Will I Ever Finish Anna Karenina? Should I Even Try?

Every three years I give myself the challenge of reading a really big book.  The first of these was Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov.

Then there were the four Rabbit novels by John Updike.

A couple of years later I came back to Dostoyevsky with Demons (alternatively titled: The Possessed)

Then there was Steinbeck's East of Eden.

All amazing books, all epic in scope.  All successfully finished.  Enter Anna Karenina.

I am about half-way through this 800+ page monster masquerading as a book, which would be great if I had started it in 2011.  I began it back in October or November of last year and it might have even been as early as August now that I am applying my mind to nailing down a date.  I have taken two significant breaks in reading it, even completing several other books during the hiatus.  But I hate to leave a book half read, especially because I feel like I should get some kind of credit for reading over 400 pages of a book.  That is not how reading works, at least in my brain.  For me to say that I've read something, it is permissible to skim, but not to skip.  So I journey forward into Anna Karenina even though I know that it will be more work than pleasure at times.  I must remember that this is why I wait several years between these epics-because I have to forget the work that it take to complete them.

The way I see it there are two things I could possibly gain from completing this book.  First, a sense of (false) superiority because I have read a great book that many other people have not, or second, I could actually enjoy reading the book.  Because the book is a "great book" it often over looks the small details like plot, so I'm planning on fully embracing my pretentious pride once I finish the book.  Watch out for my upturned nose around June of 2013.


P.S. Tolstoy is much easier to read that Dostoyevsky.


Tomorrow: I'll Do You One Better