Anna Karenina

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude

Anna Karenina is a long book dealing with marriage and affairs in 19th century Russia. Anna does not like her marriage. Anna has an affair with another man. Her husband considers divorce, but due to culture at the time, that would not be easy, and would create difficulty for Anna. Later Anna's paramore feels bad and tries to commit suicide. Things get weird in their lives. Others have different experiences and various relationships. The book kkeeps going on and on with details.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories

This collection of Tolstoy short stories includes:

• The Death of Ivan Ilyich
• The Forged Coupon
• After the Dance
• My Dream
• There Are No Guilty People
• The Young Tsar

They explore ethical and religious topics. The title story focuses on a man that is dying. He had risen up in society and made some sacrifices along the way. However, his death is now leading to the unwinding of life in the relative unknown.

Others somewhat seem to connect together. The people explore their state in life. In one story, the hangman undergoes a religious conversion. How will people be killed? In another the Tsar contemplates his experience and that of his people. The purpose of God and the needs of men towards other are explored in detail.

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life

The first section of A Swim in a Pond in the Rain drove me crazy. Small sections of a story were read and analyzed. I did not have a chance to get into the story before shifting gears to analysis. Luckily, the remainder of the book presented the entire stories before analyzing them. The works are all by master Russian writers. The author's background is in creative writing workshops. However, the analysis is beneficial for both writers and readers. Since most of these are translated stories, there is also mention of times when some context may be lost in translation.

The storytellers have honed their skills in the pre-Soviet days. There are themes of the struggles of common men. Most are firmly in the realism camp. However, there was one fun story about a person who had lost his nose and had it show up in strange locations. A good story follows an event that changes the life of characters that we care about. Most background and description should help us to know the characters and bring out the story at hand. The story may even behave differently than an author intended. A good writer would let it do what it needs to do.

War And Peace

War and Peace is a long book. I tried listening to the BBC dramatization that "only" lasts about 10 hours. It was tough to keep all the characters and events straight. I guess that is why it is such a long book. It takes place in Russia along the times of the Napoleonic invasion. Society is greatly altered both on the individual scale as well as the public scale. And the rest is just details...