[throwawayarnty]

I hear a lot how people find it difficult to slog through anna karenina because of its length and numerous characters.

They cannot see how such a book could be one of the greatest of all time.

I think the analogy to music may be like: Beethoven’s 9th Symphony is one of the greatest of all time. But it’s a really long and complex piece lasting over an hour. It can be hard to pay attention to the entire piece.

That said, the recommendation for reading Anna Karenina would be to read it fast or watch a good tv series on it. War and piece 2016 tv series was excellent for example.

[carabiner]

I find AK pretty easy going, and I've read it 3x, each time a different translation. War & Peace OTOH is impenetrable. I tried to build a habit of 10 pages each day. I lasted 8 days. Brothers Karamazov was similar. The most I got was 100 pages in during a 10-hour flight with no wifi, then put it down, probably forever.

[briandarvell]

Very interesting! I as well really enjoyed AK, but I also extremely enjoyed The Brothers Karamazov, even more than Anna Karenina. It's probably my favorite Russian classic! I too gave up on War and Peace however about 200-300 pages into the story.

I find timing plays a big part of my enjoyment of tougher classic novels. If I'm extremely busy or don't have time to dedicate to reading in decent chunks (an hour or more per day) then I find it hard to maintain motivation to read dense novels.

I somehow got through Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow but don't recommend anyone do that, I was just too stubborn to let it get the better of me :)

[cardanome]

That is interesting because I found War and Peace the easiest to go through.

Though it might be because I actually found his materialistic approach to history very interesting and his views an leadership extremely valuable. So I am one of the few that actually enjoyed all the rambling about how much Napoleon sucked.

It is one of the few books that made a lasting impression on my worldview. I wish more management type people would read it. It just so exhausting to work with people that see leadership as some ego trip. A good leader's job is to simply enable the people to do their job.

Funny enough I don't remember much about the actual characters. Really need to read it again some other time. AK was a bit more difficult for me as it is more story-driven and a bit more subtle with it themes.

[OriginalPenguin]

You should keep going with Brothers Karamazov. The first 150 pages are mind-numbingly boring. But starting at around page 151, it does indeed become one of the best, if not the absolute best book ever written.

[bell-cot]

Difficult to slog through Anna Karenina because of its length and number of characters???

Have any of those critics tried reading a George R.R. Martin novel from the past 25 years or so?

[UIUC_06]

AK is not difficult to read, IMHO. I say that as someone not particularly persistent about "difficult" books: I couldn't get through either War and Peace or The Brothers Karamazov, or many other "classics".

Whereas I've read AK three times.

[ratg13]

Are there any long books that don't have lots of characters?

[mmmpop]

Beethoven's 9th is overwrought trash, so not following the comparison to one of the greatest novels ever written?