two in one

Finished with 2 books that I must post about because they were both wonderful.

First, Anna Karenina. I read the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation and recommend it, I’ve heard it’s one of the best.

My complaints:
1) Sections of the book seemed to drag on and on and on. I had a really hard time caring about Russian farming and the politics of being in a government position and the Slavs and so I skipped over a lot of pages.
2) Anna Karenina. She drove me crazy. She was extremely selfish and I wanted to hit her for basically every decision she made throughout the book, especially concerning her son. I hated how she professed how much she loved him but acted the opposite.

What I liked:
Despite Anna's selfishness, she was a complex and well-written character. All of his characters were complex and unpredictable and real. Tolstoy takes you right into the lives of people (thank heavens I had a list of characters in the front of my book because it was hard to keep them all apart and they all have at least 3 names plus a nickname). But you experience a lot through these characters: death, love, relationships, affairs, religion, faith, arguments, marriage, pretty much everything that is important in the grand scheme of things. I loved that.

It wasn’t an easy 800 pages to get through but it was worth it.

Favorite Quotes:
"For me there is only one thing – your love."
"Her love outweighed all that is good in life."
"He understood not only that she was close to him, but that he no longer knew where she ended and he began."
"Good is outside the chain of cause and effect."
"The place where she stood seemed to him a holy shrine, unapproachable, and there was one moment when he was almost retreating, so overwhelmed was he with terror. He walked down, for a long while avoiding looking at her as at the sun, but seeing her, as one does the sun, without looking."
"What doubt can you have of the Creator when you behold His creation?"
"When you love someone, you love the whole person, as they are, and not as you’d like them to be."
And one of my favorites because I hate when when people think they deserve respect without having to earn it, "Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be."

Mike was getting a little worried about me reading books that largely revolved around divorce or affairs, so I decided for some lighter reading once I finished AK. I started Marley & Me about 2 weeks ago and finished today. It was a quick read, highly entertaining, and filled with little life gems. It was sad, which I knew from watching the movie. We always had dogs growing up, and now that we have our own dog, I loved the message about how influential animals are. They really become part of the family.

Favorite Quotes:
"in every dog owner's life a few cherished family heirlooms must fall" [my wedding ring almost became a fallen heriloom which at the time wasn't very funny]
"no matter how complicated life became, he reminded me of its simple joys. no matter how many demands were placed on me, he never let me forget that willful disobedience is sometimes worth the price."
"he was part of our family, and, for all his flaws, he had returned our affection one hundredfold. devotion such as his could not be bought for any price."
"in a dog's life, some plaster would fall, some cushions would open, some rugs would shred. like any relationship, this one had its costs. we could have bought a small yacht with what we spent on our dog and all the things he destroyed. then again, how many yachts wait by the door all day for your return?"
"he taught us what really matters in life. loyalty. courage. devotion. simplicity. joy. and the things that did not matter, too. a dog has no use for fancy cars or big homes or designer clothes. status symbols mean nothing to him. give him your heart, and he will give you his."
"he was a central player in some of the happiest chapters of our lives."

we love our crazy little coco!