Overcoming My Waterloo

Yes, I knew it is a classic. Yes, I knew that I, being a homeschooled book worm, owed it to my reputation to read it from cover to cover and express undying admiration for it. But I just couldn't. Anna Karenina had me defeated.

The book's immense breadth made me quail a little when I first picked it up. It looked more like a weapon than a pleasurable pass time. However, I bravely decided that I would read it. And furthermore, I would enjoy it. If nothing else, it would expand and enrich my brain. So, undaunted by the jaw-breaking Russian names, I started reading. I read, and I read, and I read, and read some more before I finally realized that I wasn't even half way through yet, and that I frankly didn't care what happened to Anna, Vronsky, Dolly, Alexei, and the rest. Whether they lived, died, or went insane, it was all the same to me. So I admitted defeat and relegated Anna and her fate back to the bookshelf. And there the book sat for upwards of two years. But, every time I caught sight of Anna Karenina's imposing black dust jacket, the guilty thoughts rankled. I, the bookworm, the history fanatic, the lightning fast reader, I had been defeated by a book. 

So, I have decided to pick the black monster back up. I have even come up with an ingenious plan of attack which will, I hope, enable me to finish reading it. Since Levin and Kitty are the only two characters I had managed to drum up any interest in, I will go through the book and read only the chapters about one or the other of them. Then, I will choose another character and repeat the same methods until the book is completed and I have seen every character to his or her more or less happy ending. 

Yes, I know that this may possibly bring all of you rigid, the-book-must-be-read-straight-through-from-cover-to-cover types down upon me in a wrathful horde. But, hey! Cut me a break! I am at least trying to enrich my life, expand my mental capacity, further my knowledge of how not to pronounce Russian names, and all those other wonderful, home-schoolery things.