Wow, in the ninth grade? Where did you go to school?
I didn't read Anna Karenina until I was well into my 20s. And it certainly was never required reading anywhere I went to school!
But I agree, "it's a great novel, with a serious moral point of view, revealing what the consequences of adultery are."
Episcopalian prep school, back before they turned squishy liberal.
We never read War and Peace--probably too long--but I read it over the course of a summer a few years later.
I'm trying to remember some of the things we read in school. Moby Dick, Anna Karenina, The Waste Land, Hamlet, Lear, Othello, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Bear, and plenty of good poetry. I read some Dostoevsky back then but I don't remember if it was assigned or voluntary.