Alec Lay > Recent Status Updates

Love it so far. Just barely into the story though

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Isaac Babel said: “if the world could write, it would write like Tolstoy.”

How true this is. Tolstoy is the master of portraying such varying, intense, and deeply relatable emotion. The unity in every character, how he describes the emotion playing across every part of a person, from their dress, to their facial expressions, to their every movement. Kitty, watching Anna dance with Vronsky, broke my heart.

This is one of those books that can get you in a mood if you keep reading it, the same way a gray overcast day can with it all around you all day. It’s a tragedy, this kid you can’t help but root for, and you can see it in him that it’s going to go bad, and it’s all right there, so easy to see. He even tells you, it’s going to be his own fault, it was in him the whole time.

Really good so far - the main character growing up in rural Appalachia (Lee County, VA) reminds me so much of home. From talking about Knoxville and Dollywood to how the people interact, the southern hospitality, how everybody in a small Appalachian town knows everyone else, it’s got me a little homesick. And it’s heartbreaking what this kid goes through, but he keeps his head up. Great so far

“Justice is no more reasonable than what a person’s prudence tells him he must acquire for himself, or must submit to, because men cannot afford justice in any sense that transcends their own preservation.”
- Machiavelli