Hi Inquisitor
I'm not a big fan of Tolstoy either. I think he moralised too much. However, I do think he had a real talent for characterisation. I find his characters very believable. My favourite by far is Dostoevsky. I love all his books and I almost feel like he's an old friend. I'm reading The Idiot at the moment, and it's almost like being back in my Philosophy tutorials at university, as well as being an absorbing novel. I like Solzhenitsyn, Gogol, Pasternak, Turgenev. Dr Zhivago is one of my favourite novels of all time. I think Lara Antipova is one of the greatest literary heroes ever created.
Ooops, you got me started...