Anna Karenina

The Book Club now consists of three (3) members:

Myself

Stephanie (Out of pity, I suspect. And when she's in Cross Country, I can count her out)

Mrs. McFarland (The Librarian)


Well, it's kind of sad. Still, it's not like we were ever a huge group. I think at one point we were hypothetically up to 8, but there were only ever 4 of us that came on a regular basis. (Layla, Billie, Angie, and Myself). The Seniors were everything. They leave, we weep for a year and remember the good old days. We have no new members. All clubs collapse. Except for Anime Club. Which starts watching only InuYasha. Dubbed. O.O

But I digress. So, one advantage to having just the three of us is that we have a shot at actually finishing what we start. So, we tried to pick a summer book. I kept asking for Contemporary and Foreign... or if it couldn't be Foreign at least let it be Contemporary... or if it couldn't be Contemporary at least let it be Foreign. Please, I begged, just don't let it be composed of endless balls and social formalities! Pride and Prejudice spent any possible interest I might have had in them. McFarland comes back with a big stack and starts describing the plots as far as she knows them.

"And this book is about a dwarf who works in a Library in Germany in WWII..."

My god, where do they come up with this mierda? So, eventually she pulls out Anna Karenina and says, "Oh look, it's Foreign, it's Russian... it's about an adulteress."

Well, I have to be blunt. I love cultures, except... I don't like the French, and I'm not interested in Russia. But the more we talked, it seemed like the closest thing to a compromise the three of us were going to come to. So we ended up picking Anna Karenina.


ENDLESS BALLS!


SOCIAL FORMALITIES!


Will small, sad, shy, and slightly-gay Levin win Kitty over her dashing suitor Vronsky? And what if Vronsky plays around with poor Anna, who has come to town to console her sister in law Dolly (who also happens to be Kitty's older sister), about her (Anna's) brother (Dolly's husband), 'Do... D... Anyway, it starts with a D and it's long... by the way Mr. D is friends with Levin...''s unfaithfulness?

Did you forget what the question mark was for? Yeah...

Anyhow. It's okay. Better than Pride and Prejudice, even, which was good enough that I sat through it despite despising the subject matter. :P Every time it gets unbearable, there's a line that hasn't translated so well out of the Russian to make you smile.


And then there are other lines... about as common and about as necessary as the funny translations... which somehow seem incredibly true. For some reason they drift out of the pages and mean something for everyone. And again I find that having love changes everything, that some things that would once have meant nothing now leave me... understanding...