Home :: Books :: Audio CDs  

Arts & Photography
Audio CDs

Audiocassettes
Biographies & Memoirs
Business & Investing
Children's Books
Christianity
Comics & Graphic Novels
Computers & Internet
Cooking, Food & Wine
Entertainment
Gay & Lesbian
Health, Mind & Body
History
Home & Garden
Horror
Literature & Fiction
Mystery & Thrillers
Nonfiction
Outdoors & Nature
Parenting & Families
Professional & Technical
Reference
Religion & Spirituality
Romance
Science
Science Fiction & Fantasy
Sports
Teens
Travel
Women's Fiction
Anna Karenina

Anna Karenina

List Price: $26.98
Your Price: $17.00
Product Info Reviews

<< 1 .. 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 .. 22 >>

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Expansive and Thoughtful Exposition
Review: The Rosemary Edmonds translation of Anna is quite good, though Tolstoy's narrative structure impresses the reader with a sense of detachment from the characters. The words themselves appear similar between Tolstoy and the characters, but the characters are lively; Tolstoy is cold, unemotional and absolutely unfeeling towards Anna herself. Maybe this is what gives the people in his novel such life and such depth. Or perhaps it's just a result of the translation. Take the time to appreciate the soliloquies of Anna and Levin. Try to drag yourself through Tolstoy's ramblings on the relationship between the upper and lower classes. Sympathize with poor Anna. Detest Karenin for his cold heart, but forgive him anyway. Don't be disappointed at Levin's revelation; it is unoriginal and flawed.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: An Enlightening Immersion into Everyday Life
Review: Anna Karenina provides well a window into the rich diversity and complexity within human nature. Tolstoy, relentlessly rich in details, paints characters so deep and natural, that as a reader, I could relate with all the characters, at least in some way.

Their emotions and problems are real: Anna and her adulterous love affair with Vronsky, and Lenin, with his painful pursuit of purpose in this life. Oblonsky struggles to find substance in his "play-acted" life, and Kitty realizes only too late she spurned the man she truly loves. One could go on and on...so much life and human color is contained within the pages.

The novel is down to earth and beautifully written, and provides a wonderful depiction of 19th century Russia.

If you struggle in relationships, question God, or doubt the purpose of it all, this book is for you. I promise you'll find yourself in all the characters...I sure did.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: An amazing window into the 19th century
Review: Tolstoy had talent most of us can only dream about. In Anna Karenina he examines the central problem of life through two distinct lenses - Anna, whose discontent is acknowledged in the affair with the dashing Vronsky, and Konstantin, also disillusioned, at first spurned, and later rewarded for accepting what seem to be Tolstoy's views of the truest of virtues.

The novel is brimming with ambitious ideas about love, family, society, religion, service, deceit, you name it. In addition, the writing is well exectuted and highly compelling even to the modern reader. Without giving away the ending I would simply say that the outcomes both follow the logic of Tolstoy's opinions about right and wrong. A long novel that one only wishes could never end.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: "Vengeance is mine... and I will repay."
Review: Isn't it funny how the second part of that statement completely changes the meaning of the first? And that is the way the entire book reads. As soon as you think you have a handle on any of the characters, you learn something new that changes everything. The result is that it's almost impossible to make a judgment about anyone.

Anna, in particular, becomes more tragic just for that reason. First we see her as the dutiful, virtuous wife of a passionless man. Then we see her easily corrupted by the decadent Vronsky. How "good" was she in the first place if she was such a willing victim? And even though we see in painful detail why she continuously refuses to do the right thing until it's too late, we still find ourselves asking why.

Who is avenging themselves on whom, and why? Some of the answers are obvious, but some are unexpected and make the most righteous characters downright malicious, and the most unsympathetic almost pathetic.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Masterpiece
Review: Before the Russians were allow to read the Bible, they had the authors Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. This book by Tolstoy has all the elements of sin, redemption, sanctification, and renewal. The character portraits are amazing. Tolstoy provides an interlocking profile of three marriages and a relationship, each with its own distinct character. As the opening sentence implies, some of the relationships are more harmonious than others.

Tolstoy was a master of depicting character - a few pages into the story and Oblonsky comes to life for the reader. The same is true of Ann, Kitty, Levin, and all of the other main characters. Tolstoy often achieves an immediate characterization by describing one character through the eyes of another, as in the early description of Kitty through Levin's love-struck eyes.

One of the best books ever written.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Take the time to read this
Review: I read Anna Karenina for the hype - so many people talk of it being one of the best books ever written. I was also interested in Tolstoy, who is a fascinating character.

At time of reading, I found the novel okay. The characters came alive on the page, and many of the scenes in the novel were beautifully delineated. But I found the pace too slow, and was bored by all Levin's socio-political musings on Russia at that time.

