Oh Leo-oh

Hey All,

I really like Anna Karenina.  I know, right?  After all of my quibbling and complaints about it before I had even started reading it, I turn around and say I like it?  What gives?  Well, Leo Tolstoy gives.  History gives.  The weight of time gives.  Quite simply, a book doesn't last this long as a classic without due merit.  I kinda knew this all along, but was daunted by the weight of the book.  But Curtis, my dear friend Curtis Maloley, that cunning, handsome devil with the rapist's wit (points if you get the reference), knew what he was doing when he recommended this book.

It was written in the 1870s, and concerns the upper classes in Russian society.  Clearly, I have absolutely no connection with the lifestyle and mindset of Tolstoy's characters, but that really does not seem to matter.  Love is a large theme throughout the book, and, perhaps because of the age in which it was written, romance, and romantic notions of love, appear on many pages.  Silly things about romantic love, like men falling in love at the sight of a woman who passes them in a carriage.  As if that really happens.  I now blame Tolstoy for the existence of Cosmo and other such inane things (Rom-coms, diet pills, and nuclear war, to name a few).

It's a great book to be reading in the middle of winter, too.  Russia is cold.  Canada is colder (Of course; we're better at everything).  I don't want to put it down, and I don't have anything else worthwhile to write about it at the moment, so I'll end this post here, and get back to reading.

-Bryan