Hindsight

My current audiobook is Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. I was very hesitant to start it because I already know the general story arc, how it ends, and I didn't want to be thoroughly depressed while driving, but I have enjoyed it immensely thus far. I am about halfway finished. It seems to hold the thread of realness in telling the story and doesn't back away from the less savory parts of human nature. My own personality, for better or worse, carries those same notes of struggle between cynicism and hope that permeates the storytelling. 

One of the most interesting aspects of the story is the many digressions into politics, philosophy, managing the peasants, and ways to tend the land. Intermixed into these digressions is talk about the Russian communists. Some are true believers; some withhold judgement; some find their ideas attractive, but note they are impractical in reality; some completely dismiss them. What I find so poignant in these digressions is that the author nor the characters had any idea that those communists and that ideology would murder 100 million of their fellow men before the next century expired.