I focused on the individual characters I liked. Levin is a personal favorite and as you get further along you get a little more of him. Read each character story as a vignette and don't worry about connecting the dots of the whole book until later -- or until it comes up again. Interestingly, it's the same method I use for Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
There is a contrasting beauty of prose in Marquez, though, in spite of war being a common theme. Maybe because of environment: 19-century Russia seems raw and cold, whereas Marquez's Latin America is warm and colorful, and of course magic realism adds another level of aesthetics.
