The Diaries of Sofia Tolstoy are just that: the personal diaries of the wife of Count Lev Nikolavevich Tolstoy (or as most of us know him, Leo Tolstoy). This book is no walk in the park. It's big and tedious, but in between all of those days with mundane entries, there are some pretty amazing ones - and those are what make this book stand out.

We get an inside look at what Tolstoy was like, how it was to live with this 'genius', how life in Russia was at this turbulent stage in that country's history, and the struggle many women have with trying to be everything. Because that is exactly what Sophia did - everything. She raised the children, took care of the peasants, kept track of the planting and harvesting, & payment of workers, managed Tolstoy's publishing and printing, did all of his copying, made clothing for her family...this woman had no time to herself except for when she wrote in her diary. (It was no surprise that she felt suicidal!) Her husband hated that his copyrights weren't given to 'the people'. He hated that he lived in a large house with servants. He raved about this and said he would be better off without all of it and preached this to his followers - yet he never did a thing to change any of it. He constantly berated Sophia for being "materialistic" but never once thought of how else they would manage to feed their children (they had 13 - 5 died in infancy or childhood). And through all of this, it seems that only she sees how contradictory and hypocritical his views were when one looked at how he lived.

She struggles most with how much of herself she's given to her family and how little of it she has left for herself.

She writes, “Everyone asks: ‘But why should a worthless woman like you need an intellectual, artistic life?’ To this I can only reply: ‘I don’t know, but eternally suppressing it to serve a genius is a great misfortune.’ ”