When reading hurts (just a little bit)

I tried starting ‘Anna Karenina’ many years ago. It was recommended to me by my Romanian Teacher. At that time, I only read fantasy and young adult, I hated anything written in Romanian (even if it was just translated into it), I hated the long descriptions of Russian society and culture, so I gave up on this book.

But I remembered I have it a few months ago and I asked my parents to send it to me. I’m reading it in Romanian because I feel like it might be closer to the original than English would be - for example, there’s a very strong emphasis on pronouns, and especially the ‘politeness’ pronouns which are not a thing in English. I love it. I can appreciate the historical context given by the long descriptive passages and I’m quite intrigued by how liberal and ‘western’ Russia was before communism set in. As I just finished Kate Chopin’s ‘The Awakening’ and the themes are quite similar, I can see some interesting parallels.

There’s only one problem. My arm hurts today. But I’m so hooked that it doesn’t really matter. As long as I don’t move too much, it’s okay. No other side-effects from the vaccine, by the way.