Top 5 Tips for Reading Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

We're reading this bad boy today. Anna Karenina. One of the most well-respected and well-loved books of all time. But I'm actually kind of worried. Will I get the most out of this book? What if it's not one of my favorites? Can I really find a place in my heart next to Brothers Karamazov and other Russian classics that we've covered on this channel? Because let's be honest, sometimes you're not in the right headspace. And it's been a concern of mine, is how do I get the most out of it? So what I did is I reached out to some of the most well-read people that I know, the people who have read this book multiple times, and asked them, okay, I want to love this book. What's your top tip to get the most out of this book? And rather than just keep that info to myself, I thought I'd compile the answers that they gave to me to help you also get the most out of reading. So for one of the most well-read books, let's talk to one of the most well-read individuals who reads more in a month than some people do in a lifetime, who's probably read every book there is on the face of this planet. Maybe not. That might be exaggerated. Let's talk to Steve Donoghue, professional book critic, and ask him what's his top tip for reading Anna Karenina. Hello, BookTube. When it comes to reading any translated classic, especially one as towering as Anna Karenina, my tip to you would be to remember that you're not in it alone. And here I'm not referring to your no-doubt wonderful read-along companions. I'm talking about the companion who's going to be with you all the time when the Voxer and the Discord is quiet, when the videos aren't rolling. And that companion, of course, is the translator. Unless you're lucky enough to read Russian, you're going to need a translator. And that translator is going to be with you every step of the way. My tip to you is vet your translator. Go to your bookstore. Go to your library. Go to Electronic Samples Online and try out a whole bunch of different translations. Pick the one that suits you best. Don't go by any critic, even yours truly, telling you X, Y, or Z translation is the best. Instead, pick the one that you like reading the most, because you've got a long haul for a great book. That translator is going to be with you every step of the way. So that's my tip. Vet your translator. And the most important thing, don't feel embarrassed if you've asked this question before. It's a perfectly legitimate question. And I think there's going to be plenty of people out there that say, oh, go with P. V. Aronbolohansky. It's like the most active voice. So therefore, you should like it the best, which might be true for you. For someone like me, it actually didn't work for me in some of the translations. I was not a P. V. Aronbolohansky fan for what they did with Anna Karenina. I actually am going with Constance Garnett, and I took Steve up on his advice, flirting around different translations. And my girl, Constance, is the one that's going to work best for me. So don't ever take other people's advice to Steve's point. Now, our next tip, let's talk to an individual who specifically read this book more times than I have fingers on my hand. And also one of our co-hosts, if you're joining us on the live streams to talk about this book, Stephanie, and her tip that I also hear is one of the big fears when you're jumping into Russian literature for the first time. Hey, everyone. It's Stephanie from Mr. Truth Reads, and I'm here with one of my tips for reading Anna Karenina. So I first read this when I was a teenager and really, really new to Russian literature. One thing that really helped me was tracking the different characters or keeping some kind of chart that showed their relationships, because there are a lot of characters and a lot of the names are similar, or they have the same sounds. It made it a lot easier to keep track of who is who and who's related to who. So if you can get your hands on some kind of guide or if you just make notes as you go with the different characters, I think it will help a lot and it will help you keep everyone straight and make your reading experience more enjoyable. So I actually went out and Googled character maps. There are tons of spoilers just thrown out casually in these maps, particularly for people that are just like, what was that character's name again? So what we're doing is creating an in-depth series. If you decide to read along with us, we'll have some character maps and some of the plot summaries just for those sections, and we won't have read ahead, so there's no way that we could spoil it for you, in a sense, to make it a little bit safer for you when you're trying to kind of grasp with perhaps a larger cast of characters and perhaps a naming system that you're not familiar with. Now for our next tip, we get a two-for-one with everyone's favorite Russophile podcast, Tipsy Tolstoy. We've had them on this channel before. They do nothing but cover Russian literature. Let's hear what their top tips are since we get to two-for-one with them. Hello, I'm Matt. And I'm Cameron. And we co-host the Tipsy Tolstoy podcast, Russian literature for the inebriated. And you're about to read Anna Karenina. Here are a few tips you might want to think about going into it. Number one, my tip, the greatest tip of all time. Pay attention to the labyrinth of plots. What is the labyrinth of plots, Matt, you might ask? Well, you might notice when you get in there, there's a lot of farming. There are a lot of different plots. They are all important. You have to live the farming. You have to love the farming. That will make you love Anna Karenina. Live, laugh, love, farm. Live, love, leaven. My tip, if you're reading through Anna Karenina, even though it is often considered this amazing, uncritiquable work, it is a work like any others. It is excellently done. There's lots of things to pay attention to and respect about the book. And you know, of course, Tolstoy was an amazing writer, but it's also not above criticism. And if you have a thought, you could look into it, maybe using some academic databases because this book has been read so many times. Someone probably also had that thought and then maybe expanded upon it into something that you might find interesting. Looking up on JSTOR, you might be a genius. Do we have to sign off? Yeah, I think so. Until next time, enjoy your Anna Karenina read. Live, laugh, love. I'm going to leave a link to these guys' podcast down below where they did a part-by-part breakdown if you'd like to hear more of their thoughts on the story. But you might be wondering, well, I wonder if they break it down different being born from the text's original language. So let's talk to someone that speaks Russian fluently and is of the culture to know a little bit more, maybe some things that we don't pick up on. Let's head over to find out what Sofia thinks. I'm going to give you a tip on how to avoid one of the greatest pitfalls of reading. To get someone's point of view, you have to stop defending your own world for a second. And thankfully, fiction is a safe environment for that. When you go back to the chapters you didn't quite get, when you're in a different mood and maybe more willing to see, you can notice things that weren't there before. Tolstoy could use the same adjective to describe two rivals. He could also place a word like mushroom so strategically that you wouldn't notice the parallelism between some crucial chapters when they appear. Your first read is truly valuable and can teach you something about yourself, especially the parts that trigger strong emotions. But it says very little about the book itself. If you don't want to be like Onegin who stacked his shelves from floor to ceiling, he read and read but still no meaning, you should put in the work and patience to become a co-creator. It's an incredible skill you develop over time. Anna Karenina would be a great book to develop the skill with. The chapters are really short so if you can't focus for a long period of time, it won't be a problem. But when you are reading, make it count. Yes, even the dialogues that at first glance seem to be irrelevant only for 19th century Russia. In short, to get the most out of Anna Karenina, pay special attention to strange details, reread, and try to distinguish between the novel and your projections. She's led a masterful chapter-by-chapter breakdown of this text. I'm going to leave a link down below where you can go check out her talks on this. Whether you're deciding to join us on the part-by-part breakdown with the character maps and the chapter summary so you don't get spoiled or you read it on your own, we wish you the best of luck for what is one of the most beloved classics of all time. I hope these help you guys get a little bit closer to pulling the most amount out of this classic for your reading. As usual, like, comment, subscribe, playlist down below. We'll catch you guys later. Una out. I will love you.