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Anna Karenina falls in love with Count Vronsky.

Considered one of the great novels, after reading ‘Anna Karenina’ I’m not sure why. This is my first Tolstoy and while I enjoyed a couple of Dostoyevsky novels ages ago, I’m unsure whether I simply don’t care for Tolstoy or have meanwhile soured on Russian classics in general.

Though the prose might be sublime in the original, I read the Maude translation and found it fair to middling. It was bloodless and dispassionate, with a lot of telling and little showing. Nothing really seems to happen or matter, even though there are deaths and births and scandals.

There are many characters with many names, and because no-one is particularly interesting, they tended to blend together. Once nicknames were added to the mix, I really struggled at times. Add in the excessive amounts of philosophising on religion, politics, peasantry, and sundry other thoughts that occurred to Tolstoy, and it all makes for dull reading. While, at times, he displays extreme insight into people and emotions, Tolstoy will then quickly shatter the moment by shifting to different characters having an irrelevant conversation.

Characters are wracked by pointless anxieties which crop up constantly, something I found irritating rather than illuminating. And while Tolstoy states that every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, I found his unhappy families all alike.

I suppose I’m glad I read it, but it really felt like one of those serialised novels where the author was paid by word. Ultimately, I didn’t care for it, and found it a slog.

John Green weaves the story of Henry Reider into the tale of how tuberculosis has shaped and been shaped by history.

Green is a fine fiction writer, and the clear and factual way in which he makes his case in “Everything Is Tuberculosis” shows he has a deft hand with non-fiction too. Even when turning the emotional screws, he steers clear of sentimentality. It is an interesting read, though I learnt somewhat less than expected due to my pre-existing interest in tuberculosis.

Even presuming the numbers and facts laid before the reader are wildly exaggerated, I see no real argument against Green’s plea. In fact, I agree wholeheartedly with it. We should be doing all we can to cure tuberculosis.

I’ll even go a step further. I truly believe we should be doing all we can to cure disease and alleviate suffering where we can. Fuck cost-effectiveness. We are people, and Green is right about us being here to love and be loved. Our human existence should be enough. It is enough.