Lớp Học Mật Ngữ - Tập 1 tải về miễn phí cuốn sách

Pedro Moreno _psum_lobal — Historical novel

Danica Drego dregodanic17e8 — I didn't read this book until after I was out of college. A book for all.

Amie Bennett amiebennett — “She felt as though her nerves were strings being strained tighter and tighter on some sort of screwing peg. She felt her eyes opening wider and wider, her fingers and toes twitching nervously, something within oppressing her breathing, while all shapes and sounds seemed in the uncertain half-light to strike her with unaccustomed vividness. Moments of doubt were continually coming upon her, when she was uncertain whether the train were going forwards or backwards, or were standing still altogether; whether it were Annushka at her side or a stranger. ‘What’s that on the arm of the chair, a fur cloak or some beast? And what am I myself? Myself or some other woman?’ She was afraid of giving way to this delirium. But something drew her towards it, and she could yield to it or resist it at will.” When asked for his three favorite books, Faulkner replied: "Anna Karenina, Anna Karenina, Anna Karenina," and polls of other well-known writers consistently rate it the greatest novel ever written. The genesis of the novel was in an encounter with Maria Hartung, Pushkin's daughter (giving Anna an interesting eighth-Ethiopian heritage - perhaps this was part of her mysterious appeal). Tolstoy began reading Pushkin, and had a fleeting daydream of a "bare exquisite aristocratic elbow." From that fragment, Anna emerged. Perhaps with the cumbersome initial chapter of War and Peace in mind, Tolstoy told his wife that novels should plunge immediately into the action, and that night wrote the wonderful first sentences of what would become Anna Karenina. The title is deceptive. Tolstoy's original title, Two Families, is more reflective of the structure of the novel, which presents Levin and his courtship and marriage to Kitty in counterpoint to Anna's infidelity with Vronsky. Indeed, it could be argued that Levin is the central character of the novel. The model for Kitty was Sofie Behrs, Tolstoy’s wife (Tatiana, the youngest Behrs sister, was the model for Natasha in War and Peace). Nabokov, who also acclaimed it the finest novel ever written (switching allegiance from Madame Bovary; a shift hinted at in the opening and closing sentences of Ada), with a typical Nabokovian concern with patterning, noted the theme of trains. When Anna first encounters Vronsky, a man has been killed on the tracks, a tragedy Vronsky uses to his own ends. When Anna first sees her niece and nephew, they are playing with a toy train set, suggesting the playful, seemingly innocuous nature of the intial gestures that will lead to infidelity. Later, in one of the most delicately developed scenes (see the passage quoted above), Anna is in a train carriage returning to Moscow, reveling in her emotions, but trying to convince herself that nothing has happened between her and Vronsky; then, stepping onto the freezing platform at a station, she meets him, and he makes his feelings clear. Anna's nightmare of the peasant is on the train tracks, and, of course, she finally commits suicide by throwing herself under a train. The quoted passage also shows Tolstoy's use of interior language in order to show a character's thoughts. This interiority was to become, with modifications, the stream-of-consciousness of the early 20th-century modernists. There are two minor love stories. The book opens with the infidelity of Oblonsky (Anna's brother) and his wife Dolly's reaction when she finds out. The casual revelation, halfway through the book, that Oblonsky is involved in another affair with a dancer, is both shocking and utterly true to his character. The unfulfilled attraction between Levin's older brother Koznyshev and Varenka forms another minor thread. In the heartbreaking "mushroom scene," Koznyshev and Varenka go gathering mushrooms, and everyone, including themselves, expects a marriage proposal to occur. But the moment passes and they return with baskets of mushrooms but no confession of their feelings. The book is exquisitely proportioned. When Kitty, infatuated with Vronsky, initially rebuffs Levin, he returns to his country estate and throws himself into his farmwork, going out and scything all day long with the peasants. He is, of course, trying to submerge his emotions in physical labor. As we enter into his work, we too begin to forget about Kitty, and this makes the eventual confession of love all the more poignant. All the main characters meet and react in their individual ways to Levin and Anna, but the encounter between the two main characters is left to the end. Tragic and beautiful, philosophical and descriptive, the novel also contains moments of superb comedy. In particular, Levin's hapless attempts to put the ring on Kitty's finger during the marriage ceremony, and his frustration with the doctor while Kitty is in labor are wonderfully understated. Anna Karenina, more than any other novel, has the quality of changing as one rereads it. Of course it is not the novel that changes; one's experiences are reflected in the pages, and moments that seem insignificant at first reading take on weight upon rereading.

Hizuka Shizuko flongthechariot — Thought this series was a trilogy, so I was anxious to find out the end. Alas, there's another book yet to come. I'm not sure I'll read it.

Jutta Strahll jjuttastra8052 — Baltimore's Laura Lippman almost never fails. I'm a diehard Tess Monahan fan, and this book (with its not-so-subtle lampooning of TV series production) is in my view the best of this growing series. I hope Lippman doesn't get tired of her gritty private eye protagonist@