of any 19th-century literature is directly proportional to one's predilections. However, Anna Karenina will engross, may even occasionally bore, but will never be less than a lesson well taught for those of the mind for reflection.
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