{"id":3107,"date":"2017-05-09T21:24:42","date_gmt":"2017-05-09T15:54:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fableandi.com\/?p=3107"},"modified":"2020-03-20T12:06:26","modified_gmt":"2020-03-20T06:36:26","slug":"not-pick-tolstoys-anna-karenina-new-release","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thebooksatchel.com\/not-pick-tolstoys-anna-karenina-new-release\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I Would not Pick up Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina if it was a New Release"},"content":{"rendered":"

That\u2019s right. I said it. I would not have picked up Anna Karenina<\/em>\u00a0if it was a 2017 release.\u00a0Before you think that I am going to blatantly criticize a classic, allow me to say that I am currently reading (currently? I have been \u2018currently reading\u2019 it for the last three months). And I am immensely enjoying this novel. Tolstoy stole my heart within a few chapters and I keep going back to the passages I have already read; imagining the world in which Anna lived. But maybe if this book was written by a\u00a0present-day author, I might have second thoughts about reading it mainly because of three reasons.<\/p>\n

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1. The size<\/p>\n

Yes,\u00a0Anna Karenina<\/em>\u00a0is a huge one indeed. Knowing my fear of big books, it is surprising that I decided to read it. I do not read new releases that are this huge in case you are wondering.<\/p>\n

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2. The heroine\u2019s entry<\/p>\n

We start the story with Anna\u2019s sister in law and the problems in her family. Anna does not make an appearance until about fifty pages after. The classics-reader in me is a patient little girl; the new-releases reader in me is definitely not.<\/p>\n

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3. Agriculture<\/p>\n

Levin, a major character in\u00a0Anna Karenina<\/em>, has his POV strewn with agricultural and political references. Though I did not find the political talk boring, the passages on agriculture, ploughing, horses etc were not enjoyable for me.<\/p>\n

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Why I Picked it Up<\/h3>\n

The truth is, I picked up\u00a0Anna Karenina<\/em>, two years after reading a chapter (or two?) of Orhan Pamuk\u2019s\u00a0The Na\u00efve and Sentimental Novelist<\/em>, a series of lectures on the craft of writing and essence of a novel. Pamuk keeps referencing Tolstoy\u2019s Anna that I stopped reading the lectures because it gave rise to an urge to pick up this Russian classic. It took me two years to fulfil that urge and here I am, currently reading Part 6 of\u00a0Anna Karenina<\/em>. I did pick up Pamuk\u2019s book (which by the way is an extraordinary one defining who the novelist is and who the reader is) and finished reading it with a clearer perspective.<\/p>\n

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