I finally did read and loved Anna Karenina, and want to read it sometime soon again, but W&P has defeated me every single time. I am starting to think it's like Moby-Dick and its reputation is bloated out of all proportion to how good it actually is. I think it gets a reputation as World's Best Novel because it's supposed to be about, well, War and Manly Things. Altho (heresy I know) I like Tolstoy's novellas better, except for Anna K., I think he writes better at a shorter length. I dunno if he got that habit of inserting nonfiction essays into the story from Hugo or Hugo got it from him (or did they get it from Zola?), but someone should have stopped both of them.

(I'm always reminded of that Delany snipe at The Dispossessed that 'To be an American intellectual of a certain (pre-Magershack) age is to have read more English prose by Constance Garnett than probably any other single English writer except Dickens.' As if Magershack didn't have his own problems, but anyway.)