Dinner With Anna Karenina

This was among a number of "book club" novels I set out to read at one point and I thought it was one of the more well done. (Disclaimer: Anna Karenina is one of my favorite novels, so perhaps I was sympathetically predisposed to this book). Anyway, I thought it was an interesting take on the transformative effect of books, showing how individual club members really re-examined their lives and priorities as a result of experiencing an Anna Karenina like moment.

Promising premise: A group of NYC women have a book club and their lives and their interactions with each other are featured between book club meetings. Unfortunately, too much whining and not enough plot development. I did enjoy the book discussions, though.

This book was barely "OK" and very unsatisfying. I picked it up impulsively from the "recommended" shelf at my local library and I was intrigued by the title due to its reference to Anna K. To me the book seemed pretentious, self-conscious, almost trivial and incredibly predictable. But.....I did finish it.

Great book. I loved the characters and it really piqued my interest in the books the characters read and discussed.

Expected something more literary. This was really just chick lit that mentioned literary fiction.

This was too much like some of the other book club books i've read. The most interesting part was some of the in depth discussions of the books the characters were reading.

This got a bit tedious and self-important.