But Anna doesn't die. Instead, she recovers, Vronsky quits the army and they go travelling abroad together! Shock!

Meanwhile Kitty and Levin have just got married, so much happiness and good will.

I'm loving this book! It's taking me awhile to get through it, but that's what Tolstoy's all about, right? It's a beautiful read anyway, not at all difficult, the transaltors have done an excellent job to make it flow so well.

And Toby's going well, growing fast, getting cuter every minute, almost eight weeks old now. He cries a lot some days and sleeps well other days. Today's a crying day, which is hard for Leash. She feels she's tried every different combination of feed/play/sleep/bath etc and there's no pattern emerging - sometimes he's fine, sometimes he's not - and while I think it's probably normal, the fact that he won't settle into a routine or predictable behaviour stresses us both just a bit. Especially because we did this parenting course that promoted the importance of 'flexible routine', and a lot of the 'routine' part of what they said should happen just hasn't for our little man. At least he's got the 'flexible' part going well!

Toby did very well, he cried while we were waiting in the airport and we could see everyone looking at us out of the corners of their eyes thinking "I hope we're not on their flight" but once we were on the plane he was fine. And he slept perfectly well in the hotel too, so overall I was very impressed with him; and while there were enough stressful moments that I wouldn't purposefully travel with a 5-week old, if the requirement came up again I wouldn't hesitate. Love my boy :)

I often think that half the joy in reading books like this is the insight into another culture. An author from within that culture writes about what is normal and interesting and noteworthy, writing primarily for other people within the culture, and I think it gives great insight into how other people think and the similarities and differences that exist across different countries and borders. It's like traveling to really foreign places: it broadens your mind. I often think the same thing when reading Italo Calvino or Milan Kundera. The story itself is only half the pleasure, the rest is in being introduced to a knew and exciting world view.

Another thing I find myself thinking, though, is how the original readers responded to the story. Calvino, for instance: I recently re-read Difficult Loves, a series of short stories, each one really a character study of some typical Italian person. To me, reading about a woman drinking coffee, or a man riding his bike to a factory to work, or someone losing their bathers while swimming at the ocean - these are all incredibly interesting because they build in my mind an image of Italy. But if you're Italian, and every day you see women drinking coffee and men riding bikes, or in fact if you are an Italian woman or man who does these things, then the story itself would be all that is left of Calvino. Or Kundera, or Tolstoy. And would the story by itself be enough to keep the interest of a 'native'? I guess in the case of these three it must be, as they have each attained a level of respect and longevity within their own cultures and languages as well as in mine.

Anyway, more thoughts about this later. I still don't know how Anna Karenina ends. Or even, in fact, how it pans out - despite being 200 pages in I've still got three quarters to go. Now that's longevity.

Well, except for the very noisy bundle of joy ;)

Someone asked me yesterday how I feel to be a dad, and I had trouble answering. It's strange. Sometimes I'll be at work or watching tele or something else mundane and all of a sudden I feel incredibly fantastic, like everything's right with the world. I think it's hormones. Or love. Whatever, it feels great and I can't wait to come home and see my family and hold out little boy.

But then other times I feel kind of dull and a bit confused. Like I don't know how to feel about it all. Like I'm not very emotionally involved in what's going on. Some of the things that happen aren't situations that normally make me happy, noisy late nights for example. I don't feel sad either, nor regretful, it's more kind of like I don't know how to feel or what to feel - unless it's slightly bewildered.

Besides, there's nothing to be done: we're well and truly committed now! And anyway, he's 3.5 weeks now, which means that with any luck we're halfway to sleeps-through-the-night stage. (Ssssh, I don't want any more horror stories thank you.)

Actually it's all still going pretty well, we've had a few sleepless nights and a few sleep-filled - as much as they can be with a newborn anyway. The midwife who visited on the weekend had some hot tips for good night sleep, which worked wonders on the night after. It's progressively got worse again since then though, so I'm not sure if he's building up an immunity to my Nina Simone CD (not one of the midwife's suggestions as such, but something that we found worked incredibly well) or whether they just stop sleeping as well. Not sure, never done this before...

Anyway, this bleary-eyed Dad is logging off, still very much in love with his noisy son.

Elicia’s doing well, she sprained a ligament in her pelvis during the birth process which means she wasn’t able to walk at all for a few days and now has to use an old lady's walking frame. She’s recovering well and we spent our first night back at home last night. The sleep deprivation isn't too bad - Elicia's mum is staying with us for a few days which is absolutely awesome, between the three of us we can alternate shifts a bit which makes life much easier.

And truly, being a parent is awesome, our little guy is the best ever. Even when he's crying in the middle of the night I just look down at him and think 'it doesn't matter how much noise you make, I love you a million'.

Anyway, more about that later. What's really struck me today is how much of a change this really is for us. Work-wise yes, but I think I was expecting that to an extent - it's really the first thing the husband thinks about. And the baby-care role for the wife - that's another big change but again, it's one that you know will happen before you start. But there's other changes - one for us is that we've had to put our apartment at Mount Hotham on the market in order to make the new budget balance nicely. It's a bit sad - and to me it really does signify the end of a part of our lives, the care-free, travelling part. I'm not moping - I'm sure we'll still go on holidays and whatever else, and they'll probably be even more fun with kids - but Hotham was an escape from the real world, a relaxing of the rules and a real icon of our ability to non-conform. And now it's got - we will conform - we will stay in one place - and we will enjoy it!

Anyway, as I said, more about all that later - but if you want to check it out visit our apartment on realestate.com.au.

- Ben Lee

Although I do note that some of JKR's plot explanations get a little befuddled. That's not just in the last book either, but nearly every one of the others. There's a scene right at the end of each, usually where Harry talks to Dumbledore, where everything is explained - and while the odd happenings and strange events are always explained away, sometimes the explanations are so far beyond what you would expect that they become implausible, even though they have very obviously been carefully thought out.

In my opinion, the revelation at the end of a novel should draw together the seemingly incongruous and make you go "Ah, now I see! Wow, how clever", and leave you with the feeling htat you should ahve thought of that connection yourself. Whereas Harry Potter is a bit more like "Righty-oh then, well I guess that does explain things" but I've never really found the explanations entirely satisfactory, like they depend too much on random 'magic' laws or spells that aren't understood or explained throughout the rest of the book.

But having said that, they are definitely all great reads and some of my favourite light-reading books of all time.