Personal Library -- Anna Karenina (Volume 1 and 2)

Author: (Russia) Tolstoy Chen Yang
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-09-01
Features: The ancients said, "Travel ten thousand miles and read ten thousand books." For modern people, traveling ten thousand miles is easy, but reading ten thousand books is difficult. The wheels of technology are sweeping across the world at an astonishing speed. Modern people, busy in front of computers and all kinds of machines all day, have turned the Earth into a village with wires, optical cables, tracks, or air routes. With a click of the mouse, we can paste ourselves anywhere in the world. However, facing the vast civilization, without the foundation of reading ten thousand books, we not only frequently encounter the awkwardness of "meeting face to face but not recognizing each other," but we also accumulate an unfamiliarity that stems from the depths of our hearts. For this, we long for a deeper understanding, a spiritual connection; we yearn for a return to a way of traveling—before traveling ten thousand miles, first put a few books in our spiritual backpacks so that our steps and souls can go further. A spiritual journey does not require "writing essays in youth and exhausting oneself in studies in old age," nor does it require hanging on a beam, gnawing through walls to steal light, or having a red sleeve add fragrance while never putting down the book. A spiritual journey only requires reading a few classics in the leisure of life. Novels, essays, and poems can all be made into soup for the soul; buses, subways, and even the palms of our hands can be our desks. Therefore, we have tailored a "pocket library" for busy urban dwellers. Classics are the soul of the library; easy to absorb is the essence of the library; reading anytime, anywhere, and in any state is the purpose of the library. The selected works in the library are all the true classics that have been refined after exposing themselves to the storms of different civilizations; the illustrations, carefully selected and painstakingly collected from hundreds of rare books and private collections, are a true restoration of the essence of the classics. The small format design makes it as clever as a wallet; the special printing process makes every book "filled with the fragrance of osmanthus." Classics are not afraid of time, but life cannot withstand the erosion of "time flies." The charm of classics is better seen than heard. It is better to use them to mend the gaps in our time, to add value to the fragments of our days; it is better to use on-the-go reading anytime, anywhere, to gather wisdom piece by piece, and to understand life in the spiritual journey. Reading classics, with the least expense, to reach the furthest reaches of life. Anna Karenina is one of the main works of the great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy. The noblewoman Anna pursues love and happiness but is ultimately crushed by the hypocrisy, indifference of Karenin, and the selfishness of Vronsky, ending up committing suicide by lying on the tracks and being found dead at the station. The landlord Levin opposes private land ownership and the capitalist system, sympathizes with the poor farmers, but cannot escape the aristocratic habits that trap him in an unsolvable contradiction. The contradictions of the era, the system, the characters, and the psychology make the entire novel tossed in the whirlpool of contradictions. This novel is deeply loved by Chinese readers; it depicts the tense and anxious Russian society during the transition from the old to the new.