Recommend me some Tolstoy

[bisonbison]

I've been doing a lot of heavy-type reading lately, and getting a lot out of it, and in my wanderings I've come across several references to the goodness that is Leo Tolstoy.

So, can anyone recommend me some Tolstoy to start with? I've read nothing, but am interested in his fiction and his non-fiction.

Fire away.

[Georgia Avenue]

What is Art? is incredible visionary insane and iconoclastic. Non fiction study of art, duh.

War and Peace. Get
the Penguin Version for better footnotes /translation.

These are my two favorite books of his.
--GA

[GME]

Start with The Death of Ivan Ilyich. It's very good and more importantly it's short, so you can use it to decide if you like his style or not. I also liked Anna Karenina, but it's very long so I would only recommend it if you don't mind long books.

[diebitter]

Love and Death.... Whoops that's Woody Allen

War and Peace. Takes a long time though.

[Jeebus]

i second the death of ivan ilyich. If you like that, you will really like War and Peace.

[yasher]

Anna Karenina was my favorite Tolstoy book, but I haven't actually read him since before I graduated HS, so maybe take that with a grain of salt.

GME is probably right; the Death of Ivan Ilyich was pretty good, and is a good starting point.

[Anacardo]

I really, really enjoy Hadji Murad, which is quite short.

[raisins]

War and Peace is an easy read, it's just long. Afterwards, or before or during read Isaiah Berlin's long essay the Fox and the Hedgehog. It will keep you motivated, assuming of course that you find Tolstoy and his ideas interesting.

raisins

[RussianBear]

I hated having to read Tolstoy when I was in school. I can't stand his writing style. That having been said, Anna Karenina is a great novel (especially in Russian). Marian Schwartz did an excellent translation of it, although, I'm not sure if it's been published yet. All of the other translations of it have serious errors in them. Her translation is by far the best, and I'm not just saying that because I assisted her and translated parts of it myself for her. There was a recent translation of it that even won a prize, however, I can tell you that there are many translation errors in that version. There are some short stories of his that are not bad, however, I'm not sure if all of them that I could recommend have been translated into English as I only have read them in Russian.
There are, in my opinion, better works to start with if you are interested in Russian classics. "Dead Souls" by Gogol or "The Master and Margarita" by Bulgakov. Or anything by Victor Pelevin is good. You should definitely read Pushkin as he is Russia's Shakespeare.

[Anacardo]

Oooh. Oooh. "Dead Souls." Least likely comedic title ever. I really enjoyed.