I hear a lot how people find it difficult to slog through anna karenina because of its length and numerous characters.
They cannot see how such a book could be one of the greatest of all time.
I think the analogy to music may be like: Beethoven’s 9th Symphony is one of the greatest of all time. But it’s a really long and complex piece lasting over an hour. It can be hard to pay attention to the entire piece.
That said, the recommendation for reading Anna Karenina would be to read it fast or watch a good tv series on it. War and piece 2016 tv series was excellent for example.
I find AK pretty easy going, and I've read it 3x, each time a different translation. War & Peace OTOH is impenetrable. I tried to build a habit of 10 pages each day. I lasted 8 days. Brothers Karamazov was similar. The most I got was 100 pages in during a 10-hour flight with no wifi, then put it down, probably forever.
Very interesting! I as well really enjoyed AK, but I also extremely enjoyed The Brothers Karamazov, even more than Anna Karenina. It's probably my favorite Russian classic! I too gave up on War and Peace however about 200-300 pages into the story.
I find timing plays a big part of my enjoyment of tougher classic novels. If I'm extremely busy or don't have time to dedicate to reading in decent chunks (an hour or more per day) then I find it hard to maintain motivation to read dense novels.
I somehow got through Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow but don't recommend anyone do that, I was just too stubborn to let it get the better of me :)
I have read the first book of War and Peace a long time ago and had a fairly similar experience to you. I never got to reading the second one because I didn’t have the time to do so at the time. I remember it as long but easy reading however. War and Peace definitely is entertaining.
> I somehow got through Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow but don't recommend anyone do that, I was just too stubborn to let it get the better of me
Strangely I think everyone should do that. It’s an insanely fun book once you have accepted you are not supposed to get everything. Pynchon is probably my favourite author all things considered. Still I think starting with Inherent Vice, The Crying of Lot 49 or Vineland is probably a good idea.
These comments are very interesting to me. I first read War and Peace in abridged format in English as a high school assignment, and loved it enough to follow up immediately with unabridged in Russian (am a native speaker). Found it enthralling.
On the other hand I recently gave Gravity's Rainbow a go right after slogging through David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, and just couldn't do it. The premise seems interesting/odd enough, but I found the writing impossible to follow. I'm sure listening to it as an audiobook didn't help, but this was the first book I gave up on after 15 years of audiobooks. At some point I just thought to myself, why am I subjecting myself to something I neither comprehend nor enjoy...
I can’t help you with the Infinite Jest comparaison. I have only read short stories by Foster Wallace, didn’t really like his style and had no interest in the themes explored in Infinite Jest so I am probably never going to try reading it.
I really like Pynchon style however. I think he perfectly nails the mix of serious and zany. Vineland is a good example. On the one hand, it’s a fairly serious book about the end of the counterculture and what the election of Nixon meant for the American dream but on the other hand it’s also a book in which a community of living-dead has its own radio station, one hundred pages in the middle of it concerns a woman training to be a lethal ninja and perfecting a delayed assassination technique and Godzilla makes a cameo and despite all of that the whole things feel coherent and properly jointed. I also really enjoy the rhythm of Pynchon sentences. I can definitely see why it wouldn’t work as an audiobook however. It’s writing you definitely have to read at your own pace.
I can imagine reading them in original Russian would add another level to the experience.
Interestingly enough, I devoured Infinite Jest and loved the entire novel. Gravity's Rainbow was simply too confusing to me and I think I would have done better had I used a reading guide to support me through the novel.
I think it is almost impossible to read Gravity's Rainbow exactly once. Either you give up halfway through it, or you finish it and re-read it. It makes more sense, I think, when re-reading it.
Youth and timing! I dropped out of college after my 3rd semester. I read widely and kept seeing W&P cited as the greatest piece of literature ever. I read it and liked it -- in two weeks, which was about 100 pages a day. I read it during breakfasts, dinners, coffee breaks and lunch at work, and then at bedtime until 2 in the morning. So, I was able to concentrate on it and enjoy it; being young, I could slough off the lack of sleep.
I read AK next and it was great. A customer at work saw me carrying AK and suggested I read BK, so I did. I too found BK to be my favorite of FD's novels. I also read most of his other novels, except I only got part-way through The Idiot. When I returned to school, I took a Russian Literature course, for which I reread W&P, AK, BK, and Crime and Punishment (instead of using the Cliff's Notes).
(My professor pointed out the humor at the end of AK, something I had failed to see in two readings: the narrator is talking to what's-his-name, who has a horrific toothache and therefore doesn't really care that the most beautiful woman in Russia ... oops, no spoiler here! It was kind of funny when he explained it and he was a zillion times more knowledgeable than me about FD and FD's writings.)
Again, I had youth on my side and, as you noted is important, I had the time to concentrate on the books. Decades later, a few years ago, I finally read The Idiot all the way through -- it was a long slog; it being a weird story anyway didn't help.
Just as another data point, I managed to finish and kind of enjoy Gravity's Rainbow, accepting that I just couldn't understand everything and just go along for the (rocket) ride. Only after finishing it I read some notes and interpretations online.
But I tried several times reading or listening to The Brothers Karamazov and I didn't manage to finish it, I felt out of touch with the characters, their little lives and foibles weren't interesting, the tone felt dry and didactic, and there was no "fun" mystery to keep me hooked.
This was weird because I did manage to finish and ultimately like Crime & Punishment several years earlier.
However like you said, this was back before I had my current job. I wouldn't be able to read any of them today, I think, I'd lose motivation.
That is interesting because I found War and Peace the easiest to go through.
Though it might be because I actually found his materialistic approach to history very interesting and his views an leadership extremely valuable. So I am one of the few that actually enjoyed all the rambling about how much Napoleon sucked.
It is one of the few books that made a lasting impression on my worldview. I wish more management type people would read it. It just so exhausting to work with people that see leadership as some ego trip. A good leader's job is to simply enable the people to do their job.
Funny enough I don't remember much about the actual characters. Really need to read it again some other time. AK was a bit more difficult for me as it is more story-driven and a bit more subtle with it themes.
>War and Peace is only as long as Lord of the Rings, after all. It's odd to me that people will read something like ASOIF and then punt on that.
I read the first four ASOIAF books in two weeks (before the TV show). I read the fifth one in two days straight after buying the ebook at midnight on release day.
I have repeatedly failed to read more than a few dozen pages of LotR.
You should keep going with Brothers Karamazov. The first 150 pages are mind-numbingly boring. But starting at around page 151, it does indeed become one of the best, if not the absolute best book ever written.
AK is not difficult to read, IMHO. I say that as someone not particularly persistent about "difficult" books: I couldn't get through either War and Peace or The Brothers Karamazov, or many other "classics".
They cannot see how such a book could be one of the greatest of all time.
I think the analogy to music may be like: Beethoven’s 9th Symphony is one of the greatest of all time. But it’s a really long and complex piece lasting over an hour. It can be hard to pay attention to the entire piece.
That said, the recommendation for reading Anna Karenina would be to read it fast or watch a good tv series on it. War and piece 2016 tv series was excellent for example.