Book Addicts Anonymous

I finished this last night....I just had to...I only had 40+ pages to read
To me the novel is very insightful, knowing what went on several years later. Tolstoy could not have foreseen the revolution.
Anna is a "tragic" character, she falls for someone whilst married, in a society that gives everything to the man....whatever.
She leaves he husband to set up home with her lover, also the father of her daughter, but as she is still officially married to her husband, it his name that claims Anna and her lover's child.
The end of part seven is very tragic, and part eight seems to me to be devoted to tying up all the ends neatly.
Anyone who knows their Russian history will spot that this might be the beginning of the rot.
The novel is worth reading, and once you sort out the naming in your head, fairly easy to follow.
I have the good luck to have read several Russian based novels, and understand the various names.
But.....let's be honest...who ever you are reading this...you are someones child, someones sibling, maybe someones spouse...without taking into consideration any other social circumstances...you might have three ways of address.
The Russian way of naming is not so odd...the endings point to the relationships.

I now have less than 200 pages to read of AK......It has become a book where I just want to read to the end of the next chapter. I am familiar with all the characters now, and am thoroughly enjoying. When I bought Anna Karenina, it was part of a set of seven published by Penguin as "wonders of the World". Maybe the others are as good, I did read one of them around halfway through whilst doing my degree, that's why I never finished it. Perhaps after you persevere through the first few chapters they all get easy?

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.