I first read Anna Karenina many many years ago on a girls trip to a beach on a Spanish isle. We ate breakfast, went to the beach, alternated between cooling off in the water and my friend tanning while I hid under a parasol reading. Then we went back to our hotel, had an afternoon nap, or siesta, and then went out in search of dinner. So went 7 days and on the flight back I finished Anna Karenina, which now had an incredible amount of sand between her pages. It had only been about £1 at a charity shop so I wasn’t too bothered.
A couple of months ago I got the urge to reread it and decided to get a nice copy for my growing library (as my beach copy is back home in Norway), and so I ordered this one:
I thought it looked very nice and simplistic and I liked the colour choices.
After about a month my copy arrived but, it was awful.
Pages bent and ripped, about 30 of them. If I smoothed them out is the story readable? Yes. Does ripped pages spark joy? No. Seeing a book in this state rips my heart.
So I emailed the seller with pictures and got a refund. I could have ordered a new copy of the same edition, but I didn’t feel like taking the chance, so I went back to my old buddy; the Barnes and Noble leatherbounds.
And today she arrived!
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a reader in possession of good books, must be in want of a bookshelf. It seems I need a bigger bookshelf.
Diary of a Norwegian in Japan 