I'm generally a fairly well-read guy, so I would like to knock this classic out, but I am not sure how.
War and Peace was hard to start because of all the characters, but I got lost in it and it was really worth it. You don't have to pay a lot of attention to the chapters on the meaning of history unless it interests you. Anna Karenina I felt like I dived right into because it was a "smaller" story focused on really well defined characters. But I don't feel like it gripped me all the way through as much as War and Peace.
With books like that-- if you have the time to really sink into them-- you feel like you know the characters as people in the way you know your friends. They are like people you have known. The closest modern book to that I think is A Suitable Boy.
But if it isn't for you in terms of your time or your interest you shouldn't feel bad about it.
There were the perfect openings for laying down and just read until you forget to eat. In the end, there was some sort of sorrow of having to leave the characters behind.
It is very hard to get such openings today.
Don't force yourself to read a book you don't enjoy. Life is too short. There are so many books out there.
As many 19th century novels, the plot takes some time to get underway, but I was gripped by the characters and the language from the start. Perhaps you should think of it like a TV show which take a few episodes to establish the characters and universe, before the story gets underway.
Start with some easy Tolstoy, like Kholstomer, The Story of a Horse, or Master and Man. If you don't like those, maybe you're just not a Tolstoy reader. No problem there.
http://www.lrgaf.org/training/kholstomer.htm
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/986/986-h/986-h.htm (Master and Man)
I love 19th-century English literature, especially Hardy, and the same goes for the Russians Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, and the Ukrainian/Russian Gogol, so maybe it's a patience for carefully described settings/characters, carefully developed plots, and a willingness to be dragged, slowly, methodically, and for me, magically into another world and time. Not sure. It's possible certain books only suit certain temperaments. Tolstoy, I'm almost certain, appeals to those who've wrestled with religious belief or doubt for decades, whether they've moved towards or away from belief. He himself scared the Russian elite greatly because of his strong desire to live a truly Christian life, and his apparent willingness to do so. A truly Christian life terrifies most folks, religious or not. Don't assume I'm in sympathy with Tolstoy on this topic. But his sincerity clearly bled through into his writing, and gives it a power few other authors exhibit.
There may be authors on a par with Tolstoy, but I'm hard pressed to come up with one I consider better. War and Peace? Best book I've ever read.
The classics are not a homework assignment to be suffered through.
First of all, this sounds like wanting to "having had read" a book to check a box rather than the desire for the intellectual growth that comes from reading it.
> If other minds that I find interesting tend to mention a particular book a lot, I want in. I want to get it, to understand it, to have what they're having.
That isn't a book chosen for intellectual growth, that's a book chosen out of mimetic desire.
> The notion that people should only read things they already 'enjoy' is modern anti-intellectual bullshit. Perhaps enjoy was not the best word for me to use.
My point being, there are more classic books and books which other intellectuals reccomend than there is time in the world to read. Rather than keep banging ones head against the wall because this particular book does work out, they may be better served by trying a different book (one of the other 1,000s).
This point was not at all clear from your parent comment, which was easy to interpret as “if it’s hard, why try?”.
You’ve clarified that this was not your point, but I understand why someone would interpret the original comment as anti-intellectual.
But rather than “if it’s hard, why try?”, what I meant by it is "you've tried several times and still don't like it. Why is it that you're trying in the first place".
It is not anti-intellectual to say that one should stop reading a book they don't enjoy and don't have a good reason to get through. There are many other books which will qualify as an intellectual pursuit that the person could enjoy.
Pulling this momentarily into the technical domain, there are hundreds of ways to learn about computing, and the underlying concepts that make it all work.
If one day, I decide I want to learn how operating systems work, there are a myriad of resources I can choose from.
I might choose one, and discover that something about it just doesn't help me learn the subject matter. Perhaps it's too dense, or assumes knowledge that I don't yet have, or is just not written very well.
My end goal is still to learn about operating systems. I can abandon this goal entirely (which is how one might read that original comment, and I think it's fair to ask whether it's imperative that I learn about operating systems), or I can find other resources that help me achieve the same goal, possibly through a very different learning process.
All I'm saying is: "If it's hard, why try?"
Is very different from: "If it's hard, consider looking for another starting point"
To the point that the 2nd sentence takes on an entirely different meaning and leads to a very different conclusion than the 1st.
> It is not anti-intellectual to say that one should stop reading a book they don't enjoy and don't have a good reason to get through
I agree with this statement, but this is not what the original comment stated. The original comment made no distinction about "a good reason to get through" the material.
I'd go a step further and say that if you don't have a good reason to get through the material, and you don't enjoy it, it's actively harmful to spend the time. At that point, you might as well fire up your favorite video game or Netflix series, which will at least give you some momentary enjoyment.
But even then, some uncertainty emerges when deciding which things are important to get through. It is often not easy to make that judgement without understanding the material, which you cannot do without getting through it. And so we look to others who we respect, who found profound meaning, and trust that there's something there.
I think the most important thing is forming some idea of what you hope to achieve (a new understanding of things, or some insight into a particular phenomena, or personal growth, etc), and then making decisions about which steps you take next based on whether or not you're achieving that goal.
One of those steps might be choosing to stop struggling through a particular book. Or one of those steps might be deciding the original goal isn't worth the effort. But I do think that choosing purely based on enjoyment or difficulty will lead to never growing.
