Agora Road Book Club: Anna Karenina Edition

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remember_summer_days

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Btw. Reminder we're reading Confederacy of Dunces next. I listened to the audiobook and felt it was a short book if translated to pages (Probably because of captivated I was by the novel.) But I just picked it up and its actually 400 pages lmao. Hopefully you guys enjoy it as much as I do. I think it's a very relevant novel that us agorans will find relatable.
 
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As I was trying to express during the radio show today --of which only 56 was there, so he's the only one not missing any context here-- is that on the scale of Mikhailov to Vronsky, the ease of learning and making art in recent years has shifted people a lot closer to the latter than they were previously.
 

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As I was trying to express during the radio show today --of which only 56 was there, so he's the only one not missing any context here-- is that on the scale of Mikhailov to Vronsky, the ease of learning and making art in recent years has shifted people a lot closer to the latter than they were previously.
Thinking about it, this might actually be an apt analogy about attitudes towards art in general.

To Mikhailov, painting is a lifestyle. He has formed extremely strong opinions about it, and dedicates much of his identity to "being a painter". The world of art, from its criticism to history to interpretation, more or less occupies his entire philosophy.

To Vronsky, painting is a skill that he picks up out of, among other things, boredom, and ultimately he only really cares whether his paintings are nice to look at or not. Mikhailov, to him, just someone who has "talent", so he's just better at painting than Vronsky is, ignoring how, even though there is no disagreement between them that the paintings are "art", they have fundamentally different attitudes towards what constitutes it.

That brings us to today, with the amount of materials and the increasing ease of learning to draw nowadays, people are skewed much more towards the latter. For most people, art isn't really something that you dedicate your entire life too nowadays--at least, not if you're a well-balanced adult--but rather another skill that you can pick up if you manage your time effectively and get get the right study materials.
 

zalaz alaza

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Well, I finished Snowcrash this morning and it has shed some light on quality literature for me. Given the experience of reading that absolutely meaningless book I entirely understand how AK could be considered great literature. I guess it just doesn't stack up against my favs. Still on Part 6 btw, choogling along. To note, I have been following the /r/TrueLit read along of Finnegans Wake and they divide the reading up into much smaller doses, 20-30 pages/week. I think when reading heavy material/classics this makes a lot of sense
 
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remember_summer_days

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Unless someone else wants to stream, the Anna Karenina discussion stream is canceled because my internet in my new home is unreliable. Instead, I will just of a Q/A for discussion lmao.

First question. Who was the best girl of the novel.

Obviously, Kitty hands down there's no competition. On the other hand, Anna is still perhaps the more compelling character. I think people IRL are more like Anna than Kitty, I particularly enjoyed the arc of Anna running away from her family in search of some exciting romance.

What drove Anna to do this?
 
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First question. Who was the best girl of the novel.
In order:
1. Dolly
2. Varenka
3. Kitty
4. Anna

Anna was I think the weakest point in the novel for me. I was never really interested in paying attention to her motives or romance or anything, though that's probably more of a fallacy on my part as the reader than it is on the writer. It is unusual though, how the book is titled after her, yet she doesn't meet Tolstoy's self-insert MC until very late into the book, and even when that does occur it's an extremely short encounter and then she dies a few chapters later.
 

dorgon

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Btw. Reminder we're reading Confederacy of Dunces next. I listened to the audiobook and felt it was a short book if translated to pages (Probably because of captivated I was by the novel.) But I just picked it up and its actually 400 pages lmao. Hopefully you guys enjoy it as much as I do. I think it's a very relevant novel that us agorans will find relatable.
i started the book too and i just finished chapter 2. Not gonna talk about it here but i am looking forward to when you make the thread for it, then I will discuss it there. But I am loving the book so far
 
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I await getting my hands on a better translation of the novel in order to continue my writing of it--currently around chapter 16--and in the meanwhile I've realized that I haven't recently been able to keep my mind off of this book at all. It keeps recurring in a fashion which I think only a couple of VNs have also been able to. I've come to the conclusion that is shows just about every aspect of human relations that you could reasonably ask from a novel. @zalaz alaza you're the dad here, so you're the one with the first opportunity to object to this, but I think that the novel has just about every aspect of maturity that people now share in common with the past. While perhaps only a lack of exposure, as I see it any sense of connection and "literally me"ing that I could share with a person 150 years ago is in there. It's gotten to the point that I've started to in some way narrate my life as if it were written by Tolstoy.

Or maybe I'm just starting to align more with Tolstoy's views on Christianity idk
 

zalaz alaza

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hm, i donno if i agree but i will put some thought into it and see what i can come up with . Perhaps we can try to think of some examples to the contrary? Does the novel show the lives of children in detail? I do think i agree that it shows the various levels of maturity adults adopt and how each plays out though
 
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