War and Peace defeated me for the same reason you struggled with Anna Karenina - keeping all those names straight. Yikes! Didn't even make it through one chapter. I liked the Brothers Karamazov, but tried Crime and Punishment twice and quit both times in the last couple of chapters because I just didn't care about the characters. Reading is an escape for me, but I don't like being bored or annoyed, and have become more particular about what I read - mostly theology and murder mysteries which sounds strange, but they both deal with discovering what lies beneath.
War and Peace defeated me for the same reason you struggled with Anna Karenina - keeping all those names straight. Yikes! Didn't even make it through one chapter. I liked the Brothers Karamazov, but tried Crime and Punishment twice and quit both times in the last couple of chapters because I just didn't care about the characters. Reading is an escape for me, but I don't like being bored or annoyed, and have become more particular about what I read - mostly theology and murder mysteries which sounds strange, but they both deal with discovering what lies beneath.