Months later, and I find that the book still resonantes in my mind. I find myself still thinking about Anna and her fate; about that excruciating moment where Karenin approaches total forgiveness and then veers away; about Dolly, Kitty and Oblonsky. About how different the world of Anna Karenina is from my own, in some ways, but still so relevant. And the differences are illuminating.

In this novel, Tolstoy manages to weave together a whole world of stories and people and events. I can't really describe it other than saying that it is a very very human story. Greater than the sum of its parts.

Don't read this book if you think you might become impatient 'getting through' it. It deserves better that that. But if you're reading these reviews wondering whether it's worth taking all that time to read one of the world's reputed classics, then my anonymous 25-year-old word, for what it's worth, is that yes, it definitely is.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A delightful soap opera
Review: This is a delightful soap opera which is as current now as it was when it was written. There's lots of history and lots of description and its fascinating to think that it was written over 100 years ago. I loved it.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: My opinion
Review: What can I say?! It's a great book.. I love it!!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: I'm glad tolstoy isn't my next door neighbor.
Review: This 80000000000000000000 page "book" isn't just boring and depressing, it's frighteningly so. Tolstoy wasn't just writing a boring book, he was trying to convince us that life is boring and dull. He deliberably avoids any sort of plot developement that might spark the slightest shread of joy, excitement, or even mild interest (One might point out Anna's collision with the train, but I did not find this interesting. It was malevolent, sad, and in the context of the rest of the book, spooky in an ill-defined sort of way, but it was not interesting.) He has here milked life of all it's flavor and left us a soggy tale to digest. It's no wonder that Levin finds himself retiring into morbid preoccupations with his own death, feeling himself unable to enjoy anything in his life. This whole novel seems to have been generated in such a pessimistic mood. In the preface to my edition (which gives an account of the history of Tolstoy's progress on the novel, and amazingly manages to surpass the novel's dullness with its rediculous redundancies about the dates of Leo's stops and starts on the novel.) Tolstoy is quoted, "if only someone would finish Anna Karenina for me." The writer himself was bored with this pulseless corpse of a book. No one does anything in this book, and barely anything happens. Levin spends a whole constipated summer with Kitty living down the road from him, and aside from accidentally passing her carriage on the road one morning, absolutely NOTHING becomes of this. Characters have to be sent out into the woods to shoot at birds for lack of anything better to do. Newlyweds are made to spend continuous chapters at a dying man's bedside just so the author can make sure that the slightest fly-speck of happiness isn't allowed admittance to the musty cell where this crap was composed. Several scenes are bungled and character's are often left without discernable motivation. Why does Anna fall for Vronsky? Who knows. They have hardly said four words to each other in print before they end up in bed together. Everything else that proceeds their consumation must have happened off stage somewhere. As far as the final pages of the book, where Levin discovers "faith", some weak-headed folks might find this inspiring, but I was disgusted. Levin's epiphany is less about faith as it is about giving Tolstoy an oppurtunity to spit in the face of reason. (As an illustration of what goes through a person's mind when turning to faith, I think it unintentionally sheds a lot of light on all the disgusting rationalizations a person is making in such a moment.) Why this book is considered a classic, and what sort of enlightment and enjoyment anyone is expected to get out of it, is beyond me. It must appeal to some masochistic element that makes people feel that the revolting boredom that this book induces is somehow their fault and their duty to overcome, (like the guilt people feel in church when the preacher makes them drowsy.) Tolsoy, of course, was a realist and he argued, in effect, that that he was protraying life without "implausable" flights of imagination or wildly extrodinary people or events. But a life without flights of imagination or extrodinary events is not worth living, (nor is it, in my experience, very realistic.) This so-called classic WREAKS.......

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: My Favorite Book of All Time!
Review: As you can guess, this is my favorite book of all time! Why? Well, because it deals with spiritual and personal redemption, death and rebirth, and all that jazz. However, the one problem I have with Anna Karenina is that Tolstoy seems to take a condescending tone towards the title heroine, while he seems to favor the other main character, Levin. I sometimes wonder why the book wasn't called Levin. . . or Vengeance is Mine. Perhaps Anna Karenina is a more catchy title.

To me, Anna was used by Tolstoy as someone who is disatisfied with the world, but who doesn't go far enough to transcend her disatisfaction. Levin, on the other hand, transcends his surroundings by seeking the spiritual path, while Anna's search for redemption leads to self-destruction. Maybe Tolstoy did this because Anna sought enlightenment through the pleasures of the flesh, while Levin sought a higher form of transcendence.

In any case, Anna Karenina is still my number one book (although Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow and Mailer's Harlot's Ghost come close.)


<< 1 .. 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 .. 22 >>

© 2004, ReviewFocus or its affiliates