I have been reading AK slowly but surely. The main complaint of most readers doesn't bother me. I have read several books based in Russia and know that one family member can have many different names, depending on who is talking about them/addressing them. It isn't as strange as you think, our own language has many different ways of addressing people. If you are talking to a family member you use their given name, but if you talk about a family member, you give their relationship as well as their name. If you know the person well there may be a nickname you use, and then parents rarely call their offspring their given names, but shorten them or use "pet names". OK....keeping that in mind...embark on Anna Karenina and the naming is not as odd as people first think..
I have only got as far as where Levin has found out that Vronsky has not proposed to Kitty, and Kitty has gone into a decline. The book is much easier to read than I thought it would be, however, I am only reading in 10-20 page chunks.
I had also started a book called "The Confusion" by Neal Stephenson, only to realise that it is the second book of a huge trilogy. So, yesterday I found a copy of "Quicksilver", the first in the trilogy, and am reading that.....all 900+ pages of it.
Bearing that in mind, please forgive me if I don't post for a while, as I am working my way through two ENORMOUS books.
Labels: Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy, Neal Stephenson, Quicksilver, The Confusion