Prolific Living

Russian literature

Fyodor Dostoevsky: “Crime and Punishment”

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Ugly Flower in the classics - Crime and Punishment

The Happy Journey of the Classics Rudely Interrupted

“I would like to read you on a complete disaster of a book and why it should be buried!!”

My eccentric Scottish friend sent me these words well over a year ago – and how I have wondered if I would fulfill that request at some point. Well Alastair, you get your wish. This one is for you! Here is why I think Crime and Punishment should be “buried”!

Enough already with the wonderful, incredible, inspiring book reviews! Could I really write a review of a book I loathed, of an author that I could neither comprehend nor appreciate on any level, and could this book even be considered (gasp) a classic? [Read more…] about Fyodor Dostoevsky: “Crime and Punishment”

Revive your Literary Side

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I have a ritual with my books – first, to come into possession of book (through some generous source as I rarely buy books), read/inhale/digest the book, write a deeply personal blog post on book, keep book on shelf (if I loved it)/donate book to library (if I didn’t love it)/give book away to anyone who would take it (if one of “those books”)! The ritual, however, was more of a love affair with my Anna Karenina gem of a volume. I bought it well over a year ago on a whim and promptly nursed it on a shelf for months. I did not dare open it for fear of not fully appreciating a masterpiece by the Russian novelist Tolstoy until one day in January, I mustered enough courage to read this opening line.

“All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

It took me one instant to fall in love with Tolstoy and one day to fall in love with Anna K. [Read more…] about Revive your Literary Side

Leo Tolstoy: “Anna Karenina”

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“All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

With these captivating words, the supreme Russian artist, Leo Tolstoy, opens his magnificent masterpiece, Anna Karenina, and grips at my heart from that first paragraph until the closing words, 963 pages later. It is impossible to express everything I felt and experienced and learned from inhaling every word of Anna Karenina and yet I remain pertinacious to attempt so, a month after its completion. During this time, I have tossed one book after another aside, not because I found them to be in poor taste, only because it has been impossible to reap pleasure from lesser purity, lesser prose, lesser richness, anything lesser than Anna K. Reading Tolstoy is falling in love – with reading, with words, with characters, with thoughts, with dialogues, and with Anna and Tolstoy both – and finishing Anna K is that first love’s broken heart, never again will a novel touch me this profoundly, move me this deeply, and ache me so much. At least, I am sorely convinced as such today.

Reading Anna Karenina near Pacific Ocean

[Read more…] about Leo Tolstoy: “Anna Karenina”

“The Last Station”: One year in the life of world’s beloved novelist – Leo Tolstoy

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Leo Tolstoy Quote | Everything I love

Reading Anna Karenina has been so overwhelming and gratifying that I chose to walk away from it for a short while. I decided to take time to digest the scope, the breadth, the depth in this masterpiece of a novel. It is of course an overly ambitious task to ever digest it all. This is only my first reading by the Russian novelist, Leo Tolstoy, but most definitely not my last. So it was especially fortuitous when we chose to watch “The Last Station” about his life on a girls’ night out celebrating Russia’s International Women Day on Monday, March the 8th. [Read more…] about “The Last Station”: One year in the life of world’s beloved novelist – Leo Tolstoy

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