I love how every once in a while we got the perspective from Levin's dog, Laska. It just shows that even in 19th-century Russia, humans were also narrating their dog's thoughts. 

Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy 

Tolstoy insults happiness insinuating that it is a boring, mode of stasis: "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

Another similar passage on page 739: "In order to undertake anything in family life, it is necessary that there be either complete discord between the spouses or loving harmony. But when the relations between spouses are uncertain and there is neither the one nor the other, nothing can be undertaken." 

I enjoy the farming scenes a lot, the descriptions of glossy grass & digging, & laughing from the peasantry really engaged my senses. Understanding the etiquette from my perspective, one that has gaps in knowledge of history, was tricky but it piqued my interest enough because Tolstoy depicts the timeless psychology of people well to me, their relationships also, to not be bored by this. Most of the characters seem to be pushing away their desires for the sake of comfort & social acceptability. They seem to enjoy the drama of it all. I like the occasional french words. It's frustrating to read about the affairs & forgiveness that comes after them, & the relationships that could have been, a bittersweet experience to be immersed in nonetheless. 

Prince Stephan Arkadyich Oblonsky is the sibling of Anna Karenina & who we are introduced to first in the novel, he is vain & hopeless: "Hard as Stepan Arkadyich tried to be a solicitous father and husband, he never could remember that he had a wife and children. He had a bachelor's tastes, and they alone guided him."

He leaves Dolly, his wife, & their six children in the country side: "The manager, a former cavalry sergeant whom Stepan Arkadyich liked and had promoted from hall porter for his handsome and respectful appearance, took no share in Darya Alexandrovna's [Dolly] calamities, said respectfully: 'Impossible, ma'am, such nasty folk,' and did nothing to help." She only got help with managing the house from Matryona Filimonovna, their nanny. 

A quote on page 162: 'No. Some mathematician said that the pleasure lies not in discovering the truth, but in searching for it.' — Stiva (Stephan Arkadyich) to Levin (Konstantin Dmitrich) referring to dealing with women. 

A quote on page 768, when Anna Karenina takes her life at the train station: 'And the candle by the light of which she had been reading that book filled with anxieties, deceptions, grief and evil, flared up brighter than ever, lit up for her all that had been in darkness, sputtered, grew dim, and went out forever.' 

A quote on page 795, when Levin is again, feeling philosophical: 'If the good has a cause, it is no longer the good; if it has a consequence - a reward - it is also not the good. Therefore the good is outside the chain of cause and effect' 

I don't think count Vronsky cared about Anna much. Vronsky's reminiscence of his first meeting Anna at a train station, after her death on the train tracks, contradicts Tolstoy's first line of the novel & seemingly his belief that unhappiness is movement & happiness is statis, because in this moment their love story comes full circle as Vronsky is again, at a train station. Suffering is predictable after all. It's causes, or strategies, are so limited. 

This was surprisingly a really interesting book, and while I did struggle a bit in understanding, want to reread again. Some parts of the book felt a bit unnecessary and overly long, however overall felt complete.