Growth usually comes via the hardest stuff, and if growth is important to you, a different decision making framework is required.
Yes, but I never claimed the first. I said "I think it's worth reconsidering why you wish to read this book if you do not enjoy it."
My point being that the original comment sounded more like wishing to check a box of having read a classic book rather than wanting to approach the book for what was in it and growing from the experience: > I'm generally a fairly well-read guy, so I would like to knock this classic out, but I am not sure how.
> I'd go a step further and say that if you don't have a good reason to get through the material, and you don't enjoy it, it's actively harmful to spend the time.
Yes I broadly agree with that.
> And so we look to others who we respect, who found profound meaning, and trust that there's something there.
There being something there for others does not mean that we will get the same thing out of it, or even anything at all if we're not in the right place for it. Doubly so if we did not pick the book because we wanted to get out of it what those others have said they got out of it.
Sure, but it's reasonable to want to try, especially for a novel considered by some to be "the greatest work of literature ever written". That seems worthy of investigation at least. Giving up when things get tough is a pretty problematic approach if you want to grow. Whether my objection matters admittedly depends on whether the goal is to learn/grow, but I think there's a good case to be made that it is.
> My point being that the original comment sounded more like wishing to check a box of having read a classic book rather than wanting to approach the book for what was in it and growing from the experience
But the point of being well-read isn't just to complete a checklist. I think you are reading very deeply into something and drawing a potentially unwarranted conclusion.
Everyone I know who reads avidly, and who many would consider well-read, who are even aware of the existence of Anna Karenina read not for the sake of it, but to improve themselves, their knowledge and understanding of the world around them, etc.
I think that's where our differences in this thread are coming from. I'm assuming the whole point is the acquisition of knowledge/understanding, and you seem to be assuming a different motivation, although I'm not entirely sure what that motivation is (I don't think "checking a box just for the sake of it" is a warranted conclusion in context, and "checking a box" is just a rhetorical device to help us understand that this person has a gap in their reading that they haven't succeeded in filling yet). Perhaps they primarily value good literature, in which case having a list makes quite a lot of sense.
If someone expressed the same frustration about the Greek myths, a potentially more productive response would be to point someone to Stephen Fry's Mythos, Heroes and Troy, which he wrote exactly for the reason that this comment thread exists: some people find the original material difficult to get through, but the underlying message was important enough to re-tell.
In the case of Anna Karenina, perhaps exploring the various translations that exist and choosing one vs. the other would be the ideal next step.
I think this and the rest of our disagreements is how we view the original comment, and the kind of motivations we ascribe to the original comment.
I'm biased, perhaps unfairly, in that the people I've met who talk about books this way do so with the goal of being able to say that they've read X, that they can show themselves as the kind of person who has reads books like X.
Again perhaps unfair to the original comment given that I don't know where they're coming from.
Because we are the rest we are mostly in agreement about. I am the last person to argue that one should give up when and things get difficult.
But not all roads to the acquisition of knowledge lead to this book, or any one specific book.
And I agree that not all roads lead there. My position was founded entirely on the stated desire to read this book, and the implied desire to learn from it.
Maybe that time would have been better spent on books you found meaningful at the time and to come back to this one when you would find it meaningful.
I don't know if this is a "tip" or not, but what I found easy about AK was the descriptions of people's inner lives, and how much insight Tolstoy has on the human condition. He was a very religious man, but the characters don't so much think about Christianity as live it (or try to).
Anna's feelings about Karenin's stuffiness, and their inability to connect, are SO modern. You see how they treat their son, and contrast it with the way "modern" parents try to raise their kids. Vronsky's behavior with his fellow soldiers is a beautiful picture of male bonding before there was such a term.
Writers are exhorted to "show, don't tell" and Tolstoy doesn't tell you Anna felt guilty, he shows you.
Another perspective shift that makes it more enjoyable: it's a time machine. I wouldn't care for that level of detail in a modern American context or even a fantasy, but a distinct culture nearly 200 years ago? Sign me up.
Then again, if you don't dig it no shame in moving on. There are more books than there is time to read them.
after reading that if you feel like reading tolstoy is something you want to do a whole lot more of, then pick up Anna Karenina or War and Peace. I've read both, because i enjoy reading Tolstoy, but i would not recommend reading them if you do not enjoy the process. there are plenty of other great literary works out there (and most of them are shorter).
Endings are hard. I suspect one of the things that has enhanced Tom Hanks' acting career is making sure most of the stuff he did had a good solid ending, not a quick fade -- consider Saving Private Ryan, and Castaway. Killer endings. Tolstoy, unlike Chekov, does great endings.
Also war and peace is truly amazing in the same vein
Sometimes the movie can be better than the book, especially if the book is a dense classic.
I saw a dust jacket quote that said something like, "Dostoevsky writes about the unconscious as though it were conscious". When I started reading his books, I felt like he naturally reveals his character's psychology through dialogue (both inner and intrapersonal). They are surprisingly relatable. They have quirks and insecurities, can be hot-headed one minute and fearful the next. "Do you know what it means to demand when you are only in a position to implore?" asks one protagonist. They struggle with big questions, their motivations are laid bare, and they endear empathy as would a self-destructive family member. Dostoevsky may not write inspired literature, but he has something important to say, and he says it from his uniquely Russian soul.
Anecdote: War And Peace was so massive it broke my audiobook reader app. 400 pages in it just quit progressing.