Greatest Novel Ever Written?

A and I have decided on Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy for our first book selection---after much agonizing deliberation (A:  How about Anna Karenina?  B: Okay, -Husband- owns a copy already, so it sounds good to me.). 

Apparently, some have named A.K. as the greatest novel ever written.  It's going to take a few days to get through every novel ever written in order to have an informed opinion on that, but we are ready to get started. 

We're excited.  And I'm particularly excited for this fact:  Since our discussion will occur over the computer, via this blog, I don't have to worry about mispronouncing "Karenina" every time it comes up.  I also don't have to worry about laughing at and consequently offending you when you mispronounce it.  Because if you've ever been part of a traditional book club, you know that drinking wine is often a standard for meetings, and  Wine + "Karenina" = Mispronunciation. 

We will  post our questions/comments/reactions as we read.  If you are reading "with" us, please send your own comments/questions/insights to keep the discussion (and reading) moving along.  You can also email us, Amy and Brooke, at AllBookedUpNow@gmail.com

So with that, let's get started...best of luck :) 


Here is some Wikipedia background, if you're interested:
Anna Karenina (Russian: Анна Каренина; Russian pronunciation: [ˈanə kɐˈrʲenʲɪnə]) (sometimes Anglicised as Anna Karenin)^[1] is a novel by the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, published in serial installments from 1873 to 1877 in the periodical The Russian Messenger. Tolstoy clashed with its editor Mikhail Katkov over issues that arose in the final installment; therefore, the novel's first complete appearance was in book form.
Widely regarded^[who?] as a pinnacle in realist fiction, Tolstoy considered Anna Karenina his first true novel, when he came to consider War and Peace to be more than a novel. The character of Anna was likely inspired, in part, by Maria Hartung (Russian spelling Maria Gartung, 1832–1919), the elder daughter of the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin.^{[citation needed]} Soon after meeting her at dinner, Tolstoy began reading Pushkin's prose and once had a fleeting daydream of "a bare exquisite aristocratic elbow", which proved to be the first intimation of Anna's character.^[2]
Although Russian critics dismissed the novel on its publication as a "trifling romance of high life",^[3] Fyodor Dostoevsky declared it to be "flawless as a work of art". His opinion was shared by Vladimir Nabokov, who especially admired "the flawless magic of Tolstoy's style", and by William Faulkner, who described the novel as "the best ever written".^[4] The novel is currently enjoying popularity as demonstrated by a recent poll of 125 contemporary authors by J. Peder Zane, published in 2007 in The Top Ten, which declared that Anna Karenina is the "greatest novel ever written".^[5]