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I have just came up with a very easy explanation of why I could never like Tolstoy: I had been taught to read him not as descriptive but as prescriptive literature. It is one thing to know that divorced women used to jump under trains, but it is an entirely different thing to be taught that divorce is like suicide. My rejection of this reading has lead to my rejection of the author. Will I ever come to read his novels as -- well, novels? Writing this, I am resistant to the idea. There must be more to my dislike of Tolstoy that this.