I tried to read War and Peace when I was 15. It was not a successful venture, as I didn't make it 50 pages deep into that book.
When I was 21 my sister introduced me to What Men Live By. Reading it aloud has become a Christmas tradition. In a little way this book eased my conversion to Orthodoxy. When so much in Orthodoxy was different from what I was used to I saw a painting in a priest's dining room that showed someone praying at a road-side shrine of the type mentioned in What Men Live By. It wasn't much, but it was something familiar. Other than that, I read nothing by Tolstoy.
This Christmas just past my sister gave me a collection of Tolstoy's short stories. I am really enjoying it. The stories often have no plot, but are more like psychological snapshots of different types of people. It is fascinating. I heartily recommend the collection.
11 hours ago
3 comments:
I've read some of his short stories - have you read "The Death of Ivan Illych"?
I just read War and Peace this past year, it actually moves quickly for a book of its heft, but peace is much more interesting than war for me.
I do enjoy Anna Karenina as well.
No. I haven't read TDoII yet. I'm looking forward to reading it. I read Anna Karenina 20 years ago. I forgot that was by Tolstoy. If I remember correctly that was about a French country doctor married to a discontent woman who sleeps around and eventually kills herself. Right?
My wife, aka the brains in this outfit, has reminded me that the plot I outlined above is not that of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. Rather, it is the plot of Flaubert's Madame Bovary.
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