I hated Anna Karenina

By copperThread1972

I’m on my second read right now, and it’s kind of hit-or-miss. I actually liked it more the first time, but I can’t even fully tell what I’m supposed to “get” from it. I’m curious though—if there are people who truly love it, what exactly did you like? I want a different mindset going into a third read sometime this or next year, maybe. I adored *War and Peace*, so I keep wondering if I just don’t connect with *Anna Karenina* because the characters are kind of a different personality type and I didn’t feel that same curiosity/compassion for them. In *W&P*, Tolstoy made me genuinely care about basically everyone, and I actually wanted to keep learning more. I’d never really had that kind of pull from other books. Even when I was a little disappointed that there wasn’t more on Sonya by the end, it still felt like I understood the main characters really well. This one doesn’t fully click the same way for me. Levin feels closest to Pierre, and I didn’t mind Pierre, but I really don’t like Levin. Most of what I remember from my first read is nonstop talking about social issues and arguing with other characters—like it always comes back to “Levin didn’t quite word it right, but he’s right anyway.” I did enjoy the first and last chunk (like the first 100 pages and the last 100) because the writing had this real punch, but the middle was just exhausting. Also, I don’t really buy the whole “it’s fine if you don’t like it” thing some people say, like it’s automatically okay to dislike a book without thinking about why. I feel like with Tolstoy especially, I’m probably missing something important if I can’t explain what I didn’t like in a real way. I keep feeling like I’m not giving it a fair chance to land. Part of me thinks it could’ve been reading conditions or expectations. The translation I used (Bartlett) really didn’t work for me—her style felt weirdly lifeless and pretentious at the same time, and in a blind taste test of four translations I ranked her last by a mile. And I went into my first read pretty clueless about what the book even was, but I was patient and curious and tried to figure it out as I went. Maybe this time I expected something closer to *War and Peace*—more “swept away” action—and I got impatient, so I didn’t sink into it enough to understand it. Or maybe I just wasn’t paying attention at the time. I honestly don’t know. That’s why I’m asking—tell me what you genuinely liked about it. If I know what to look for, I can try again and maybe this time it’ll finally click.