Book Seven
Introduction by Robbie
Why Anna Karenina
Robbie introduces the reading · TBC
Anna Karenina was the seventh book in the reading sequence, begun in November 2023 after The Moonstone. This was a return to Tolstoy — the second great novel by the writer whose War and Peace had started the whole project three years earlier. It felt like coming home to a familiar voice, though Anna Karenina is a very different kind of book.
The novel is structured across eight parts, and the reading ran from November 2023 through June 2024. Where War and Peace is panoramic and historical, Anna Karenina is intimate and domestic, though no less vast in its understanding of how people live and love and fail.
Reading Tolstoy aloud for the second time brought a deeper familiarity with his rhythms and his way of seeing. The Russian names came a little more easily this time around, though there were still moments of stumbling.
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