Dear God I am so glad I chose to listen to the audiobook.
I can certainly see why this is a classic. However, the exciting bits happened so far apart and the details of their everyday upper class Russian lives was incredibly tedious to listen to. I most certainly would have DNFed this if I had read the book. I understand it was written well before radio, films and TV; folks had more time on their hands and were entertained more easily. I can appreciate it's cultural significance.

Wow. This book has been sitting on my shelf gathering dust for some time. But then, one day over the summer I happened upon it, and opened it up to the first page and was sucked in. It’s as dramatic as any Netflix series. It’s so satisfying to read, and remarkable to me that this was first published in 1877—it holds up remarkably well.

Anyhow, if you are a writer, I recommend this book as a must. Plot, setting, tension, point of view, all masterfully done in this novel.

It was alright. Some parts were pretty interesting and I felt involved with the characters and invested in what was going to happen to them.

However, there were times when I wished I could just skip ahead. I don't need multiple chapters describing some sort of political scene which the character you are with doesn't understand so how in the world am I going to understand?!
There was way to much stuff about farming that did not need to be there. It added nothing to the story.

It could have been a great book, but for me there were too many unnecessary and dull chapters.

Probably my all time favorite book. I read it in college and hid myself away from everyone while I devored it. I remember sitting in my dorm room and reading about waltzes and Russian aristrocracy and tragedies while living in NYC amongst graffiti and weekend suburban mall runs.. Still don't know what the magic was but I became deeply involved with this book.

One of the most beautiful things I've ever read.

Such an exquisitely beautiful and pure novel, probably the most beautiful novel I've ever read. Depicts the grandeur and sophistication of 19th century Russian society, in a period of relative political and cultural calm before the turmoil that was to come in the following century. These cultivated and cosmopolitan Russians of the 1870's spoke in such simple yet delicate and graceful ways, but the emotion that is conveyed and experienced - verbally, facially and through hand-touching - is abundant.

There are really two stories: Anna and Vronsky, being the ostensible tragedy of the novel, and Kitty and Levin, who are the real romantic heroes of the story. The latter couple follow an opposite trajectory to the title character's, and it is a brilliantly understated but stunning love story between two triumphant albeit very human and flawed people.

There's a third love story too; fatally flawed - that of Dolly and Stiva. In fact the whole book is about love. The times it works, the times it doesn't, the times it struggles. Sergei Ivanovich and Varenka's near miss; even Kostya's first proposal to Kitty. It's all about love.

I'm not gonna finish this. It pains me to dnf a book, but I don't care enough about this to spend any more time pushing my way through this.

long book. good if ur into that

Tolstoy's Anna Karenina turns out to deserve its reputation as one of the world's greatest novels. Far more than just the famous story of a married woman's doomed love affair, it presents a broadly sweeping picture of the Russian elite in the 1870s, from dysfunctional marriages to troubled courtships, against a backdrop of a society in flux. As well as a powerful narrative drive, its strength lies in the complexities of its characters and a brutally honest exploration of the emotions and outside forces that motivate and change them.