beginning of book review

so, after a month of beginning books and not finishing them, i have rested upon reading Anna Karenina with my friend Jamie. I have only read 56 pages but so far i am more interested in the writing deviation of tolstoy than the actual plot itself. I never read War and Peace or the Demons or the Ivan Il... something or other book. the only other thing i ever read was notes from underground which was a heady character study of a man who feels so ignored by the world that a stranger bumping into him and not saying excuse me sends him into a spiral that leads him to plot the man's death. so sitting down to a novel of society and propriety and general austen-like depictions of the social lives of a group of russian elites is just weird to me. kinda like a tolstoyan version of Emma. but it is extremely well-written and is starting to pull me in. i am hoping the context of the setting will also teach me a bit about russian society during that time. which is something about which i know nothing.