I am glad that this is over, finally! Not in a mean way, just that it took me so long to read! 
 I didn't really want to give this three stars... sometimes during reading, especially around the very beginning and the middle of the book, including near the end of Part Seven(view spoiler)[ - where Anna shows the full extent of her mental stress and then throws herself in front of a train - (hide spoiler)] I thought actually worthy of giving the book four or five stars. However, other parts I found the whole thing was dragging, and I wanted to end it and give it just one star. 
 I am glad that I carried on, even during these times, though I feel like I could have skipped out on Part Eight without missing much at all. I wanted to know more about the people that Anna had left behind; Vronsky mostly, even though I very much disliked him until the end, but also Karenin himself, Anna's son, Kitty and Dolly, and Anna's brother! Instead, she was barely mentioned. 
 I don't really know what I enjoyed. From some reviews I have seen, people have a clear distinction of what they enjoyed and what they did not; either they enjoyed Anna and Vronsky's relationship or Kitty and Levin's. But I could not choose! For the most part, I loved reading about Kitty and Levin's relationship, and was annoyed with Anna and Vronsky's, but nearing The End, I began to enjoy Anna herself much more. Also, being a fan of history and Russian history, I also enjoyed some of the politics and the description of farming. Love can be a bit tiresome when it is all that is talked about in a book this big! Unfortunately I was reading it for English class where my title is 'Love Through the Ages' and where you have to read rather a lot, so I could not slow myself and focus more on the actual interesting bits, which annoyed me no end. 
 The plot seemed very complicated, and not even because that much happens, but because there are so many different characters with separate storylines. Even though the storylines linked together, they were also very separate a lot of the time. I enjoyed this concept a lot actually, though I think that a couple of them (Levin's writer brother) was not actually needed, and I'm not entirely sure what some of his sections were for. 
 Tolstoy definitely did go off on random philosophical rants, and whilst I would perhaps not mind this so much regularly, I definitely did mind it with the time limit that I am reading it in for English. Note to self - and anyone else I guess - try to read this book when you don't have time limits! Because I'm sure I would have enjoyed it a lot more if I weren't rushing!