Chapters 1-5: No Anna, Lots of Jude Law

I am not going to start this by quoting Anna Karenina's famous first line, which is controversial and has inspired its own sociological and statistic principle. Instead, here's a good reason to put this Incredible Hulk of a novel on your reading list: the chapters are short. This might have nothing to do with the actual content of the book, but it makes it a heck of a lot easier to take a break and watch the London 2012 swimming races until Missy Franklin's adorable face is tattooed on your eyelids.

Like the NBC Olympics coverage, Anna Karenina has a greater ratio of political endorsements to teary-eyed young women than I was expecting.

 Anyway, because of the mini-chapters, the first 24 pages weren't painful at all, despite the fact that the title character hasn't actually put in an appearance yet. Nope, so far it's been all about how Prince Stepan Arkadyevich Oblonsky (henceforth known as Stepan) has cheated on his wife, Darya "Dolly" Alexandrovna Oblonsky, with the French governess. That's right: over 130 years before Jude Law made headlines for cavorting behind Sienna Miller's back with his children's nanny, Stepan is trying to win back his woman's favor. The best part of this storyline is that Jude Law is in the upcoming Anna Karenina  movie, even though he plays a different character. Unfortunate implications much? I wonder if he's read the script.

Jude Law is also the voice of Lemony Snicket in the Series of Unfortunate Events movie. As mentioned before, the central theme of Anna Karenina is a plot point in the books. COINCIDENCE OVERLOAD.

 This might come across as somewhat romantic if Stepan actually loved Dolly and felt bad about screwing up. The reality is he's just concerned that she won't be able to run the household properly if she stays mad at him. Even though this is sort of accurate, because their youngest kid has already gotten sick from "unwholesome soup" that her Super Mom powers would apparently have detected otherwise, it definitely puts him in my Literary Chauvinistic Male Pig category beside un-studs like Rhett Butler and any Hemingway hero ever. Let's just say that I was cheering when Dolly ripped him a new you-know-what in a takedown on par with Carly Simon's "You're So Vain."

You are loathsome to me, repulsive! Your tears mean nothing! You have never loved me; you have neither a heart nor a sense of honor! You are hateful to me, disgusting, a stranger - yes, a complete stranger!

...and then she has inward angst about still loving him. But at least she shows some spirit...unlike her husband. For a man who writes racy letters to his French maid-slash-mistress, Stepan is a pretty bland character. He just putters along at his high-end government job (which he got through pure nepotism) and his high-end social life (which he got through being a rich prince and not arguing with people).

Not this kind of prince. Nineteenth-century Russia, like Saudi Arabia, had lots of princes, most of whom didn't inherit the throne or have weddings that inspire graphic novels.

 Tolstoy does more than imply that Stepan is an example of the complaisance that comes with being a member of the bourgeoisie; he calls him out directly for choosing the political affiliation that best suits his lifestyle. Stepan doesn't like traditional family life, going to church, or challenging the media, so - ta da! - he's a liberal.

And so liberalism had become a habit of Stepan Arkadyevitch, and he liked his newspaper, as he did his cigar after dinner, for the slight fog it diffused in his brain.

Hands up, everyone who heard Glenn Beck's voice reading that quote in their head. Somehow I suspect that Tolstoy's views are more in line with Stepan's friend Levin, the earnest but uncultured country boy who thinks that government bureaucracy is ruining everything. As of the end of Chapter 5, they have dinner plans. Is it too much to hope that a tantalizing secret emerges over coffee?

Maybe Stepan/Levin was the Joey/Chandler of its time.

 Speaking of coffee, people in this book are always drinking it, just like in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Since I believe in immersive literary experiences AKA excuses to eat while reading, I Googled "Russian coffee." All the recipes that came up seemed to involve vodka, which a) is not part of my diet and b) is not the best thing to imbibe when most of the characters have easily confused fourteen-letter names. So my Official Lit Dish recommendation for this chapter is a warm mug of your favorite coffee or tea (the latter of which was actually more popular throughout Russian history, even after Peter the Great introduced the "cup of joe" concept to the nation). If you're feeling adventurous, pair it with a delicious scone made from all the canned pumpkin that's been sitting in the pantry since the after-Thanksgiving grocery store sale.

Oh, and what does any of this have to do with Anna Karenina herself? She's Stepan's sister. I'm sure all this will tie into her story...eventually.

A is for "Anna Karenina"

We all like to think of ourselves as open-minded when it comes to books, right? Liking lots of different kinds of literature is practically the Eighth Holy Virtue. It means that you're stretching your mind, and also that you can appreciate the fact that Time Magazine listed both Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret and Watchmen as among 100 best novels of all time. For years, I never questioned my range of reading material.  As an eighteenth-century British literature fan who also liked science fiction, why should I?

Just not always together.

Then I went to college. And several philosophical texts and indie surrealist plays later, I realized that I'd spent the past 18 years well within my literary comfort zone. Which, incidentally, is a dangerous place to be.  If we don't read books that frighten us - books that rant about subjects we don't understand, books that even Hermione Granger wouldn't consider "light reading" and books that have spawned criticism collections longer than they are (here's looking at you, Ulysses) - then we can only grow so much. Somehow, the idea that some literary works are too deep or too foreign for the average modern reader to understand has become prevalent in the current cultural attitude. I am going to challenge this idea.

I'm not a professor or an English grad student. I'm a teenage girl. I take pride in baking the perfect loaf of banana bread and finishing my French homework in time to watch Stephen Colbert. And for the next who-knows-how-long, I am going to lay claim to 26 of the most renowned works of literature in the world. Specifically, ones that I normally wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole for 100 points of extra credit and free Starbucks for the rest of my life.

These are nothing compared to the bliss of never opening Moby Dick, even if they come with their own rocket ship.

My first book is Anna Karenina. Not only does it start with an A, setting up a nice little alphabetical title sequence for me to follow, but Russian literature is scary. All those long, consonant-full names!  All those allusions to Eastern Europe politics! (Am I the only one who never got the whole Prussia-Russia thing?  I can list every one of Henry VIII's wives and their children, but my eyes glaze over every time I try to remember anything about Frederick the Great.) I'm also hoping for a scandalicious, Us Weekly-worthy plot since the title character is a famously adulterous woman.

The upcoming movie looks hot, but so would a film adaptation of Webster's Dictionary if Keira and Jude were in it.

I also want to see if the central theme of the novel as proposed by Klaus Baudelaire in A Series of Unfortunate Events turns out to be correct: "[A] rural life of of moral simplicity, despite its monotony, is the preferable personal narrative to a daring life of impulsive passion, which only leads to tragedy." After getting through the 935 pages in my edition, I'll be kinda impressed if I can utter any noise other than a guttural groan of relief, let alone anything vaguely resembling a thesis statement.

This is my ground rule: I will not do outside research on the book's commonly recognized main ideas or symbols or meanings (author info and Eastern European history are fair game, since Anna Karenina was written with nineteenth-century Russians as the target audience). We live in the Information Age, and it's become ridiculously easy to know things without ever learning them for ourselves. I'm starting from scratch.

So. Chapter 1. Here goes nothing.